Yale62.org

Bulletin from the Secretary:  If you’re reading this you’ve logged onto our excellent website, Yale’s best one. Be sure to read in this posting Mike Kane’s minutes of the Y62 Class Council meeting of May 1, 2010. The minutes mention a Council effort to gather “missing” e-mails from some 260 or so classmates. Help is needed for that job, which involves phoning classmates and is easily and pleasantly done.  If you want to volunteer  – and I hope you will -  just contact me at jameskwhite@me.com or 202-333-0590.  Next, have you paid your class dues?  If not, now is the time to do so, and note particularly the special “sponsorship” box in support of our 50th reunion.  Can’t find your dues card? Our Treasurer David Honneus will get you one: dhonneus@comcast.net.  Finally, read our website regularly to keep on top of  Bob Oliver’s plans for our 50th reunion. Best to all, Jim White

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By Steve Buck
Bethesda, MD
May 2010

(Ed. Note:  From 1965 to 2002 Steve Buck, Pierson ‘62, served at 8 posts in the Middle East, including Deputy Chief of Mission in Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war (1986-88) and Consul General in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (1996-1999). From 1999-2001 he taught the Middle East security seminar, political science and energy economics at the National Defense University.  Since retiring in 2002 he has continued to teach at the National Defense University, serve on the editorial board of the Foreign Service Journal, and lecture at various universities on the Middle East. He has written a number of articles for our website on the Middle East and the folly of our invasion of Iraq.)

Last spring I was invited by the Council for the National Interest Foundation to lead the group’s 19th “Political Pilgrimage” to Egypt, Gaza, Jerusalem, Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.   A non-profit founded by a former U.S. Congressman and a number of retired U.S. Ambassadors, the Council seeks to educate Americans about the complexities of the Middle East and policies in the U.S. national interest.  Harriet Fulbright, widow of the Senator for whom the well-known Fulbright program is named, joined us, along with an investment banker, a lawyer with a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern studies, an eye surgeon, a Texas cattle rancher, and a retired Pennsylvania state trooper.

In front of Israeli bombed American International School in Gaza. Mrs. Fulbright second from left, Steve Buck with white beard.

Because the Israel/Palestine dispute is so emotional and because U.S. policy on the subject is really made at the White House and in Congress, I had made it a point in my career not to serve in Israel and the countries bordering it, although I had studied Arabic (and met my wife) in Beirut and visited all of them a number of times.

I write what follows because what I saw on the ground shocked me – particularly how little it is reported in the mainstream U.S. media. I hope some in the class may find it eye-opening. It underscores a fundamental point that NSC advisor General Jones and Central Command General Petreaus have both emphasized – that the festering Israel/Palestine dispute threatens U.S. national security interests, particularly as it makes it far more difficult for U.S. forces and personnel to operate in much of the Arab and Islamic world.  While media in the U.S. rarely give much coverage to suffering in Gaza and the West Bank, media in the rest of the world do. Israeli actions foster a growing and dangerous hatred of the U.S. in the Middle East and beyond.

In what follows I share with you parts of our trip with a few photos, and then end with cautious hope.  I realize that some of this article may upset some readers, particularly those who see Israel only as a shining beacon in a troubled Middle East.  As “Dad 2.0″ of a Jewish son-in-law with a large extended family who we dearly love, I am fully aware of the “existential fear” that exists on both sides of the dispute.  I ask that those who are well-versed in the Shoah (Catastrophe) be open to learning about the “Nakba” (Disaster) that burdens far too many Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza every day.

We started off in Cairo, then trekked through the Sinai desert (red lines) with a security escort to Rafah, the sole border crossing from Egypt into Gaza (the small red area poking into Israel from the Egyptian border on the map below).

Map of our trip

It is one thing to be well-versed, to write careful briefing memos off quiet corridors at the State Department.  It is entirely another to experience and witness unnecessary human suffering face-to-face, on the ground.  In Gaza we experienced a highly urbanized area just twice the size of the District of Columbia, but at 1.5 million people, three times its population.  Land, air and sea blockades by Israel and a very difficult border crossing with Egypt make it the world’s largest open air prison.

In the hours it took us to go through the Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza, I first saw at a distance and then close up a young man in a wheel-chair.  He looked into my eyes and showed me horrible burns – down to the bone – from Israeli phosphorous canisters.  Phosphorous burns chemically until it exhausts itself and cannot be extinguished.

What amazed me was there was no anger, just hurt, dignified hurt we experienced over and over in Gaza – as for example,  when we listened to Gaza students with scholarships to study abroad who are not allowed to leave Gaza.  We were inconvenienced by the time it took us to get into Gaza.  Imagine what it is like for a graduate student who has slowly watched hope disappear in the two years he has waited for permission to leave.

