Richard Ramsey's smile is infectious. But his passion for the old El Toro air base's turkey vultures, palm trees and warehouses is even more catching. Ramsey '89 is the chief of staff of the design team working to build the Orange County Great Park on the site of the former Marine Corps facility in Irvine, Calif. The job "is part design, part management and part politics," he said, noting that "it has the three essential elements: civic significance, public and private support, and the design matters." He added, "The site is also just amazing." Ramsey, who studied 20th-century American history at Bates, wrote his final paper on the history of nature conservation in America. His goal with this project, he says, is "to see a master plan come to reality."

In Maine, the least ethnically and racially diverse state, it can be a struggle for families to observe Kwanzaa. Nationally, though, Kwanzaa's message of solidarity has begun to resonate with more households, said John H. McClendon III, program chair of African-American studies at Bates. McClendon attributed this in part to the rise of a middle class among African Americans, who no longer live in predominantly black neighborhoods. "They now live in suburban areas among larger white communities and are finding that they and their children are not having that sense of identity that was at one point taken for granted," McClendon said. -- In January, McClendon also appeared three times on the Auburn radio station WCNM-AM, discussing Martin Luther King Jr. Day and this year's observance at Bates.

The Kansas City Star gave "visual arts kudos" to the multimedia exhibit Cryptozoology, co-curated by Bates College Museum of Art director Mark Bessire and Raechell Smith, director of Block Artspace. The Star called Smith one of 10 notable Kansas City individuals and institutions that in 2006 "demonstrated vision, backbone and generosity." The article said that the exhibit, which ran from October to December, was "the talk of the town," and that it "struck the perfect balance between fun and thought-provoking." In addition to commenting on the relationship between human and nature, both fantastic and fictitious, the show introduced to the K.C. area such artists as Mark Dion, Joan Fontcuberta and Jeffrey Vallance.

Producing fresh, good food and contributing to the economic vitality of a community is a huge benefit for young farmers. One of a rising number of young farmers with college degrees, Brooklyn native Alex Utevsky '02 works with a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program at Phillies Bridge Farm Project in Gardiner, N.Y. In this type of farming, customers become shareholders who invest in the winter or spring and are rewarded with a share in crops throughout the growing season. Benefits include direct-to-consumer supply, reduced transportation costs and, according to Utevsky, the relationship formed with the community. "There's a social aspect to the CSA model," said Utevsky. Phillies Bridge, where the 180 customers volunteer to pull weeds and help with the harvest, is "a community resource — a place to gather," he says.

The record-tying start by the Bates men's basketball team has visions of playoffs dancing in Bobcats' fans heads. The Bobcats have matched their 8-0 start to the 2004-05 season despite having to replace two graduated starters, losing another to injury and starting their preseason later than most of the other teams they've played. "It's due to the great leadership that our veterans and new guys have blended so well together this quickly," said Joe Reilly, Bates' head coach, pointing to senior co-captains Zak Ray and Rob Stockwell, who "have been leaders since they arrived on campus." Throw in returning starter and junior guard Bryan Wholey and immediate contributions from guard Chris Wilson '10, and you can understand why the Bobcats are off and running.

Jason Buxbaum '08 was inspired to become an emergency medical technician after his dad, Steve, became an EMT and joined the Hillsdale Volunteer Ambulance Service a few years ago. Buxbaum took EMT courses during his first year at Bates, joined the school’s Emergency Medical Services team and has been a member ever since. Buxbaum, a Maine-licensed EMT, is enthusiastic about the team and its work. "It gets anyone on the campus emergency medical attention five minutes sooner than otherwise," he says. "And it's good for us to be there for our peers." The willingness to give back is evident in the Bates EMS, as it is at all such services. "Only about half the members are pre-med students," he says. The others "are doing it in the spirit of community."

John Strassburger '64, president of Ursinus College, remembers the day that the chairman of the board of trustees told him the college was losing applicants because of its tuition: It was too low. After the college raised tuition and fees 17.6 percent, to $23,460, Ursinus received nearly 200 more applications than the year before. Within four years the size of the freshman class had risen 35 percent. Applicants apparently concluded that if the college cost more, it must be better. "It's bizarre and it's embarrassing, but it's probably true," Strassburger said. Ursinus also raised student aid by nearly 20 percent, meaning that a majority of its students paid less than half price. And with the race for rankings and choice students shaping college pricing, Ursinus is not unique.

I4 Commerce seeks to displace credit cards as a means of paying for goods online. I4's Bill Me Later service is like asking the butcher to put the steaks on your tab: Online shoppers click the Bill Me Later button and, if their credit is good, I4 pays the merchants and bills the shoppers. Credit card issuers typically charge online retailers up to 3 percent per transaction, often twice what they charge real-world retailers. Bill Me Later provides the convenience of plastic but charges only 1.5%. "That puts pressure on Visa and MasterCard to lower their fees," says Brad Wolansky '86, head of e-commerce at outdoors outfitter Orvis. "Before Bill Me Later there wasn't anything from a free-market point of view to keep the credit card companies in check."

Members of Somalia's Bantu population lost their homes and suffered other serious traumas during the country's civil war. The United States began admitting them as refugees in 2003, and some 500 have settled in Lewiston. The smooth surface of relations between the city's Somalis and its Somali Bantus began to change last January. During 2006 Martin Luther King Jr. Day activities at Bates, Somali Bantus took part in a panel discussion of Lewiston's refugee populations, as did Catherine Besteman, an anthropology professor at Colby who had done research in a Somali Bantu village years ago. Soon after she met the other panelists at Bates, mutual recognition slowly dawned — she had met the Bantus as children in the village. It was "a true goose-bump moment," said Bates anthropologist Elizabeth Eames.

Kim Gamel '90, a veteran correspondent and editor for The Associated Press, has been appointed to the new position of news editor in Baghdad. Gamel, 38, who reported from Baghdad earlier this year, has served as news editor in Stockholm, Sweden, and covered the United Nations during two tours on The AP's international desk in New York. She began her assignment in Iraq on Dec. 1. Gamel joined the AP in 1996 as a reporter in Des Moines, Iowa. A native of Boise, Idaho, Gamel holds a master's degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, and before joining the AP worked for Russian and Mexican newspapers.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Winston Greaton '43 recalls, a sense of disbelief pervaded the Bates campus. He also remembers the feeling that his life had suddenly changed as the country headed into war. "I knew I'd be going sometime soon," Greaton, now 85, said. He fought in the China-Burma-India Theater, which came to be known as the "Forgotten Theater." "It didn't make the news," said Greaton, who served with the Army in India. "All the news was concentrated in the other areas." Greaton still wears the lapel pin identifying him as a CBI veteran, though few recognize it. "Once in a while, you come across someone who knows. They'll say, 'Oh, you served in CBI,'" he said. "That's pleasing."

Bates Trustee Thomas Renyi P'97,P'04 is presiding over the merger between Bank of New York and Mellon Financial, a $16.5 billion transaction that will create the world's largest securities-servicing firm. Currently Bank of New York's chairman and chief executive, Renyi will serve as executive chairman for the first 18 months of the new company. "Mellon is going to have the opportunity to accelerate what are very compelling growth rates for the company," he said. "This is a combination that has extraordinarily similar and very complementary businesses." While the deal ends a longstanding rivalry for both companies, it will unite institutions whose heritage is tied to two titans of business history: Judge Thomas Mellon and Bank of New York founder Alexander Hamilton, the first U.S. Treasury secretary.

After months of suspense, the top-level commission probing U.S. strategic options in Iraq this week unveils a report seen as the last, best chance for President George W. Bush to change course. So acute is the gloom over Iraq's slide into chaos, the Iraq Study Group cochaired by veteran U.S. operator James Baker has generated feverish expectations that will be tough to meet. Eric Hooglund, an Iran expert and professor of politics at Bates, said that whatever the commission comes up with, the key question will be how much influence the United States has left in Iraq. "The United States has been reduced to a passive role, unfortunately . . . [and] has been gradually losing its influence and authority," he said.

Don Riegle and Doug Coupe '92 have launched a new entertainment show on the Internet. Each week, "The 6Pack" highlights six of the World Wide Web's best in worldwide music, art, culture and worthy causes. The show is intended to give a boost to new talent. The show was recently ranked second among hundreds of thousands of videos on YouTube. The pair have a combined 30-plus years of experience in the entertainment industry. Don is a former executive of Sony Pictures Digital Networks, Disney and MGM. Doug worked as a television and film actor, appearing on "The Young and the Restless," "Baywatch" and "Beverly Hills 90210," among other titles. "The 6Pack" airs every Thursday. Recent episodes can be viewed at www.sixpackshow.com and all episodes appear on YouTube and MySpace.

For her video works, performance artist Kate Gilmore '97 has jumped rope in stilettos on a perforated platform and cemented her leg inside a bucket. Now she is making her Brooklyn solo exhibition debut with new videos at Pierogi that continue her exploration of pain, desire and endurance. In ''Main Squeeze,'' Gilmore crawls through a tapering tunnel while cameras at both ends capture her squiggling and squirming through. Another video shows her standing as the camera swings back and forth, punching her in the stomach. Laugh-inducing at first, the action becomes disturbing as Gilmore begins to grunt and groan in pain. It's hard to watch, though her clever incorporation of the camera into the work suggests a possible new direction. (''Hopelessly Devoted,'' through Dec. 23 at Pierogi, Williamsburg, 718-599-2144)

Wildcat Mountain ski area's director of mountain operations, Alexa Bernotavicz '94, was recently named this year's sole female recipient of a SAMMY Future Leadership Award, presented by Ski Area Management Magazine. The awards honor four individuals whose strong, innovative leadership demonstrated at mid-career shows exciting promise for even more accomplishments and leadership in the future. Last November, at the start of her eighth season at Wildcat Mountain, the 34-year-old Bernotavicz became the first female mountain operations director in Wildcat's history. She first came to Wildcat in December 1998 as director of the children's ski school and nursery programs, and has gradually taken on greater responsibility across mountain operations, so that she was the natural choice to fill the mountain operations director position when it opened early last winter.

When it comes to family, Kate Spencer '01 goes the distance. When her mother, Martha, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on June 14, the news came as a shock to her family. Kate's response was to raise funds for pancreatic cancer research by running a half-marathon. "I didn't know what else to do, because after that kind of diagnosis, it's so overwhelming," Kate said. She launched Running for My Mom, a project that raises money and awareness, and ran the Maine Half-Marathon Oct. 1, raising a little over $19,000. Inspired by that success, Kate is in training again for the ING Miami Half Marathon in January 2007. Kate writes comedy and performs with Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York, founded by Amy Poehler of "Saturday Night Live."

Students from Toddy Pond School in Swanville visited Bates to share experiences from a geology field trip to Baxter State Park. The informal Bates "Geo Lunch" gave the visitors an opportunity to ask questions about their Baxter trip. "I'm psyched!" said seventh-grader Daphne Kos after talking to Peter, a Bates junior. From Peter and his professor, Mike Retelle, she learned how enormous Katahdin once was and how it was originally formed. The geology department shared pizza and soda with the visitors, who in turn shared a demonstration that a Baxter naturalist showed them: Take a tub of ice cream and cups and spoons for everyone and practice gouging cirques out of the ice cream mountain, just as glaciers do. "Who wants to make The Knife Edge?" asked a Bates student.

