After Whitten’s blog post recommended Slave to Sensation, there was a run on the romance novel at Maine libraries.

In its profile of Sarah Whitten ’94, recently named Librarian of the Year by the country’s romance writers, the Bangor Daily News explains the influence Whitten wields over Maine’s romance readers.

An active blogger for the Bangor Public Library blog Not Your Ordinary Book Banter — “for readers who love popular fiction, edgy and uncensored” — Whitten announced in February 2011 that Nalini Singh’s Slave to Sensation was the blog’s top vote-getter for book of the month.

Within 24 hours of her post, every copy in the state library system had been borrowed.

The organization Romance Writers of America recognized Whitten as Librarian of the Year for “making a significant online library presence supporting the romance genre.”

Whitten, a circulation assistant at Bangor Public Library who several years ago co-founded the library’s Not Your Ordinary Book Club, tells reporter Ardeana Hamlin that her interest in romance novels was “kept that under wraps” at Bates, when the literary genre was anything but appreciated.

“People would be surprised by how much romance novels have changed,” Whitten says. “No longer does a woe-is-me heroine need to be rescued by the hero. Heroines are much more independent, confident and strong.”

• View story from the April 3, 2013, Bangor Daily News

This family in Yemen’s Mawza District received vouchers to buy food as part of Mercy Corps’ emergency response to Yemen’s humanitarian crisis. Photograph by Cassandra Nelson / Mercy Corps.

In their Sept. 25 op-ed they write:

“Simply increasing short-term relief aid — although an important stopgap measure — is not a durable solution. What Yemen needs are simultaneous initiatives to build a more dynamic private sector, while supporting market development, job training, and youth employment programs to address systemic issues.

“In other parts of the world — notably the nearby Horn of Africa — the United States Agency for International Development is piloting a ‘resilience’ approach to aid. That multi-pronged approach addresses immediate needs while also focusing on the underlying factors that make a population vulnerable to recurring humanitarian crises.”

Diener, a magna cum laude graduate in political science who earned a master’s at Georgetown, is a senior policy adviser on the Middle East with Mercy Corps. She reports that her editor at The Christian Science Monitor was a fellow alumna: Cricket Alioto Fuller ’05.

• View op-ed from The Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 25, 2012

Sabina tells columnist Jennifer Jackson that the idea is to “provide some fresh produce and plant starts for food bank clientele and to empower people to grow their own food.”

Ellen Sabino '09 and a friend run a local farm stand in 2010.

The project, writes Jackson, includes a hoop-house-style greenhouse for growing tomatoes and a seed germination box for salad greens. It’s located on the grounds of a former elementary school that now houses the Port Townsend Food Bank and other community programs.

Plans call for starting lettuce in mid-February, Sabina said, with continuous harvest through November once the garden gets going.

Besides tomatoes and fresh salad greens, “I also plan to do flowers and herbs,” Sabina said. “We want to make it inviting.”

A Bates history major and former AmeriCorps volunteer, Sabina grew on the Maine coast, working in the lobster industry during summers. At Bates, she wrote her thesis on the history of women in lobstering.

Sabina coordinates the Jefferson LandWorks Collaborative, a network of eight organizations that help farmers and landowners keep rural land economically viable.

• View story from the Peninsula Daily News, Dec. 6, 2011

Merisotis is president of the Lumina Foundation, which works to increase access to higher education. In October at Bates, he moderated the college’s Leadership Symposium on College Cost, Price and Financial Aid.

Jamie Merisotis '86, a Bates trustee and a dedicated advocate for improved access to higher education, spoke at the Bates-hosted Leadership Symposium on College Cost, Price, and Financial Aid in October.

Merisotis tells Times reporter Tamar Lewin that there seemed to be some consensus at the White House meeting that the federal government should develop policies on financial aid, its biggest tool, to spur a higher graduation rates.

Inside Higher Ed reports that the White House meeting “appears to mark a shift in policy for the administration, which will focus more on college affordability in the coming months.”

• View story from The New York Times, Dec. 6, 2011.

“The spectrum of animals that I talk about in a day is amazingly varied,” Fox tells reporters Jill Oestreicher Gross.  “This is my dream job. It’s wonderful.”