Again and again we saw the crushing of hope, often for reasons that have little if anything to do with security.  We saw the ruins of the American International School in Gaza, designed to promote moderation, peace and openness.  Twice in 18 months extremists tried to blow it up without success.  Long after Israel controlled the area during its December/January Operation Cast Lead, Israeli jets did what the extremists were unable to do.

The people of Gaza are well-educated, with a 95 percent literacy rate.  UNRWA officials and an American-educated lawyer explained to us that prior to Israel’s clamp-down in 2007 following Hamas’ victory in a free and fair election promoted by the U.S., there had been flourishing trade between Gaza and Israel, with considerable interchange between Gazan businessmen and Israelis, and excellent large facilities for inspecting cargo.  Now with the clamp-down, Gazan trade with Israel has ended, with virtually the only goods getting through via tunnels.  Rather than building ties with Israel, the blockade cuts them off and will create a whole generation of alienated young Gazans, a growing pool for the very extremism that Israel says it wants to reduce.

We also learned that the number of trucks crossing into Gaza had declined from 2,350 trucks a week to 99 a week – 4% of the pre–closure number – just enough for the most basic necessities.  Until Senator Kerry intervened, the Israeli authorities refused to permit importation of  “luxury goods” such as semolina and tomato paste.  Other items, such as glass to replace bombed-out windows, fabric, thread, needles, matches, mattresses, sheets, blankets, crockery, coffee, light bulbs, crayons, clothing and shoes are also banned.  Concrete, rebar, glass, wood, anything that could be used for rebuilding is banned, despite Operation Cast Lead’s horrific destruction (photo below).  This is not banning goods supporting terrorism, this is mean-spirited deprivation and group punishment.  How this is supposed to promote long-term Israeli/Palestinian peace or security escapes me.   In our meeting with the leader of the Labor party in the Knesset, Daniel Ben Simon, he told us “Israelis want to be loved.”   Depriving a whole people of a minimally decent life and hope is a peculiar way of gaining love.

Because Israel refused to let us make the easy hour and a half trip from Gaza to Jerusalem, we spent 27 hours (4 for sleep) going back through Gaza to the Rafah crossing, then into Egypt to the Suez canal and through the Sinai desert to Eilat, and up to Jerusalem (see map).  Suffering from stomach flu, Mrs. Fulbright was a trooper throughout the trip.

In Hebron, on the West Bank, we saw graphic examples of a conscious policy to take over and strangle a once vibrant city.  The Mayor and Governor of Hebron explained to us that on the pretext of needing to protect 400 armed extremist Israeli settlers/colonizers, 520 shops in the center of old Hebron have been closed – their metal doors blowtorched shut by Israeli troops (photo below).  Another 1000 have closed due to harassment and security measures.   The Mayor and Governor cannot walk on the main street of Hebron, a street restored with USAID money, but settlers/colonizers have free access.  On one street we saw wire mesh strung to protect Palestinians from garbage – but not urine and feces – thrown down on them by settlers who have built above existing buildings.

Destruction from Israeli Operation Cast Lead, Gaza

Arab shops in the center of Hebron blow-torched shut by Israeli forces

Nets to stop garbage thrown down by Israeli settlers in central Hebron

Throughout our visit to the center of the old city we had to endure loudspeakers blaring out hard-rock Israeli music from a settler/colonist center financed by a pro-settler group in Florida.  The music blares 24 hours a day.  Muslims hear it while going through four security check points to reach what had been their mosque on the tomb of Abraham.  In 1994, the extremist American/Israeli settler Dr. Baruch Goldstein opened fire in the mosque at prayer time, killing 29 Palestinians and wounding 150.  A year later an Israeli commission gave two-thirds of the mosque to the settlers, who can enter whenever they want, and the remaining third to the Palestinians, who can only enter after humiliating security checks.  The settlers, many supported by tax-deductible contributions to U.S. “charities,” have erected a monument in their nearby settlement that reads “To the holy Baruch Goldstein, who gave his life for the Jewish people, the Torah and the nation of Israel.”

Summing our visit to the West Bank, one of our group, an investment banker from New York who had spent 10 years in South Africa in the 80’s, remarked wryly that “Israel is giving Apartheid a bad name.”