Long-term studies exploring addictive behaviors produce tremendous amounts of data. To help analyze those data and characterize critical processes underlying addiction, Theodore Walls '90, an assistant professor of behavioral science at the University of Rhode Island, has received an American Cancer Society grant to develop new quantitative models, to be based on the integration of models used in engineering and the physical sciences with statistical approaches used typically in behavioral science. The five-year, $594,000 grant will support the development of new models to describe self-regulation in addiction, particularly in the case of smoking. Walls, who joined the URI psychology faculty just over two years ago, has established a lab devoted to the study of behavioral processes.

In November, Wal-Mart discontinued its layaway program nationwide, forcing shoppers either to pay in full up front or to use other means such as a credit card. James Hughes, a Bates economics professor who has written about Wal-Mart, said that for retailers, layaway programs typically are the most expensive kind of purchase plans they offer. Layaway ties up merchandise before the retailer makes money, he said, estimating that at some large stores as much as $100,000 worth of merchandise may be set aside in layaway at any one time. Some consumers may have trouble getting lines of credit, Hughes acknowledged, but those who can use them often do, regardless of whether it's best for their long-term financial stability. "Humans tend to like instant gratification," Hughes said.

There's a closer connection than one might think between Bangladesh and New Hampshire, one highlighted by the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus. Yunus pioneered microcredit, the now-common practice of making small loans to poor entrepreneurs. Rob Riley '95, director of Concord-based MicroCredit-NH, says that while MicroCredit-NH's mission is different, the same principles of small-scale development apply. Even more crucial in Riley's view is how MicroCredit-NH is helping to foster the state's growing sector of "microenterprises," businesses employing up to five people. According to 2002 U.S. Census figures, 19.1 percent of total employment in the state was in the microenterprises -- that is, more than 150,000 residents own or work for such concerns. "The importance of these microenterprises often goes unappreciated," Riley said.

College students could get more financial aid as a result of the power shift in Washington, said college leaders from across the nation who attended an annual gathering with media in New York, hosted by Arizona State University. Bates President Elaine Tuttle Hansen was one of nine college presidents and educational leaders who answered questions from the media on topics ranging from rising tuition to the cutthroat competition for national rankings. Addressing the latter topic, Hansen said that she recognizes that the many college rankings are part of our societal competitiveness, but "we all know the most valuable things can't be measured very precisely."

Maine's two U.S. senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, could emerge from Tuesday's election with greater clout than before, even as they're poised to lose their committee chairmanships and begin to take on the appearance of an endangered political species. Centrists will play a pivotal role in a Senate where Democrats and the two independents aligned with them hold a 51-49 majority. Indeed, the Democrats' margin is so slim that any individual senator has the potential to decide the outcome of a vote. "This is especially important for the remaining members of the 'Gang of 14' who had already shown a willingness and an interest in working across party lines to prevent stalemate," said John Baughman, a politics professor at Bates.

A native of Massachusetts, I was brought up on a very simple political syllogism: Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves; Abraham Lincoln was a Republican; therefore, vote Republican. . . . Thus, it was no small thing to abandon the party of Lincoln, and I did so not simply to vote for Deval Patrick but to affirm that the values I have always held, that stood for the best in Massachusetts, are now to be found in this non-Yankee from Chicago. Ronald Reagan, at whose second inauguration I offered the benediction, once said that he hadn't left the Democratic Party but that it had left him; I must say I feel the same way about the Republican Party. -- The Rev. Peter Gomes '65, in an op-ed

The worst part of coming home from Iraq was the waiting. Michael Philbrick '04, a Charlottesville native in the Marine reserves, was told he was coming back about three weeks ago -- then there was a stint waiting in Iraq, waiting in Kuwait and then debriefing in California. "You develop this image in your head" of what homecoming will be like, he said at his parents' home Saturday, sitting surrounded by family and friends celebrating his return. "When you get back home, it's not necessarily going to be like that." Philbrick didn't want a big party, didn't want lots of friends to ask him about what it's like in Iraq. The truth is, he said, you can't know it unless you've been there.

The Kansas City Art Institute's exhibit "Cryptozoology: Out of Time Place Scale" exhibit, which ran at Bates through summer 2006, makes a mash-up of science and mythology. And that's exactly what the planners hoped to accomplish. Sixteen artists with a particular interest in the cryptozoologic -- basically the study of creatures whose existence remains unproven -- submitted pieces. Joan Fontcuberta provided photographs documenting a fictional German scientist hot on the trail of fantastic animals. Members of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists offer stuffed beasts that evoke mythical animals like the chimera. Marc Swanson provided a life-sized sculpture of himself as a yeti. Bates College Museum of Art Director Mark Bessire said the show evokes a 19th-century science museum. "The whole exhibition almost looks like a diorama," Bessire said.

"The SAT is optional because we're looking for students who have an intense desire to take advantage of what we offer: small seminars, work in the lab with a full professor -- and we have admissions officers who read holistically and individually. The SAT could help a student, and that's great, but if it's not the best indication of your academic desire, we can live without it." -- President Elaine Tuttle Hansen on NBC's Today program, Oct. 20, 2006. Hansen appeared in two segments aimed at advising parents about getting their children into the best colleges. Also taking part were administrators from Princeton, Washington University in St. Louis and UCLA.

When Acer Nesbitt and Melanie Nesbitt '04 met in high school, they knew they'd have a home together someday. But they had no idea what they'd go through to get there. After graduation from high school, Melanie chose Bates to study chemistry while Acer joined the Army. Melanie graduated from Bates after only three years, returned to Memphis and started teaching high school chemistry. Acer, based in Seattle, married Melanie the summer before his deployment to Iraq, in December 2004. He returned safely last Christmas Eve, and in February the couple found their long-awaited home, in the Bishop Hills neighborhood. It's 1,200 square feet with three bedrooms, two baths and garage. "We knew as we entered that this was it, because it was so spacious," Melanie said.

A growing number of the best liberal arts colleges have dropped the SAT requirement for admission. Bates was one of the first to do so, in 1984. "The SAT wasn't telling us about students who performed well on a variety of other measures," said Bates President Elaine Tuttle Hansen. "It very often masks the background of kids coming from different cultures," added Vice President Bill Hiss '66, who was dean of admissions when Bates went SAT-optional. Her score on the SAT verbal component would have kept Lien Le '99, a Vietnamese immigrant, out of many top colleges. But, accepted at Bates, she graduated magna cum laude as a biology major and today is a doctor finishing her residency. "Being accepted to a really good college had tremendous consequences," Le said.

As the roster of schools dropping the standardized testing requirement in admissions continues to grow, this hot topic permeated the recent gathering in Pittsburgh of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. During a session on testing that drew a capacity crowd, officials of some schools with test-optional policies said applicants who chose not to submit scores did about as well academically as those who submitted scores. Once enrolled, non-test-submitters at Bates had "nearly identical" grades, said dean of admissions Wylie Mitchell, and they "actually had a slightly better percentage of graduation," he said. Mitchell was struck by the large show of hands from admission officials in the NACAC session indicating their schools were rethinking use of tests.

Lynne T. Johnson '00 of Milton joined the Peace Corps in May. A graduate of Milton High and Bates, she had worked in a variety of positions, including acting director of the Non-Profit Finance Fund of Boston. During the summer, she and 35 other Peace Corps volunteers went to the Republic of Moldova. Johnson is staying with a host family in the village of Gura Galbeniei, where she teaches health to high school students and works with the nonprofit Center for Health. Moldova has rich agricultural resources, and is making strides to catch up technologically, Johnson reports. She describes seeing a man coming into town in an old hay cart, complete with wooden wheels -- and the man was using a cell phone.

"John Lahr makes painfully clear how anxiety can prey on stage actors and destroy performances ("Petrified," August 28th). But actors may actually benefit from being just nervous enough. The Yerkes-Dodson Law . . . suggests that for any given task there is an optimal level of arousal linked to good performance. . . . [A]cting is a very demanding task and it is no surprise that stage fright can literally cripple it. Yet, as anyone who has seen a sluggish performance towards the end of a long-running production can attest, the Yerkes-Dodson Law suggests that being able to continually muster some anxiety may imbue actors' performances with the spark and energy that make live theater so special." -- Jonathan Adler '00, a graduate student in psychology at Northwestern University

"I was a very curious person because of my parents. They encouraged me to be as curious about as many things as I wanted. I had no idea when I went to college what I'd be doing. I took organic chemistry and did terribly, but I was good in English and art. I took many courses and participated in as many activities as I could. I learned a lot about every single thing." -- Martha Stewart, in response to a question by Emma Twombly '08. Twombly's two-page CosmoGIRL! interview with the lifestyle guru came about through the magazine's internship placement program Project 2024. Twombly focused on entrepreneurship in the interview, conducted in Stewart's New York office.

In the installment of Nick News with Linda Ellerbee that premiered Oct. 1, six kids set out on a Wild West adventure along the Laramie River near the Colorado-Wyoming border. The Laramie River Dude Ranch, owned by Bill Burleigh '86 and his wife, Krista Kaplan, was the scene for an experience that gave these youngsters from across the country new skills in everything from horseback riding to wrangling cattle. In their off time, the young cowpokes hiked, fished, tubed the river and watched real cowboys at work.

The growing mental health crisis on campus is no longer confined to the students. "All the structural changes affecting today's students -- overwork, competitiveness, technological shifts, commercialism -- extend to the lives of faculty," says Rebecca Herzig, associate professor in the women and gender program at Bates. She heads a committee on faculty issues for the pioneering Bringing Theory to Practice Project, which seed-funds innovative solutions to the college mental health crisis. So far, Herzig says, the evidence is largely anecdotal. But at every campus she visited while conducting research for a new book during her recent sabbatical year, Herzig says, she was approached by presidents and deans describing such problems as an increase in suicidal thoughts among colleagues.

Mermaid anatomy dissected! Loch Ness Monster captured on paper! Yeti face revealed! For Cryptozoology: Out of Time Place Scale, an exhibit at Maine's Bates College Museum of Art, 16 artists explore cryptids -- creatures only rumored to exist. The menagerie includes a resurrection of the extinct Tasmanian tiger, which some believe still roams the outback. The graphite-and-foam model was created by Rachel Berwick, who captured the predator's form by putting an 80-year-old film of the last known living specimen through a digital imaging process. "The artists are more interested in the stories behind cryptids," co-curator and museum director Mark Bessire says, "than in actually finding them." The bestiary departs Maine on Oct. 8, bound for an extended sighting at the Kansas City Art Institute.

Pat Grater '08 went from being too small on the junior varsity men's soccer team last season to starting varsity midfielder, and now he's second on the Bobcats with two goals and five points in six games. "I wasn't even looking to go here," says Grater, who was originally thinking about bigger schools. "But when I decided I wanted to play sports, my dad took me up here and I stayed over one night with the soccer team and loved it." That's how the kid his friends always identified as the perfect teammate found a niche that fits him like a tailored suit. Tom Doyle, recently retired from Fitch High, coached Grater in baseball, basketball and even against him once in soccer. "He just knew how to play. Everything."