She and husband Jesse Fox ’03 live in Newbury, halfway between Boston, where she spends much of her time with lawmakers on Beacon Hill, and Newmarket, N.H., where Jesse creates custom bicycles at Independent Fabrications.

An environmental studies major, she has a law degree from Lewis and Clark Law School. As a Bates student, Alexis was a member of People Eating Plants, a campus group dedicated to raising awareness of vegetarian/vegan issues. Her inspiration to focus on animal issues came later, while living in California, when she attended a meeting of the Animal Legal Defense Fund.

“I knew early on that’s where I was headed,” she says. “It’s been my passion to help animals.” View story from the Newburyport Daily News, July 4, 2011.

So is Millett, writes Cover, who quotes Maine political leaders from both sides of the aisle.

“Maine can only be better because of his involvement.”

A career educator and educational administrator, Millett has also long served in the Legislature as a Republican from Waterford. Now, he is “the public face of [Maine's] $6.1 billion, two-year budget,” Cover writes, “a controversial proposal that has angered state workers and teachers because of proposed pension reforms…. Through it all, Millett has remained unflappable as he’s fielded questions from lawmakers or taken criticism from affected groups.”

During confirmation hearings, a representative of the Maine Association for Community Service Providers said that “Sawin is truly a treasure for the state, and we are delighted that he has this opportunity to continue to contribute. Maine can only be better because of his involvement.”

Millett credits his parents (both Howard’34 and Marguerite Millett ’36 were Bates graduates) with instilling in him a sense of duty when it comes to public service. “I took a lot of my career-goal setting from my dad,” he said. “I wanted to get involved in town government. I wanted to get involved in administration.” View story from The Portland Press Herald, March 24, 2011.

Only around 100 of the pupfish exist, dwelling in a geothermal pool within a limestone cavern in Death Valley. When last spring’s Baja California earthquake roiled the pupfish pool, a permanent monitoring station caught the sloshing on underwater video — some of the action looks like a slowly exploding lava lamp.

Barrett told The New York Times that the splish-splashing may have been a “good thing” for the fish because it stirred up nutrients and removed silt from a ledge where fragile fish larvae spend their early days. In any event, he adds, the video is just “pretty phenomenal” to watch.

Barrett is the science adviser to the regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, based in Albuquerque, N.M. The pool’s monitoring station is maintained by the University of Arizona in conjunction with the Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, and Nevada Department of Wildlife.

At the reception, Jenny Stasio ’07 will talk about her work with incarcerated women through her position with Family Crisis Services and its Incarcerated Women’s Program.

Recognizing the statistical connection between female incarceration and domestic abuse, the program offers support groups for women at the Cumberland County Jail (Portland) and the Maine Correctional Center (Windham), one of only a handful of such programs offered by U.S. domestic violence agencies.

In 2007, the program added creative writing activities to its educational groups. The women began each creative writing session by reading author Natalie Goldberg’s tips for writers in Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within:

1. Keep your hand moving.
2. Don’t cross out.
3. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar.
4. Lose control.
5. Don’t think. Don’t get logical.
6. Go for the jugular.

The majority of the work in the exhibition was done within 15-minute free-writing sessions.

To create the photographic portraits for More Than a Rap Sheet, Family Crisis Services worked with the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies and Salt alum Christine Heinz, who photographed the women.

Donations of non-spiral-bound notebooks or composition books are greatly appreciated. They are always needed for the project’s ongoing work.

Raye has long been dedicated to Maine politics, serving 18 years on the staff of U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, losing a run for Congress in 2002 and winning a state Senate seat in 2004. “I’ve always though public service was a very honorable thing, a good way to serve people and make a mark in life,” he says. “From the time I was a little kid I was drawn to it — I loved politics, elections and government from the time I was old enough to read.” View story from The Portland Press Herald, Nov. 28, 2010.

The Boston Globe, among other Massachusetts news media, report the promotion of Rick Sullivan ’81 to secretary of environmental affairs under Gov. Deval Patrick. In this segment, he speaks to WWLP-TV news in Springfield, Mass. Previously commissioner of the state Department of Conservation and Recreation, Sullivan managed a “highly successful turnaround turnaround” of that department, said the governor. View story from The Boston Globe, Dec. 1, 2010.