Returning to Gaza for a moment, the inevitable question arises, “What about Hamas? They don’t recognize Israel. Israel is just trying to root them out.”  In Gaza we were told that Hamas would accept whatever agreement was worked out between the Palestinian Authority and Israel so long as the new Palestinian State would be within the pre-1967 borders and any agreement were ratified by the Palestinians’ Legislature.  For them this is in effect recognition of Israel.  As for renunciation of violence (the second of three conditions the U.S. has asked of Hamas), Hamas had honored a cease-fire it declared in June 2008 and Israel violated this cease-fire (a point corroborated by former President Jimmy Carter).  As to the final U.S. condition, recognition of previous accords, it was pointed out that Israel’s then new Prime Minister and Foreign Minister had refused to do that.  We were left with the impression that Hamas would like to move towards negotiation and be in some sort of contact with the United States Government.

Now, and the future -

At this point I am sure some readers will say “this only gives the Arab perspective,” What about the Israeli? What about Hamas rockets firing into Sderot?”  Obviously any violence is wrong and to be condemned.  That said, the number of deaths and damage from inaccurate rockets was miniscule compared to the over 1200 deaths and massive destruction of apartment buildings in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.  And this does not deny Israeli fears and concerns.   They are best addressed in real peace talks that include the whole Palestinian population, not just the West bank.

I am sure at this point, or much earlier in reading this article, some readers will ask “What about Arab recognition of Israel?”   In 2002, then Crown Prince Abdullah, now King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia proposed a peace plan that would involve the recognition of Israel by all members of the Arab League if there were a settlement between the Palestinians and Israel.   The Bush administration gave the plan short shrift, as they did any activity on the peace process.   The Arab League has continued to endorse the plan.

As I write this in mid-May 2010, the talking heads in Washington are busily discussing “proximity talks” between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which Arab states and Netanyahu have endorsed. Talks are fine – but seven years of talks in the 90’s only led to expansion of Israeli settlements and a doubling of the number of Israeli settlers.  As a diplomat I of course am in favor of talks – but not if they are a clever way of diverting attention from continued Israeli expansion, depopulation of the West Bank and creating yet more “facts on the ground.”  It is time that Americans see this and hold Israel accountable as President Obama and Secretary Clinton have been trying to do.

As it has been for decades, a major problem is that most in the U.S. Congress are petrified of the power of the Israel lobby, as exemplified by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).  In the 80’s I worked on Middle East issues in the State Department’s Congressional relations bureau.  When I talked with Congressional staff and members on any Mid-East matter, even one far removed from anything having to do with Israel, the first comment usually was  “Is State’s position the same as AIPAC’s?  If not you have a problem.”

This March, in the middle of Vice President Biden’s visit to Israel to revivify a moribund “peace process,” Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government announced it would build 1600 new housing units in East Jerusalem, infuriating Biden and President Obama and greatly complicating any hopes for peace.  Netanyahu rejected Obama’s request to stop building settlements in a speech before AIPAC and AIPAC quickly got 333 congressmen and 76 senators to write letters to Secretary of State Clinton reaffirming unyielding support for Israel and suggesting that any differences be kept out of the public domain.

Possible Hope -

“Existential fear” – In our conversation with David Ben Simon, the leader of the Israeli Labor Party in the Knesset, he told us he had talked with the leader of the party, former Prime Minister now Defense Minister Ehud Barak four days before and Barak had told him that Israel had “no good intelligence” on Iranian nuclear development.  “It is a black hole,” Simon quote Barak, “Our fear is existential, not based on intelligence.”

In politics, alas, perception is usually far more important than reality.  U.S. policy has been and should remain one that reassures Israel about our commitment to its existence and security.  This should not mean a blank check for Israeli actions that have little to do with security, such as a “security fence” that cuts deeply into the West Bank, or settlements in East Jerusalem.  It does mean encouraging unity talks between the PLO and Hamas, rather than discouraging them, as the U.S. government has been doing, and exploring ways to bring Hamas into final status negotiations.  Peace talks that only involve half the total population of the West Bank and Gaza are unlikely to lead to any real peace.

So long as AIPAC can muster overwhelming congressional support for anything the Israeli government does, even if it undercuts U.S. national interests, President Obama is unlikely to be able to make much progress in promoting real peace talks.  Netanyahu and the extremists in his cabinet can ignore Obama’s calls for a settlement freeze, as they have done up to the present.

In a thought-provoking recent talk on this reality, University of Chicago University Professor John Mearsheimer, a leader of the “realist” school of foreign policy, broke down the American Jewish community into three broad groups – the “righteous Jews,” who support Israel, but not its oppressive policies; the “new Afrikaners,” who “will support Israel even if it is an apartheid state,”  and a majority in the middle. (full text at The Future of Palestine: Righteous Jews vs. the New Afrikaners )  1

A reason for hope, Mearsheimer noted, is that the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee and prominent Jewish organization leaders who have long supported any action taken by the Israeli government no longer have a monopoly on speaking for American Jews regarding Israel.  A new organization, “J Street,” is active in telling congressmen that there are many people who support Israel, but not settlements, oppression on the West Bank or the collective punishment of Gazan civilians.  Whether “J Street” will make a difference is an open question, but it at least provides an option.