Tonight, Taylor Hicks and the other fifth-season finalists from the popular show "American Idol" perform in Portland. Why is this talent show such a phenomenon? Stephanie Kelley-Romano, assistant professor of rhetoric at Bates, theorizes that its immense popularity comes from the show's feel-good effect and the audience's ability to express its personal connection to the performers by voting. The show presents "young, fresh-faced Americans using their talents," says Romano, so that its audience "can go to bed happy about the state of the world." The "will of the American people" makes possible the American dream for at least one contestant, and that's empowering, she points out, especially in a time of war when everyday Americans are seeking something to feel good about.

NBC's "Nightly News with Brian Williams" on Sept. 20 showed the Bates wordmark and Web pages containing research on Bates' 20 years of optional SAT testing by Vice President for External Affairs William C. Hiss ’66 and Prem R. Neupane ’05. The study shows virtually no difference in the grade point averages and graduation rates of students who submitted SATs and non-submitters. Bates encourages prospective students to include with their application evidence of various forms of intelligence, academic skills, discipline, productivity, values and contribution to a community. Admissions officers say that 20 years of data show the optional SAT policy allows them to make better decisions about who will succeed at Bates –- to consider factors like internal motivation, intellectual curiosity, creativity and the ability to work well with others.

Maine's younger voters could play a more decisive role in this November's election than in past years, says a newly released report. "Young people can be mobilized," said Mark Lopez of the University of Maryland's Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, which conducted the study. "It's not hard to get them to the polls. It's as simple as asking," he said. In Maine, where youth voter turnout consistently tops the national average, both major parties are asking. "There was actually a line to get to our table," Nathaniel Walton, a Bates junior and chairman of the Maine College Republicans, said of a recent membership drive at the University of Maine. More than 100 freshmen enlisted as new members -- a one-day record, Walton said.

Denenberg became chief curator of the Portland Museum of Art in June. He is responsible for the museum's historic buildings, the management of the collection of American and European art, and supervising the curatorial department. Denenberg oversees preservation, the publication program, and the use of the Winslow Homer Studio, acquired by the museum in January. His favorite Web sites include www.mobicapping.com, ("a manifesto on the state of photography in the digital age"); www.americanart.si.edu, ("the inventory of American paintings at the Smithsonian American art museum is my first stop when thinking about an artist"); www.ebay.com, ("all of my hobbies seem to require spare parts"); and www.srracing.com, NASCAR's site devoted to selling racing jackets ("the Web is a great way to indulge those Walter Mitty moments").

Boston University College of Communication graduate student Malinda Gilbert's summer included a mission to Israel and Palestine with the Interfaith Peace Builders to see the conflict firsthand and help promote peace in the region. Gilbert, a 2003 Bates graduate who is planning to study journalism with a focus on Middle Eastern politics in the COM graduate program, traveled to Israel and Palestine with 17 other IFPB participants aged 21 to 83 in July. Her eyewitness perspective, Gilbert said, showed her aspects of the conflict that people in the United States are not exposed to. "In Western media, it is printed in a black-and-white manner," she said. "The thing that strikes me most about the conflict is that we don't really get the voice of the Palestinian struggle."

As director of dining services at Bates, Christine Schwartz typically observes a dramatic spike in "salad bar intake" around the spring semester. That's when students start to notice the infamous weight gain called the "Freshman 15." It's all part of the college experience, she said: "Mom and Dad aren't there to control what you do anymore. The Freshman 15, in my opinion, is a rite of passage." But it's a rite that some view as an undocumented myth. A recent study of Rutgers University freshmen revealed an average gain of only three pounds between September and April. But it's also a rite that colleges are taking seriously as students arrive this week. Many colleges are promoting fitness, providing healthy dining options and educating students about overall health.

Increasing numbers of liberal arts colleges are making admissions exams optional. At Bates, William Hiss '66, vice president for external affairs, said that adopting an SAT-optional policy in 1984 helped attract exceptional students who might not otherwise apply -- such as Lien Le '99, a Vietnamese refugee who applied without submitting her scores, earned a biology degree magna cum laude and then a medical degree at Brown. "We hope that now that there are more test-optional schools, students will think about not taking it and putting their time and money into other activities, like music or writing or community service," said Jane B. Brown '69, vice president for enrollment at Mount Holyoke, which dropped the SAT requirement in 2001. "We hope they will have more interesting lives."

With the Hezbollah terror group gaining acceptance among many Middle Easterners, Saudi Arabia's Western links could hamper its continuing dominance in the region, warn Mideast policy analysts. The Saudis have a fine line to walk between the United States, with its unflinching support for Israel, and Muslim nations that have close ties to Saudi Arabia and want to see Israel disappear. Having a leading voice in the region is imperative to the Saudis, said Eric Hooglund, a professor of Muslim politics at Bates. He said Saudis fear that Hezbollah's growing acceptance among Arabs could diminish its moral authority over its centuries-old regional rival Iran. Saudi Arabia and Iran's relations remain tense, with centuries of aggression between the two and religious oppression of Shiites in Saudi Arabia, Hooglund said.

Miami-based decorator Evette Rios '99 has only one day to pull a room together as the on-camera designer for an HGTV show on low-budget makeovers that use furniture and objects already in homes. Her latest endeavor takes even less time: giving decorating advice based on photographs taken by do-it-yourselfers who want professional tips for fast, inexpensive makeovers. Rios honed her design tactics on HGTV's no-cost design show Freestyle, on which she recreates rooms in an afternoon using only existing furniture, art and other objects in a home. ''The idea is to work with young people who can't afford to go out and buy new stuff," says Rios, 27, whose decorating company is called Sitio (''place'' in Spanish).

Maine's congressional delegation is supporting legislation that would regulate trading in oil futures via such electronic markets as the InterContinental Exchange, which is not overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Not all economists believe the regulatory effort will address fluctuating oil prices that are reflected at the gas pump. Jim Hughes, an economics professor at Bates, is not sure the measure will affect oil prices. "As oil is the most heavily traded of global commodities, whatever you can't do here, you can do in other world markets, so the capital will just flow elsewhere," he said. Hughes said the futures market has been working properly. He suggested a better way to address the price issue would be policies that remove more of the risk from the marketplace.

As Charles Antin '02 taps the keyboard, typing in the letters and words of his favorite short stories, he absorbs their content. With each stroke, he learns more about grammar, diction and syntax. "Your fingers start to get used to where to put the words," Antin said of his time spent physically copying the works of esteemed authors such as Hemingway and Fitzgerald. His progress as a writer, which he attributes to this method, hasn't gone unnoticed. Antin, a 1998 graduate of Needham High School, took first place in the annual Very Short Fiction competition for Glimmer Train Press Inc. His piece "Fat Cooling," which won the prestigious award in the short fiction journal, is his first chance to showcase his newfound sensibilities about the craft.

[S]tories about 9/11 aren't told just by filmmakers like Oliver Stone. Every American has a story about that day. As psychologists interested in ways people make meaning of their experiences, we have been studying stories people tell about 9/11. In our nationwide sampling of Americans, collected within two months of the terrorist attacks, we found that individuals who crafted stories of national redemption—a style of storytelling that recent research suggests is particularly American—were psychologically better off than those who storied the events differently. This work reminds us that we all shape national myths, and that the way in which we tell these myths matters for our psychological well-being. -- Jonathan Adler '00, Northwestern University, and Michael Poulin, University of California

The hunger to reach the top, despite the obstacles in your way, remains fundamental to the success -- and, at times, the dark side -- of the human race. In a BusinessWeek poll of 2,500 American workers, two-thirds said "a modestly talented but extremely competitive person" would be more likely to get ahead at their companies. Only one-third gave the edge to "an extremely talented but uncompetitive person." Members of today's connected generation increasingly are driven to do better than their peers. Katie Nolan '06 notes that when her rowing mates at Bates agreed to stick together in a charity run, it didn't work. "We all started racing against each other," says Nolan. Teamwork is great, but "we've been raised to believe we'll succeed in a big way."

David Curley '10 has been synonymous with St. John's basketball. A hardnosed player with a strong work ethic, Curley epitomized what coach Bob Foley wants to see from his players. "The kids play hard, aren't selfish and genuinely like one another. Dave epitomizes all of that," Foley said. While Curley looks forward to basketball at Bates, he's even more excited about the academic challenges awaiting him at one of the country's top liberal arts colleges. He plans on concentrating on business and finance. "I haven't exactly picked a major yet, but I wanted to go to the best school I could. That was a big reason I chose Bates," Curley said, adding that he felt at home as soon as he stepped onto the small campus.

For the husband-wife team of Doug '88 and Carol Damberg, the Klamath Marsh National Wildlife Refuge is the latest stop in a series of remote and wild way stations all over the country. Doug, a biologist, is an assistant manager for the Klamath National Wildlife Refuges complex, while Carol serves as refuge manager at Klamath Marsh. For the Dambergs, Klamath Marsh truly is a backyard refuge. Their house sits in the pines about 150 yards from the refuge office. They're sharing the office for a few more months with three members of a resident fire crew, but soon they and their Jack Russell terrier, Pika -- "She keeps tracks of all the rodents" -- will be the only night-time residents.

Canton High graduate Capt. Jason P. Schauble '97, an elite Force Recon Marine, received the Silver Star, the nation's third highest military honor, in recognition of his bravery in Iraq. Schauble was shot 10 times while drawing fire from Iraqi insurgents during the rescue of one of his men in January 2005. "I wanted to make sure I got my guy out," he told The Patriot Ledger of Quincy. Upon entering an Iraqi farmhouse, one Marine immediately fell to enemy fire. In order to get him out, Schauble went in, killing two insurgents as enemy fire struck him in both legs and an arm. A nine-year Marine Corps veteran, Schauble formally retired from the service for medical reasons on July 28, the day he received the Silver Star.

When Elaine Tuttle Hansen became Bates' president, she faced a daunting task: finding $120 million. Last week Hansen announced the job was more than complete, as the campaign surpassed the goal by nearly $900,000, with some 18,813 donors. Although the campaign is over for now, fundraising at the state's 34 public and private degree-granting institutions never really stops. If a college is not raising money for a special campaign, it is trying to fatten its endowment in the face of soaring costs and competition for the best students. With New England's college-age population expected to peak in the next year or two and then decline for the next decade, that competition is expected to only increase.

Ariel Levin '08 made a deal with her mother: If there were no new State Department travel warnings for Israel or a war there this summer, she could spend a semester in Jerusalem. But that was before fighting erupted in July. Levin still wants to go to show support for Israel and had to decide whether to attend the Hebrew University. Some Americans studying in Israel left and a few expected for the fall semester in October canceled. "I think what scared my mom the most was watching the Lebanese students get evacuated," said Levin, an economics major at Bates who is also considering becoming a rabbi. "I'm very grateful that my parents would let me go at all, and still are considering letting me go," said Levin.

Dee Akiyama '08 was one of the student canvassers who recently worked for the organization Environment Maine in the coastal town of Brunswick. Using the proposed Plum Creek development on Moosehead Lake as a talking point, Akiyama and three others worked the hot summer streets trying to raise money and membership for the environmental advocacy organization. Akiyama, who is originally from Indonesia, said that she wanted to spend a summer in the United States, and that the job seemed to be a natural outgrowth from her environmental studies major at Bates College. Despite frequent brush-offs and other frustrations, Akiyama enjoyed the work. "They're very informative conversations, and I like that," she said, speaking of the debate and discussion with people she canvasses.

She grew up in Hawaii, attends Bates and studied last year in Japan, Brazil, South Africa and France. On Saturday, though, Jodie Clark '07 was at Yale, taking part in a conference dedicated to a problem that she called increasingly apparent and troubling -- the inability of the American press to thoroughly and fairly cover world affairs. "If it's not entirely skewed, it's at least limited," Clark said during a break in the event, sponsored in part by Americans for Informed Democracy, a group working to raise global awareness on a variety of issues. Billed as a "young global leaders' summit," the event featured workshops, panel discussions and a workshop on how to organize a town hall event that "educates and activates your community."

NYSE Group Inc. said Wednesday that it bought MatchPoint Trading Inc., a financial services technology company specializing in call-market trading and technologies. Mike Cormack, a New York Stock Exchange vice president, said the deal would give the NYSE a "strong platform for technological growth in benchmark trading." MatchPoint specializes in "crossing system" technologies. Crossing sessions occur after the stock exchange closes, allowing traders to execute trades after 4 p.m. Jim Ross '85, MatchPoint's trading founder and CEO, will join the NYSE Group as vice president of crossing technology, the NYSE said. “By bringing our innovative, point-in-time benchmark crossing services to the NYSE Group we can now offer the advantages of the MatchPoint engine to investors, issuers and market professionals around the world,” Ross said.

How can you show your best buddy you care? The approach most guys take, by giving him crap, has gained a cool new tactic: "One Ring." Let's say your friend in Houston is a Texans fan. Any time the Texans do something stupid, you simply call him, let the phone ring once and hang up. Guys are one-ringing their buddies all over the country. Anytime your team blows it, get ready. One Ring started in 1991 among graduates of Bates College who needed a way to torment each other about their teams without piling up phone bills. "I get One Rings at two in the morning," says Chris Carson '91, a rabid Dallas fan who, with Graham Ivory '89 and others, helped come up with the idea.

Winfield Brown '89, vice president of administration at Lowell General Hospital, recently advanced to fellow status in the American College of Healthcare Executives, an international professional society known for its credentialing and educational programs. To obtain fellow status, candidates must demonstrate their education, experience and leadership in the health care field for several years. Brown joined Lowell General last September. He holds a master's degree in health administration from the University of Minnesota and a bachelor's degree from Bates College. He is a Westford resident.

The men's Montana Mile at the Big Sky State Games at the MetraPark track produced a repeat champion, as Justin Easter '03 of Bozeman edged Patrick Casey of Laurel by one second for the win. Easter finished in 4:23.3. Easter had to push hard on the final lap to hold off Casey for the second year, and the second win in this event was just as sweet. "Thankfully I had enough in the tank on the last lap," said Easter, who took the lead on the final 250 meters. Easter, a two-time NCAA Division III steeplechase champion during his career at Bates, said he hasn't been running much lately as he's been busy training for the cross country ski season. He proved he was up for the challenge, anyway.

Medco Health Solutions, Inc. Chairman and CEO David B. Snow Jr. '76 of Darien has been awarded the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2006 Award in the distribution services category for the New Jersey region. The award, produced by the professional services firm Ernst & Young, recognizes outstanding entrepreneurs who are building and leading dynamic and growing businesses. Snow received the award during the program's 20th anniversary gala, held June 22. "This award is a testament to the success of Medco's foundation, which is based on innovation," said Snow, who has been in the field of health care administration for more than 25 years. "I feel a great sense of pride on behalf of all of our employees and their tireless commitment."

Six Bay State Summer Games athletes were chosen as recipients of the 2006 Future Leaders Scholarship. The $2,000 scholarships were awarded by the Massachusetts Amateur Sports Foundation and one of its sponsors, Verizon. The athletes, high school seniors-to-be from six different communities and six different sports, were selected from a competitive pool of more than 100 applicants, selections based on leadership skills, academic excellence, athletic achievements and community service. Last year's scholarship recipients are planning to continue their athletic endeavors at the college level, including Stow's Connor Hogan at Bates College.

For their graduation gifts, Brendan and Colin Nangle -- recent graduates of Bates College and Staples High School, respectively -- got a trip to the World Cup. The idea was a no-brainer. Both young men are former Staples varsity captains, and soccer is their passion. What better way to celebrate graduation than by heading to Germany for the greatest sporting event on the planet? Showing far more luck than the hapless U.S. team, Brendan and Colin scored tickets to perhaps the most exciting of all 62 matches: the Germany-Argentina quarterfinals. "The atmosphere was incredible," Colin said earlier this week, from Berlin. "For 120 minutes, and then penalty kicks, the people around us never stopped screaming, blowing whistles and horns, and waving flags. It was electrifying."

One of the definitive spots of English-language literature in Budapest, Treehugger Dan's secondhand bookshop stocks classics, sci-fi, history, political science, and gay and lesbian books as well as guide books, psychology and Agatha Christie, one of the best sellers. Dan is an American called Daniel Swartz '90, an environmental activist, writer and translator. At Bates he studied Chinese, but when he decided against going to China following the 1989 events at Tiananmen Square, he somehow ended up in Hungary. His environmental activism earned him the "Treehugger" name, and the shop also sells fair-trade organic coffee, purchased from small growers at a guaranteed price, as opposed to fluctuating market prices that often result in extreme hardships for the farmers. "I thought coffee and books go well together," Swartz said.

Though he claims the rough-and-ready Woody Guthrie as an influence, Mark Erelli '96 plays a kind of pop-folk that's so polished and ear-friendly that one wonders why he isn't famous. Erelli estimates that he has sold more than 20,000 copies of his five CDs, including the new "Hope and Other Casualties," on which he played a dozen instruments. Erelli has been billed as "one of America's most promising singer/songwriters," but "I don't dwell on that stuff," he says. "You know, it's not how I think of myself. I'm part of this really great community of singer-songwriters, kinda folk people. A lot of 'em are on my record label, Signature Sounds. And they're really a community, in the sense that we're all huge supporters and fans of each other's music."

Jeffrey Porter of Wayland was named in the 2006 edition of Lawdragon's "500 New Stars, New Worlds," published in the summer 2006 issue of Lawdragon Magazine. This quarterly guide features attorneys recognized through a combination of online balloting and independent research. Less than .01 percent of attorneys in the United States are listed in the guide. Porter leads the environmental law section in the Boston office of Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo P.C. He has been recognized as one of the nation's leading environmental lawyers by "The Best Lawyers in America," "Who's Who in American Law" and the "Guide to the World's Leading Environmental Lawyers." Porter received his bachelor of arts degree (cum laude) from Bates in 1985 and his J.D. from Cornell University in 1988.

Dominick Pangallo '03 has opened his own political consulting firm in Salem, Mass. The Northfields Group will focus primarily on polling and research for Democratic campaigns in the New England region. The firm will also provide general consulting and campaign management, message development, targeting advice and writing services. Most recently, Pangallo worked as the legislative aide to Massachusetts state Rep. John Keenan (D). Pangallo also worked on the Maine Democratic Party's 2002 coordinated campaign and on two local races in Salem in 2005.

Why would a young Jewish Israeli woman travel unaccompanied into the heart of unfamiliar, sometimes openly hostile, Israeli Arab villages during the violence of the second intifada? "One reason I wrote this book was my ignorance about the Israeli Arab issue," 30-year-old Smadar Bakovic '03 says of the experiences that led to her to write Tall Shadows (Hamilton Books, 2006). "I needed to learn what was going on." Researching Israel's Arab population with the support of a Phillips Student Fellowship, she discovered deep resentments against a society that makes Israeili Arabs feel like second-class citizens. "Israel is a country that I love, and want to be proud of," she says. "I speak of the less popular things in our society with hopes that we can change them."

Summer 2006 is a serious season for five interns studying the marine habitat at the Rutgers University Marine Field Station. Intern Greg Henkes, a junior this fall at Bates, is majoring in biology with an unofficial concentration in ecology. Henkes said that although he could have interned at other institutions, he knew the field station was "the right spot for him." "The internships set you up so you can gain experience," he said. "You get a chance to walk in the shadows of scientists that are the top of their field." Henkes is watching weakfish, observing where they eat and what they chase. Tom Grothues, a scientist at the station, says that there is a bigger intern pool every year that allows Rutgers to select the finest students available.

By 1964, poachers seeking the world's most valuable wool had reduced Peru's population of vicunas to 12,000. Today, Peru has some 200,000 of these smaller cousins of llamas and alpacas. That's thanks in part to the "chaccu" -- an annual ritualistic vicuna roundup, shearing and release that is both a renewed expression of indigenous culture and a triumph for an international campaign to save the animals. Allison Caine '07, a Maine native who is writing her senior thesis on the vicuna, came to witness this year's event from Ecuador, where she is studying. "I didn't think it was going to be so ceremonial," she said. "I just thought they would just round up the vicunas and shear them and I would have to dig for that cultural aspect."

Estuarine and coastal transformation is as old as civilization yet has dramatically accelerated over the past 150 to 300 years. Reconstructed time lines, causes, and consequences of change in 12 once diverse and productive estuaries and coastal seas worldwide show similar patterns: Human impacts have depleted more than 90 percent of formerly important species, destroyed more than 65 percent of seagrass and wetland habitat, degraded water quality, and accelerated species invasions. Twentieth-century conservation efforts achieved partial recovery of upper trophic levels but have so far failed to restore former ecosystem structure and function. Our results provide detailed historical baselines and quantitative targets for ecosystem-based management and marine conservation. -- 10 authors including Bates anthropologist Bruce Bourque

The Black Factory held a 1960s-style happening in Rochester on Monday, engaging visitors in heated dialogues about race, power and poverty. The consciousness-raising group, launched by famed artist and Bates faculty member William Pope.L, is on a national tour. The performers travel in a battered white van that serves as a backdrop for their skits, songs and exchanges with pedestrians. Before a multiracial crowd, the performers raised specific-to-Rochester issues and collected visitors' objects representing blackness: for example, a Martin Luther King protest button and a watermelon-shaped pocketbook. A performer from Azerbaijan had a unique perspective on the symbolism of watermelons: "The Azeris [the majority ethnic group in Azerbaijan] are discriminated against in Russia," said Rufat Hasanov '09. "We're told that we're only fit to sell watermelons on the street." (Other publications covering the tour included The New Yorker, whose listing included an illustration of Pope.L performing an earlier piece.)

Marines taking a refresher course in "Core Warrior Values" say they understand the need to go back to basics in response to allegations that fellow Marines killed 24 civilians in November in the Iraqi town of Haditha. The course highlights the tough decisions Marines say they face every day. "We get all these classes, and it's put out there that you treat an insurgent the same as a wounded Marine," said Cpl. Malcolm Gray '03 of New York, who attended Sunday's course in Haditha. "I'd like to say I'd go along with that. We'd all like to say we would do the right thing. But it's not a normal situation you're put in." The mandatory refresher course for all U.S. service personnel in Iraq was ordered this month.

As students and parents raced to consolidate their federal student loans before rates jumped on July 1, many believed that one must have more than one loan to consolidate. Students actually could consolidate just one loan at a new fixed rate -- but most lenders required the loan or loans to total at least $7,000. Adria Leach '01 of Lynn discovered that when she tried to lock in a low rate. "I found out that I had to combine my Stafford and Perkins loan to qualify," said Leach, who earned a bachelor's in psychology from Bates and her master's in elementary education from Salem State College in May. "They give you more time to pay, but they make more money that way," Leach adds.

Some dedicated moviemakers are regularly turning the cameras on their favorite subject: Maine. This independent spirit is personified by Craig Saddlemire '05, who, in collaboration with three other Bates students, last year co-directed and produced an award-winning documentary about Maine agriculture. Determined to establish a more progressive filmmaking community here, Saddlemire and classmate Ryan Conrad created the Maine Video Activists Network to support fledgling Maine filmmakers. Meanwhile, Bates theater professor Paul Kuritz is finishing "A New Life," an ambitious film adaptation of Mary Ward Brown's celebrated short story. "The excitement that used to be in theater and drama when I was in college just isn't there for the current generation," Kuritz says. "I think all of the talent and inspiration in narrative writing has gone into film."

A competitive swimmer who survived the 2003 Station nightclub fire in Rhode Island and spent a year of rehabilitation before returning to his college swim team is being honored tomorrow at the National Sportsmanship Awards dinner. Phil Barr '05 was among more than 200 people injured in the fire at The Station. One hundred people died in the blaze. He'll be honored at the dinner in St. Louis along with several other athletes, including Olympic speed skater Joey Cheek. Barr was a student at Bates when he was badly injured in the fire. He joined with several other nightclub fire survivors and volunteers to organize a fund that has raised nearly $750,000 for survivors and families. Last year, Barr won the male NCAA Sportsmanship Award.

"[E]ver since the Janet Jackson episode, [complaints about indecency on the air] certainly have skyrocketed, but there has been some analysis out there that shows that most of these complaints are coming through e-mail-generated systems from parents groups, like the Parents' Television Council and the Christian Coalition. . . . There was fines legislation prior to that incident. It just did not get very much traction, so the Janet Jackson incident absolutely pushed it ahead and really put a lot of steam behind it to move it forward." -- Jeremy Pelofsky '97, who covers telecommunication and media policy for Reuters, discussing U.S. House of Representatives approval of increased fines for broadcast violations of decency standards

Bates professor of biology Will Ambrose and his protege Kelton McMahon '05 are two members of a Norwegian-American team researching the effects of reduced Arctic ice cover on organisms that dwell on the ocean floor. The team, led by oceanographic researcher Michael Carroll, has found that the consequences of reduced ice cover could be substantial. While phytoplankton form the basis of the food chain in other oceanic regions, in the Arctic that role is played by ice algae -- algae that grows within or on the underside of the ice sheet, and falls to the ocean floor when it dies or when the ice melts in the spring. "Arctic ice algae is a valuable component of the Arctic food chain," says Carroll.

"If you don't have rates that are based on risk, you find yourself in a situation where people will not have any incentive to invest in loss-prevention measures. . . . If you have insurance protection before a disaster coupled with loss-reduction measures, you will avoid the enormous amount of disaster relief that comes after a major disaster because people will have had safer houses and we will not have the federal government and state governments having to come to the rescue -- as they did after Katrina and after every large-scale disaster that we've had in this country in recent years." -- Howard Kunreuther '59 of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, discussing hikes in homeowners insurance in the Northeast in response to the 2005 hurricane season

Bates is using a biodiesel fuel mixture to heat some of its residential buildings. In March, Bates agreed to test heating oil mixed with 5 percent biodiesel in 12 buildings. Around the same time, a professor and her students started developing a way to produce biodiesel on campus. And since Bates will soon build a new dining facility, it's looking to install a biofuel conversion system so that the waste oil created by Dining Services each year can be recycled as fuel for heating and vehicles. "To educate students about the possibilities of using renewable fuel, as well as recognizing there's a move on campus to make it happen, it's very exciting," said Bates geology professor Beverly Johnson, whose environmental geochemistry class made biodiesel from vegetable oil.

Grains like barley, spelt and whole wheat are more often associated with hearty breads than with fudgy confections or flaky pastry. But King Arthur Flour is out to change that perception. In the wake of new awareness of the benefits of whole grains, the bakers at the nation's oldest flour company are determined to find appetizing ways to bake with them. As they finish a comprehensive whole-grain baking cookbook, to be published this fall, Susan Reid '79 and her colleagues have mastered tweaks and tradeoffs on recipes as diverse as zucchini bread, apple cake, and even pies and croissants. The team was intent on contradicting the perception of whole grain baking. "You know, all those hippie nasty desserts that people remember from Mom's days in the '60s," Reid says.

Actor David Chokachi '90, a four-year veteran of the TV series "Baywatch," braved most of the ferocious waves in Hawaii himself while filming the new teen drama "Beyond the Break" -- and sported the cuts and bruises to prove it. "There's a lot more energy in the water in Hawaii," said Chokachi, who has been surfing for about nine years. "The ocean is so humbling. You have to respect it all the time because as soon as you don't, it could change your life." "Beyond the Break" premiered with an hourlong special on The N, the nighttime network for teens. In the series, four women with diverse backgrounds pursue their dreams of becoming professional surfers while sharing a house with Chokachi's character, who acts as coach and confidant.

Students from the Maine-based Bates College lent a helping hand to residents of Mountain View Avenue in Kingston on Tuesday -- Labour Day. Members of the group, which is scheduled to leave Jamaica next Thursday, said they wanted to follow through with the theme of this year's Labour Day "Jamaica's Beauty, Our Duty." "We have been in Kingston for a month studying at the University of the West Indies," said volunteer Christine Wicks '08. "We just wanted to give a helping hand to a community, and we wanted to contribute towards beautifying Jamaica." Courtney Hull, one of the local organisers, told the Observer that the Labour Day project was part of a programme to help unite the violence-torn community.

Lenoir-Rhyne College recently presented awards to its faculty and staff for outstanding performance. Among them was Ann Marie Blackmon '76, administrative associate for administration and finance, who received the Jeff L. Norris Non-Teaching Employee of the Year Award. The award honors people who have made significant contributions to the mission of the college, most notably in the area of developing and improving the student experience as it relates to academics and personal and spiritual growth. Blackmon has been with the college more than 25 years in human resources, employee benefits, alumni affairs and public relations. She has been honored numerous times, most recently with an Lenoir-Rhyne Community Service Award for her work in organizing the school's involvement with the Catawba County Meals-on-Wheels project.

Four weeks ago, heck, four days ago, Will Boe-Wiegaard had his plans set. Graduate from Bates College in Lewiston this weekend with a degree in biochemistry. Head to medical school. Learn to be a doctor. Those plans all changed Monday when Boe-Wiegaard won the NCAA Division III men's tennis singles final in Fredericksburg, Va. Now Boe-Wiegaard has a new calling: professional tennis. "I'm going to ride the wave," he said. "Keep the dream alive." It's a dream that Boe-Wiegaard has had since growing up in Georgetown, Conn. "I think every kid, when you play a sport, has that dream," he said. "Then, when I made the decision to go to college, I also made the decision that pro tennis was not going to be the direction my life would take."

In April, former state social worker Chris Ward '94 was named National Social Worker of the Year. Formerly a social worker for the state of Vermont, Ward began working for Casey Family Services, a nonprofit foster-child placement agency, on April 24. "Chris absolutely makes a difference in his ability to reach out to people and to get them to believe in themselves," said Steve Dale, commissioner of the Department for Children and Family Services. "People have told me just how meaningful it is to have a social worker who is so invested in their success." The National Foster Parent Association selected Ward for the national honor, and Ward was named state Social Worker of the Year by the Vermont Foster and Adoptive Family Association in January.

Brian Mahoney '08, a member of Bates' baseball team, set the school's all-time record for hits in a season with 48. Entering a May 5 game against Colby, Mahoney needed four hits to break the record. He had two hits by the eighth inning as Bates trailed, 7-2. ''At that point, I figured there was no chance that day," said Mahoney. However, Bates rallied for 11 runs in the eighth inning, and Mahoney cranked a single and double in the frame. He finished the game 4-for-4, with three doubles and two walks. The hit that tied the record was a single up the middle, while the record-breaker was a bases-loaded double. ''He's our best hitter, so it wasn't surprising he broke the record," said Bates head coach Craig Vandersea.

Combining a love for bike travel with a charitable undertaking became a profound experience for Bates seniors Kate Gatti and John Bauer. They decided to bike from Florida to Maine to benefit not just their own sense of adventure, but the Lewiston chapter of Habitat for Humanity. Bauer and Gatti (who were joined in Easton, Pa., by retiring professor of French Dick Williamson) were further motivated by the unexpected support and generosity of strangers along the way who offered meals as well as places to stay. "You really just connect with these people you have nothing in common with, and it's great," Gatti said. "The people have made the trip the best." About $3,000 was raised from the bike ride to help Habitat for Humanity's program in Lewiston.

Toast, tributes and trills set the tone at the President's Dinner, a gala tribute honoring outgoing San Francisco Opera board President Karl Mills '82. Sporting a Bates ball cap, Mills received a one-of-a-kind award, the soaring blue wing prop from Saint Francois d'Assise, Mills' favorite opera of all time. During the event, Music Director Donald Runnicles accompanied soprano and Opera Center director Sheri Greenawald in a special version of "You're the Cream in My Coffee": "Oh, Mr. Mills, sir, this gives me thrills, sir; I've never been a raver, but when I speak of you, I rave a bit, it's true. We're wild about you!" Also on hand were new board President George Hume and Opera board chairman Pitch Johnson.

[F]ear-driven immigration laws . . . should be of deep concern not just to immigrants, but to all who live in America. When commentators can shout with impunity that we should use a Berlin-wall-style shoot-on-sight policy to undocumented immigrants, well, America, we have a problem. The politics of fear and violent nativism are amply evident in the immigration bills Congress is currently debating. In December, the House passed the Sensenbrenner bill -- the most anti-immigrant legislation in 80 years. And although the "compromise" bill that the Senate began debating this week is marginally better, it massively erodes basic civil rights for immigrants while managing to also fall short on legalizing this country's millions of undocumented individuals. -- Shankar Narayan '97, policy director of Hate Free Zone Washington

One ton of nothing: $425. Reducing pollution: priceless. A student group at the University of Iowa College of Law used $425 raised at bake sales to buy a one-ton sulfur-dioxide pollution allowance in an annual Environmental Protection Agency auction last month. Sulfur-dioxide gas (SO2) is a major contributor to acid rain, atmospheric pollution, and respiratory problems. Its production is regulated by an EPA cap-and-trade system that allows manufacturers to buy rights to pollute. The group will retire the credit from circulation. Environmental groups at other schools also made successful bids, and students in an environmental-economics course at Bates College, which has been bidding since 2001, now own 15 tons.

The most popular music blogs, such as Music.For-Robots.com, reach audiences of 12,000 or more daily. The music blogosphere is young: Most sites were launched in the last four years and subsist on word-of-mouth advertising. Indeed, Music for Robots started as a way for Mark Willett to keep in touch music-wise with friends Blair Carswell and J.P. Connolly after the trio graduated from Bates in 2000. An early champion of indie bands such as the Hysterics and Tapes 'n Tapes, Music for Blogs two years ago accepted a then-unprecedented overture from a major label to host an MP3 track by the Secret Machines. Music blogs are also distinctive for what they don’t typically include -- hatchet jobs. "We’re not going to waste your time with stuff we don’t like," says Willett.

By one estimate, not counting people in the military, there are an estimated 2.5 to 3 million couples in temporarily separated marriages -- a number that's rising due to several factors, including globalization. David Scobey and Denise Thal are one such couple. Thal is head of business operations and CFO at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich. When Scobey was recruited by Bates for his dream job as director of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, they decided they would make the new situation work even though it meant he would be away from home four days a week. They can do it, says Scobey, "because we have built a foundation of life together." Regular e-mails and a webcam help them stay as connected as possible.

On the Thursday before the [2001] anthrax discovery in D.C., I brought a document to Tom Daschle's office. So a few days later, I was standing in line for four hours with 1,000 other staffers to get tested. . . . . This is not why I came to D.C. I wanted to visit monuments and museums, and learn about the political process. I didn't come to have a doctor shove a Q-tip so far up my nose that my eyes started to water. Although I tested negative, I'm still scared. The internship coordinator, a great mentor, called my parents after the outbreak. She's on a 60-day course of Cipro, but she told my mom not to worry. -- Matthew Scherzer '03, on spending his junior year in Washington, D.C.

Amanda Harrow '06 grew up with a lot of kids in her house -- more than 20, although only one or two at a time. And these foster children sowed the seeds of an interest that'll take Harrow around the world. Still strongly connected to the foster children that her parents took in, Harrow is driven to explore child-welfare systems in other countries and other cultures. Following graduation, she will travel to Uganda, Peru, New Zealand and Sweden for a year on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. She plans to study how different cultures affect children's welfare, and hopes that her discoveries will show that "regardless of what the country's [system] is -- and each has its strengths and its weaknesses -- we can all learn from other countries."

In the mutual fund world, success has depended on how much of a portfolio was in energy stocks. As oil today hovers above $70 a barrel, some investors are shifting energy-focused mutual funds. Yet Dan Rice '73 -- who oversees one of the past decade's top mutual funds, BlackRock Inc.'s BlackRock Global Resources Fund -- is bullish on energy. Why? Energy stock prices assume a $45 barrel, and natural gas stocks assume a long-term price of $6.25, he says, "but our expectation is that long-term oil prices will be at least $55 a barrel . . . and around $7 for natural gas." He says, "If we get there, the average oil stock can go up 40 to 45 percent, with gas stocks going up 20 to 25 percent."

The interests of big oil, wild creatures and native populations collide on the largest remaining piece of U.S. wilderness, Alaska's North Slope. In the petroleum-rich wilderness Alaskans simply call "the slope," big money, power politics and hype run as thick as the mosquitoes. It is one of Alaska's richest regions in both wildlife and hydrocarbons. Graduate student Marselle Alexander-Ozinskas '05 was part of a team inspecting soil samples in one of the many thermokarsts, or tundra fractures, caused here by melting permafrost. Thermokarsts have become more frequent due in part to rising temperatures and a loss of insulating ground vegetation. When tundra soils — which are rich in sphagnum mosses — thaw, they decompose and release carbon, a process that some scientists fear will increase global warming.

A former Trinity College basketball coach will be honored today in Rhode Island for developing an acclaimed institute that promotes international understanding through sport. Dan Doyle '72 is among eight inductees into the Rhode Island Hall of Fame, which recognizes individuals who have made Rhode Island prominent and contributed to its history and heritage. Located at the University of Rhode Island's Kingston campus, Doyle's Institute of International Sport evolved from his experiences in Europe as a prep basketball player in 1968 and in Cuba as head coach of Trinity's men's basketball team in 1979. Cuba "was a real awakening," Doyle said. "It created friendships and showed that these relationships developed through sports could extend beyond the field or court.'' The institute's most ambitious program is the World Scholar-Athlete Games.

"I felt like I could do more and take greater risks here [than at the Museum of Modern Art]. If I can say one thing about Baltimore, it is a place where you can take risks. . . . When you are not in the spotlight, you have a kind of freedom to venture into unknown territory without the sense of a world of critics and collectors looking over your shoulder. It's so close to other major cities that there's an energy that comes from having the ability to travel freely and bring major ideas home. . . . It's a free space to make those leaps of faith and creativity." -- Darsie Alexander '88, senior curator of contemporary art at the Baltimore Museum of Art .

The power has shifted in the brutally competitive college-admissions race, as schools are now bending over backward to woo prospective students who, until just recently, were vying hard for a place. With the number of applications to many top colleges hitting record levels, it has become harder for even the most experienced college-admissions officers to predict their "yield" — the ratio of admitted students who actually enroll — when they mail admissions letters. Because many students are applying to a greater number of schools, top students likely have far more options than they once did. At Bates, about 200 students visited the campus on one of three "reception" days this month — double the number of visitors last year, says Wylie Mitchell, dean of admissions.

As with most teams in most sports, lacrosse has its own unique subculture — which in many programs, unfortunately, includes drinking. So how do we help change these subcultures that unintentionally market "play hard and party hard" to young players? Peter Lasagna, head men's lacrosse coach at Bates, understands that heavy drinking is detrimental to the game and a person's body. When he addressed the issue with his players, a junior uttered, "I think everyone would [drink less] if they knew we would win more." Perhaps not coincidentally, the Bates captains made restricted alcohol use a much bigger issue than it had ever been, and the team had its best season to date. "I am learning that we are never done with this issue," said Lasagna.

A recent Yale University conference explored the pitfalls and paradoxes inherent in the nature of democratic leadership. Participants reviewed an 1838 speech in which Abraham Lincoln considered the tension between a constitutional order and ambitious individuals who seek to transcend its restrictions — perhaps the essential tension in democratic politics, defining democracy's risks and possibilities. Jeffrey Tulis '72, who teaches government at the University of Texas at Austin, suggested that powerful political leadership almost always contains within itself a challenge to democracy, as it asserts prerogatives, takes liberties and sometimes even emerges most clearly at times when the democratic order itself is threatrened. American constitutionalism, Tulis suggested, created a new kind of arena for statesmanship, with checks and constitutional arrangements constraining the worst excesses of political ambition.

High school seniors across Maine are suffering from acute senioritis, marked by a flagging interest in school. Still, some students stay focused out of fear that slipping grades may cost them their college acceptances — a possibility students should take seriously, said Wylie Mitchell, dean of admissions at Bates. "Every year we make a very thoughtful and deliberate effort to review all final high school transcripts," said Mitchell. Although most students make a strong finish, there are always a handful who show signs of decline, he said. Bates Associate Dean of Admissions Kristen Belka said that when she was a high school guidance counselor, students wanted to know how much slippage colleges would tolerate. They would ask, " 'Is an A to a B OK?' " Belka said.

John Strassburger '64 is president of a hot institution. So hot that instead of the usual 1,800 applicants competing for an incoming freshman class of 400 students, some 4,300 applied to Ursinus College this year. When he arrived at Ursinus, in 1994, Strassburger found that the institution "had been far too self-effacing, far too modest in view of its accomplishments," he said. Yet, "I was struck by how much the faculty were engaged with the students." To strengthen the qualifications of Ursinus students, he encouraged the introduction of an academic approach that re-emphasized reading, as well as new programs in neuroscience, environmental studies, biochemistry, dance, and African and African American studies. Such programs no doubt contributed to the college's selection by Newsweek/Kaplan recently as one of America's "25 hottest colleges."

Rwandan President Paul Kagame met with a group of international students based in Belgium. The group included graduate students, Rwandan students studying in Belgium after going into exile and professors, including Alexandre Dauge-Roth, professor of French at Bates. Twelve years after the genocide in Rwanda, this group visited Rwanda to investigate that horrific episode. Among the students were some from other countries that also experienced genocide. Dauge-Roth explained that his party met with many groups and organizations, meetings that "allowed us to realize the scope of the issues involved in the reconciliation, economics, the reforms of the judicial system and the economics reforms in the countryside," he said. Dauge-Roth plans to incorporate what he learned into a seminar he will teach next winter.

Running from strictly academic to decidedly personal, Web logs provide graduate students an informal, immediate and wide-ranging forum to mull over their research and studies. Aficionados of blogging find it to be a valuable tool for pursuing the life of the mind. One such grad student blogging her way through academia is Rebecca Goetz '00, a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate in history at Harvard University. Goetz spends most of her time in cyberspace addressing intellectual issues, including her pending dissertation. "When I hit a bump or have a problem I can't work out, the blog is a more casual way of working through that," she says. She launched her site, "(a) musings of a grad student" (www.rebecca-goetz.blogspot.com) in 2002. "I see no downside, as long as you're appropriate."

Growing up, Steve Hochstadt didn't think much of the Buddha trinkets strewn about his house. But years later, those trinkets would come to fascinate Hochstadt, now a Bates history professor, and lead him to explore his roots in Asia. Hochstadt started by asking questions — first of his elderly grandmother, a German Jew who emigrated to Shanghai during the Nazi regime. Hochstadt learned that some approximately 15,000 German-Austrian Jews followed that path to Shanghai. By the time he was done, Hochstadt had conducted 100 interviews with Shanghai Jews now living in the United States. Thus was born the Shanghai Jewish Community Oral History Project. Hochstadt is one of a growing number of Jewish oral historians working to capture the diversity of the Jewish experience.

Maine state Sen. Peggy Rotundo, a '67 Linton High grad, said legislators don't have a problem serving their state for just $9,000 a year. "We call it the citizens' legislature," Rotundo said. "Elected office holders here are truly dedicated to being public servants, not career politicians." Rotundo, the third highest-ranked member of the Senate Democratic majority, chairs the Appropriations Committee. Besides the Senate, she works at Bates College as director of strategic and policy initiatives at the Harward Center for Community Partnerships. She said because of term limits, she will run for a fourth and final two-year term in November. Rotundo hasn't been back to her home town in 14 years. "Yet I still have great appreciation for the community that gave me my roots," she said.

Not requiring SAT scores for admission is a new policy for several selective liberal arts colleges, such as Drew University. The addition of these schools represents a growth spurt in the test-optional movement; now, 24 of the top 100 liberal arts colleges, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report, are SAT- and ACT-optional. When Maine's Bates College made the SAT optional in 1984, it nearly doubled its applicant pool, says William Hiss, vice president for external affairs. Several of the schools that went test-optional this year cited a 20-year study of the Bates policy that shows statistically little difference in academic performance and graduation rates among students who did not submit SAT scores compared with students who did. Bates also found application rates from minority and low-income students rose.

If Marge Davis '76 had a nickel for every bottle and can she sees along the roadside near her home, she'd be . . . never mind. "It certainly will not pass this year," Davis, who grew up in Portland and now lives in Mount Juliet, Tenn., said of her beloved bottle bill, which recently got its first hearing before Tennessee's legislature. She's tried to cite Maine, where she summers, as an example. She even brought her bill's sponsor, state Rep. Russell Johnson, here to show him how we do it. But alas, beverage industry lobbyists are too powerful, continuing to crush bottle bills in Tennessee and the 38 other states that still lack them -- just as they tried in the late 1970s to thwart returnables here in Maine.

A Lexington company has successfully completed the first clinical trial of a drug to combat a bacterium that ranks high on medicine's "hit list" of dangerous microbes that are outpacing effective treatments. Cubist Pharmaceuticals says that its drug Cubicin can effectively combat Staphylococcus aureus, the second-most-common bacteria identified in hospitalized patients with blood infections. U.S. hospitals spend $9.7 billion per year treating such infections. To show Cubicin's effectiveness, the company had to test the drug against the bacterium while it was in patients' bloodstreams. CEO Mike Bonney '80 said this "bold decision" gives it a nearly four-year lead over its rivals. "We persevered and got it done," Bonney said. Cubist's reward: the Food and Drug Administration's first-ever approval of a drug to treat S. aureus in the bloodstream.

Thomas Denenberg '90 is the new chief curator of the Portland Museum of Art. The position is a dream come true for Denenberg, who grew up in the museum world -- his mother worked at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Denenberg often accompanied her to museums near and far. But as a Bates undergrad seeking his own way in the world, he often visited the PMA alone. The appointment allows Denenberg to come full circle, serving a museum that inspired him when he first contemplated a career in the arts. His responsibilities include managing the museum's collection of American and European art and its historic buildings, supervising the curatorial department and coordinating the museum's high-profile temporary exhibitions. "This is an extraordinary museum," Denenberg said.

The revelation that an additional 27,000 SAT tests from the October exam had not been rescanned for errors leaves school administrators stunned. This was the third admission in two weeks of potential errors and underreported scores in the college entrance exam used by countless schools. "It's the latest installment of a soap opera," said Robert Schaeffer of FairTest, which is critical of schools' reliance on standardized testing. The news of the errors has fueled opponents of standardized testing. Bates made the SAT optional 20 years ago, a change that has had positive results, according to William C. Hiss '66. "Ultimately we concluded that testing was an artificial indicator of success and that intelligence is more multifaceted and complex than what can be measured by any single testing system."

The Brandywine River Museum exhibits the art of Andrew Wyeth and some of his family members, and conducting the tours is Wyeth's exuberant granddaughter, Victoria Wyeth '01. Now on staff at the museum, she operates full tilt as the family art ambassador, putting her plans for a doctorate in psychology on hold. At the museum, she zips from one painting to another, delivering insightful commentary and blending anecdotal and technical elements. "My job is to bring the paintings to life for you," she explains. Surging Wyethmania has increased the entreaties for Victoria Wyeth from institutions ranging from the Smithsonian to the Chadds Ford Historical Society. "I'm having so much fun right now," she says. "Who knows? Maybe I'll go back to school in my 50s."

As the war in Iraq enters its fourth year, 48 Mainers of the 1st Battalion, 25th Marines are ready to fly to a forward operating base near Fallujah, Iraq. These reservists, most of who have not yet been to Iraq, have been training in a simulated Iraqi village in Twentynine Palms, Calif. Lance Cpl. Michael Philbrick '04 says he and his fellow Marines have learned to defuse their anxiety with humor. Still, there are times when the war already seems all too real. On a recent exercise, an instructor handed Philbrick a card informing him that he'd been shot by a sniper. His instructions: lie on the ground and feign a serious chest wound. Forcing a grin, Philbrick said, "That's one of those times when you can't necessarily distract yourself."

The pacing of Elizabeth Strout's deeply felt fiction about the distance between parents and children gives her work an addictive quality. A storyteller who allows protagonists' troubles to unfold organically, Strout '77 also keeps her plots taut enough that the suspense-intolerant may just skip to the final pages. In Abide with Me, Strout limns the relationship between Tyler Caskey, a Congregational minister mourning his young wife, and his daughter Katherine, a first-grader who has become nearly mute since her mother's death. Although Katherine's distress is the talk of their small Maine town, the grieving Caskey can't acknowledge how troubled she is. Abide with Me is satisfying in every way. [Praising Strout's "unflinching look at small-town New England," Newsweek too reviewed the novel in its March 20 issue.]

Steve Richardson has made his Stave-brand puzzles for 30 years and has developed a number of innovations, including the "Trick" puzzles that fit together in a million different ways --only one of them correct. Customers love them, but you have to finish one to really understand the appeal, making it difficult for an outsider to understand why anyone would pay $345 for one. Richardson's current business began when, as a maker of inexpensive cardboard puzzles, he was offered $300 to construct a high-end wooden number, and realized that "there was an existing customer base of rich and crazy people who wanted to buy puzzles." Anne Williams, economics professor at Bates, describes this phenomenon as "a renaissance of puzzles aimed at the luxury market."

Jason Hall's '97 announcement of the creation of St. Louis' first gay bar association was met with an unexpectedly warm welcome. When news circulated that the group was planning a kick-off reception, his board members received numerous calls from attorneys wanting to know how their firms could get involved. By the time of the Feb. 23 event, 10 firms were eager to finance the party and have their names on a program. This reaction "completely shocked me," said Hall, an associate at Bryan Cave. "I thought the reaction would be one of controversy." Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael Wolff, keynote speaker at the reception, said the overwhelming support was a sign that the area legal community had become more inclusive of attorneys from differing backgrounds.

"I played it at shows over the years and I really started to get less invested in it, just because, here I was singing this simple little song about peace and yet all these facts --about deception and how we'd been brought to war and what the true cost of that was -- were coming to light. I just got fed up and rewote the thing, gave it a little more teeth and a little bit more of an indictment. Before it was a little more non-judgmental. This was the one time I said, 'Aw, the heck with it,' and didn't pull any punches." -- Mark Erelli '96 on the song "Seeds of Peace," which appears on his new CD, Hope and Other Casualties (Signature Sounds)

The second solo show by Jonathan Pereira '98, American Cake is a comedic look at patriotism. Writer-performer Pereira has charm in spades -- not to mention insight, a willingness to go deeper and an ability not to take it all too seriously. Good thing, because his topes -- love, the American experience, politics and religion -- could be explained to you by any barstool drunk. Pereira doesn't use the cliche, or the reactionary, or the antireactionary, but makes a very personal journey, finding the universal in the specific while pitching to his audience as intellectual equals. His manic-but-unforced act, at its zenith during a U.S. president-by-president ride through character assassination, creates a momentum that may just make you stick around for dessert.

Suzanne Coffey, Bates athletics director, will serve as commissioner for the fourth World Scholar-Athlete Games this summer. Held at the Institute for International Sport at the University of Rhode Island, an institution founded and directed by Dan Doyle '72, the event is expected to attract more than 2,000 participants aged 15 to 19 from some 150 countries. These games are "an extraordinary opportunity for young leaders from around the world to come together to compete and learn with each other in a context that highlights world citizenship," says Coffey. She will serve as the institute's interim vice president. The event includes competition in 15 sports accompanied by activities in the arts and "educational theme days" that focus on such topics as ethics and sportsmanship.

If humans migrated from Asia to the Americas along Pacific Rim coastlines near the end of the Pleistocene era, kelp forests may have aided their journey, according to recent research. Among the world's richest ecosystems, kelp forests would have provided food along thousands of miles of Pacific coast and reduced wave energy for people in boats. New discoveries have moved this "coastal migration theory" to the forefront of debate on the origins of the First Americans. "This study is a unique example of collaboration between coastal archaeologists and marine biologists" said Jon Erlandson, the study's lead researcher. The "kelp highway hypothesis" first crystallized among an interdisciplinary group, including archaeologist Bruce Bourque of Bates, working at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.

The Androscoggin River that served as the putrid inspiration for the federal Clean Water Act three decades ago has never met the minimum standards of that law. Now, officials in Maine stand accused of negotiating with two riverside paper mills to weaken pollution standards along a 14-mile stretch near Lewiston-Auburn that is so foul, oxygen must be pumped in to enable fish to survive. The scandal is drawing sharp attention to the mills' storied power in Maine and whether the industry has used its influence to slow the river's cleanup. Members of the Bates College rowing team have to wipe slime off their boats after practicing on this section of river known as Gulf Island Pond. ''You really don't want to fall in," said Bates crew coach Andrew Carter.

The Metropolis Ensemble, a new chamber orchestra bringing together the talents of an emerging generation of performers who have already begun to reshape the sound and feel of music in New York, presents its first concert on February 16 at the Angel Orensanz Foundation Center for the Arts. Musical Director Andrew Cyr '96 will lead a program of music by Aaron Copland, Benjamin Britten and David Schiff. The Metropolis Ensemble is dedicated to building artistic connections between composer, performer and audiences in settings that will inspire a new generation of music lovers. A Maine native and New York City resident, Cyr also holds teaching and conducting positions at Rutgers University. As conductor, organist and trumpeter, he has performed throughout Canada, the United States, France and Hungary.

Quiet reverence prevailed at the Berkeley Shambhala Center during the opening of an exhibition of pearl-like objects venerated as remains of Buddha, or more accurately, of his most famous body, known at Gautama or Shakyamuni Buddha, who lived 2,500 years ago. The remains are part of a Buddhist relics tour unprecedented in size and accessibility, among whose 1,000 relics are more than 500 pieces from at least seven collections of supposed remains of the historical Buddha. "I think this would be unparalleled," Professor John Strong, chair of the religion and philosophy department at Bates, said of the exhibition's scope and access. Strong, one of America's foremost experts on Buddhist relics, recounts his difficulties in viewing relics in Asia in the book Embodying the Dharma: Buddhist Relic Veneration in Asia.

Bates history professor Margaret Creighton was one of the authors honored by the Lincoln and Soldiers Institute at Gettysburg College. Creighton's The Colors of Courage was praised for her ability ''to integrate the stories of noncombatants with the military history of the [Civil] War." Also honored were Doris Kearns Goodwin, for Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, her biography of the 16th president and his Cabinet; fellow Concord author Richard F. Miller for his Harvard's Civil War; and Cambridge author Carol Bundy for The Nature of Sacrifice, a biography of Charles Russell Lowell Jr.

Dr. Keith Taylor '77 was elected president of Marblehead Savings Bank at its 135th annual meeting Jan. 23. An optometrist in private practice in Marblehead, Taylor lives in Marblehead with his wife, Wendy, who is a case manager at the Landmark School in Manchester. Dr. Taylor was elected as corporator of Marblehead Savings in 1992, as trustee in 2002 and as a vice president in 2004. Taylor is a lifelong resident of Marblehead and is deeply involved in community and professional organizations, including the Rotary Club and the Philanthropic Lodge AF & AM of Marblehead. Taylor succeeds Dr. John Leary who retired after 17 years as the president of Marblehead Savings Bank.

When coverage of the Turin Olympic Games turns to snowboarding, you just might glimpse Peter Carlisle '92 in the crowd. Carlisle, a leading U.S. action sports agent, represents 20-plus Turin athletes, including snowboardcross favorite Seth Wescott of Farmington. Carlisle, Octagon's director of Olympics and action sports, entered the business in the early 1990s and started Carlisle Sports Marketing in Portland. Representing some key athletes early on, his company was primed to lead the way in the industry when Octagon acquired it in 2001. Three longtime clients were medalists at the 2002 Olympics when snowboarding stole the show. "The world changes and you don't really see the opportunities until you're in the middle of it," said Carlisle. "This is what we were hoping for. It's all been realized, and then some."

Apologies to those hoping to read descriptions of artworks. What follows is a response to the provocation posed by the Bates College Museum of Art's current show "Activator," a tightly organized exhibition of six installations by seven young artists. Curator Liz Sheehan frames the work and its interactions as a contemporary intervention in a historical trajectory that begins in the '20s and moves through the artists involved with the production of "Happenings" in the late '50s and '60s. That "Activator" asks us to think historically not only about the work in it, but about its very possibility as a show, is where it derives its strength. And that it doesn't try to stage this laborious self-criticism opens the door to something much more interesting and provocative: the viewer.

"I look for vendors and customers to finally realize that the contact center is not simply an expense but is, in fact, a critical strategic revenue and marketing component of any company. The ones that recognize this will thrive. Companies that don't recognize this and don't address the issues involved will fade, whether they are vendors or customers." -- James W. "Bill" Hunt '84, president and chief operating officer of Dirigosoft Corporation, in a compilation of business predictions by leaders in the call-center industry

Onions sizzle in the hot oil. And when Deborah de Haro '86 shakes the pan, they dance. She adds cubanelle and red bell peppers, and then garlic, which releases its heady scent. De Haro gently folds the vegetables so they don't end up mashed. Tomatoes go into the pan and thicken slightly, until the mixture looks like marmalade. De Haro is making sofrito, the basis of many Spanish dishes she and husband Julio offer at their restaurant, Taberna de Haro. ''A sofrito is about getting extraordinary flavors from ordinary ingredients," she says, and it's ''a natural way to add sweetness, richness, and complexity." A base for other sauces in Spanish cooking, a sofrito gives a good boost of flavor to long-simmered dishes from any cuisine.

Ernest Hemingway survives as an indelible example of what it means to be a man. But his kind of existence -- the big-game hunting, the dames, the adventure -- is a lost art. The lockstep of life seems to overwhelm a lot of us now, to bury our masculine mojo under a to-do list that stands in for actual experience: Attend school, marry wife, start family, buy house, marry job, buy bigger house, pay for college, die. What's lost along the way is actual experience of the world, of people, of life and death. -- Peter Moore '78, writing about his search for Hemingway's relevance today. Meanwhile, CNN's Feb. 7 "American Morning" program used Moore, the executive editor of Men's Health, as a subject in a health-related story.

In the mid-1980s, Concord High School students watched as their social studies teacher became a household name. They saw Christa McAuliffe, 37, with Johnny Carson and in parades and newspapers. "We were all very proud," said Joanne Walton, Concord High '86 and Bates '90. McAuliffe's power to inspire survived the space shuttle Challenger disaster that killed her and six others, and many of her former students have followed in her footsteps. Walton taught kindergarten before having her daughter Zoe, now 4, and plans to teach special education when she returns to work. She recalls how McAuliffe listened to her students, treating each of them as an individual. "Good teachers that I've seen meet the students where they are and validate their interests," she said.

A decade after its inception, the U.S. Diversity Visa Program remains controversial. A 2002 law blocks the State Department from issuing visitors's visas to citizens of countries deemed to be supporters of terrorism, but says nothing about immigrant visas. In 2003, between 2 and 4 percent of Green Card lottery winners came from countries on the list of terrorism sponsors. "If you're Al Qaeda and you want to plant someone in the U.S., this is the way," said Rep. Bob Goodlatte '75, from Roanoke, Va. Goodlatte, a former immigration lawyer, has been trying for years to abolish the Diversity Visa Program. As a member of the House Committee on Agriculture, he would prefer guest-worker programs that match migrants to employers. But Goodlatte admits that he hasn't made much progress.

Mr. Emerson's Wife, a historical novel by Amy Belding Brown '69, has sold well enough that St. Martin's Press will issue it in paperback in June. The book has also raised eyebrows for its bold imagining of an episode involving the title character, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and another literary lion. The novel tells the story of Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and others through the eyes of Emerson's second wife -- and includes a brief affair between her and Thoreau. Brown has no proof this happened but calls it part of the creative license in writing a novel. "I came as close to the facts as I could, and that has frustrated some people," Brown says. "The Emersons were not pleased, although I haven't had a face-to-face confrontation with them."

Dr. Catherine Kimball '80 gently follows the images on the colorful woolen scarf recounting stories contained in the first five books of the Old Testament. She knitted the scarf as a final project for a class she took at Bangor Theological Seminary. Kimball, 47, is studying to become ordained as an Episcopal priest. A physician and chief of staff at Inland Hospital, she is a parishioner at St. Mark's Episcopal Church. It was through St. Mark's that she decided to become a priest. Her work as a physician will not change when she becomes a priest, probably in about five years, she said. "My work as a physician is very much a ministry and I see the priesthood as just expanding the breadth of what I have to offer."

A panel established by the Maine Board of Education recommends sweeping changes that would reduce the number of school districts, improve teacher pay and set up mutual funds for newborns to help pay for college. The panel would slash the number of districts from 287 to 35, expand the laptop program to include all middle and high school students, extend the school calendar and boost teacher pay, which is 37th among the 50 states. The panel also would set up a $200 mutual fund for newborns to help pay for a college education down the road. Panel chair James Carignan '61, retired Bates dean of the college, pointed out that the recommendations were just that. "We don't have any authority to impose anything," he told the Sun Journal.

Jackie Powers was realizing her lifelong dream of playing big-time sports in a big-time city. This golden girl from a high-achieving family intended to make her mark for the high-powered Boston College women's soccer team. But for this small-town girl, the high-pressure preseason camp and the student body of 14,500 weren't a good fit. Powers had always fought through any obstacles in forging an extraordinary career filled with state titles and game-winning shots. But this time, the fight wasn't worth it. After much soul-searching, she contacted Bates College. "My mom said I just picked the wrong BC," laughs Powers, who loves Bates and has proven to be a huge addition to the basketball team. Just days after she reported to her first practice, she became one of the Bobcats' top players.

A confirmed bibliophile, Nicholas Basbanes '65 undertakes to explore in this essay collection nothing less than, in the lofty words of the subtitle, "the power of the printed word to stir the world." Fortunately for readers not cut of heroic cloth, the essays themselves are not nearly as ponderous as that tagline would suggest. Most, in fact, amble eccentrically along, using interviews with well-known literary figures -- e.g., David McCullough -- as jumping-off points for digressions and ruminations. Weightier than mere reportage, differently focused than literary criticism, these essays occupy a corner of the grand salon of the history of ideas, though it's a corner furnished with a comfortable chair and a reading lamp casting a welcoming glow.

Associate professor of women and gender studies at Bates and a historian of science, Rebecca M. Herzig is the author of Suffering for Science: Reason and Sacrifice in Modern America (Rutgers University Press), a fascinating, often wince-inducing book. Herzig traces the rise of a powerful ethos of "voluntary suffering," beginning in the late 19th century and linked to wider traditions of Protestant martyrology, wartime sacrifice, Darwinist thinking, and rebellion against market society. She explores the work and language of scientists who wrote glowingly of suffering -- a desired "self-immolation on the altar of science." For some, it was contractual: a certain amount of suffering for a desired outcome. But for others, their identities became entangled with an ideal in which suffering was all but an end in itself.

I do think that [Judge Samuel Alito] is one of the most brilliant legal minds of . . . his generation. And he's a man of great decency, integrity and character. And I say all of this as what I would consider to be a left-leaning Democrat, a woman, obviously; a member of the ACLU, and an immigrant. And my view is not one that is unique with regard to people who have worked with him or . . . for Judge Alito. -- Nora Demleitner '89, former law clerk for Alito and now professor at the Hofstra School of Law. In introducing her, Justice Committee chair Sen. Arlen Specter mentioned Demleitner's Bates degree. Her testimony was also carried by C-SPAN and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

Today's academics, many of them Gen X or baby boomers, are far more tolerant of popular culture than previous generations. Perhaps nothing reflects this trend more than the eclectic dissertation topics of Ph.D.'s. These research interests, which eventually filter into the classroom, nowadays cover all manner of television-related themes and other subjects as disparate as lowrider cars, Japanese comic books and authenticity in rap culture. Bates rhetorician Stephanie Kelley-Romano, for instance, wrote her dissertation on the topic "Myth of Communion: Rhetorical Analysis of the Narratives of Alien Abductees."

The makers of Brokeback Mountain predicted it would succeed with a straight female audience because the film is, first and foremost, an epic romance. To Erica Rand, a Bates professor of art and visual culture who specializes in the study of queer sexualities and genders, that makes sense. She said the mainstream LGBT rights movement may have normalized gay relationships to the extent that a straight audience could see Ang Lee's film as just another love story. Rand also says there's every reason to suspect that straight women may be just as interested in gay male sexuality as men, according to the popular cliché, are turned on by lesbians. "I think everybody has desires that are more complicated than people tend to imagine," said Rand.

She excels in athletics and in the classroom, but Carlen Arima of Sammamish, Wash., found her true passion in volunteering at Children's Hospital, playing with patients and their siblings. She discovered this passion in unlikely way: An injury sustained during a basketball game in 2004 caused Arima to spend three days in one hospital and then undergo outpatient therapy at Children's. Volunteering is "the neatest thing," she says. "Everyday I go and see the perseverance of these kids, fighting for their lives. They have the most positive attitude. It just makes you thankful for everything you have." Arima has been awarded an academic scholarship to Bates, where she will play softball. She says that she chose the school because of its academic reputation and focus on community service.

On Jan. 4, many newspapers reported the survival of miners trapped in a West Virginia coal mine, when in reality all but one were dead. Around 3 a.m. EST, the news broke about the deaths, but East Coast papers were unable to change headlines before papers were printed. The last copies of The New York Times had already come off the presses by 2:47 a.m. when, at the paper's Web site, evening editor Joao Costa '96 happened to look at CNN as he ended his shift. "We see a frantic woman running toward [newsman] Anderson Cooper and we were a little confused about what was happening," he said. Costa waited for a briefing from the coal company about 3:15 a.m. before updating the coverage on the Times site.

Professors and academics may not be destined to become famed actors and actresses, but their expertise in their particular field may be helpful to writers, directors, and producers in the filmmaking process. David Grynkiewicz '01, a grad student at the California Institute of Technology, became an extra on the TV crime series NUMB3RS. The show uses a whole team of mathematicians from the Institute to help the scripts credibly use actual math techniques such as cryptography, combinatorics, number theory and epidemiology statistics in solving crimes, and to provide math or physics concepts and equations to provide a mathematical background for the show's characters' actions, words and thoughts. Grynkiewicz served as a hand double, writing the problems on a blackboard and notepaper.

Brynn Lovejoy '05 of Hooksett, N.H., was one of eight candidates hired last November to become police officers in Manchester. She had known that she wanted to be a police officer even as a first-year at Bates. "It's something I've always wanted to do," Lovejoy said. The candidates all had different reasons for choosing law enforcement. Some found out about police work from friends or relatives, and others, like Simmon Beaule, had personal reasons for applying. Beaule said, "As a woman, it's important for other women to know that they can be good moms, work in a male-dominated field and excel." Because of a diminished interest in police careers, Manchester officials have begun to change their recruiting tactics, attending job fairs and searching outside of New Hampshire.

What does the next generation of planners look like? Meet Michael Kitces '00. Just 28, he directs financial planning at Pinnacle Advisers, writes for trade and peer-reviewed journals and is a sought-after speaker. As co-founder of NextGen, a community of younger planners, he is dedicated to sustaining the wisdom and values held by the profession's pioneers, and shaping how this business evolves. Kitces went from Bates into the insurance business — not a good fit, but he learned a lot about communicating with clients, he says. "There are ways to deliver messages and make clients accept and understand what you need to do and get them to a place where they can take action." [Editor's note: Financial Planning readers chose Kitces and seven others as the year's Movers & Shakers.]