——————————————

1  For more background see Mearsheimer and Walt, “The Israel Lobby” London Review of Books

(Steve’s email is rowyourboat@verizon.net.)

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By Bill Weber
Pulteney, NY
May 2010

As you suggested, I am writing to you with some details on the latest trials and tribulations encountered as Town Supervisor (similar to Mayor) of  Pulteney, Steuben Co., New York.  Our area is characterized by vineyard covered hillsides leading down to the Finger lakes, in my case Keuka Lake.  Our waters are so pure as to be drinkable with little or no treatment.  My Lake has about 3000 dwellings on 65 miles of shoreline and with high local unemployment and taxes, it has become a haven for retired folks of means from some urban areas of New York, but recently as far away as Florida, Colorado and California.  These people have a tendency to want to keep things as they have recently found them and are opposed to any multiple family dwellings, industry and most recently, natural gas drilling operations, in particular the latest buzz is Marcellus Shale Hydrofracking, which is not yet permitted in NYS, but is practiced in nearby Pennsylvania.

The firestorm I encountered was when Chesapeake Energy applied for an injection well permit to dispose of gas drilling waste water in a depleted gas well in my Town.  These permits are regulated by the State and no local control is permitted for the most part.  Since the proposed well was within 4000 feet of Keuka lake and 6000 feet deep, the waste water containing salt (sodium chloride), surface tension reducers, some NORM (normally occurring radioactive materials) and undisclosed amounts of “pixie dust” (automatically assumed to be toxic), the Townspeople and residents of neighbouring communities immediately assumed the term “toxic waste dump” for the proposed operation and formed committees to fight this plan by the “predator” corporation, CHK.

There was the usual Freedom of Information requests and charges that the Town Supervisor was hiding something. The whole situation culminated in a mass meeting on Super Bowl Sunday where we had the pleasure of our local Congressman, Eric Massa, (recall his name from recent revelations about his sexual orientations and financial needs?), an environmental attorney, a rock scientist from Cornell, a toxicologist from Ithaca, a geologist from the local SUNY and two winery owners.  The winery fellows were OK with their concerns about truck traffic interfering with wine tours and their operations.  The others simply said the world was coming to an end and our Lake would be destroyed forever.  No amount of logic, reason or scientific knowledge had any merit and the protest continued until CHK withdrew their application partly because of a changing process for waste water, the public outcry and some third party intervention at the highest level of CHK.

So it was over… correct?  Not really, because one of the Committees called Citizens for Open Government decided that I had hidden things from the public and was not operating in the best interests of the Town. They claimed to have petition with over 155 signatures demanding my resignation, but never turned them in.  NYS has no provision for the recall of elected officials, so if I am not a convicted felon, there is nothing they can do.

I am still in office and trying to figure out how to get some logic and reason into the Marcellus Shale situation, but with the current attitude of NOPE (not on planet earth) and the attitude of the retired folks who think they love the Lake more than I (my place is currently in its fourth generation of Weber ownership), it appears to be a nearly impossible task.  Considering the fact that our local highway departments spread 8000 tons of salt on the roads each year, there is more radiation in the form of radon in local cellars of homes and the additives to the “fracking” water are not hazardous, one might expect that a well 6000 feet down will not pollute Keuka Lake one wonders how to attack this kind of problem with public perceptions.

That’s my story and I am sticking to it!

All the best,
Bill Weber

(Bill’s email is bbweb@empacc.net)

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The third meeting of the Y62 Class Council convened at noon on May 1, 2010, in the Saybrook Room of the Yale Club of New York City.  Class Secretary Jim White presided. Attending in person were class officers David Honneus (Treasurer) and Mike Kane (Corresponding Secretary), and Bob Oliver (50th Reunion Chair), Larry Lipsher, Bill Weeden, David Scharff, Steve Danetz, David Finkle, Kirk MacDonald, and Bo Rodgers.  Jennifer Julier of the AYA also attended, as a guest of the Council.  Jennifer is the officer responsible for AYA relations with our class, including for our 50th reunion.  Participating by telephone were Al Chambers, our class delegate to the AYA, Jim Wechsler, and Bill Reilly, the gift chair for our 50th.

After welcoming everyone, Jim White called for reports from the class leadership. First, David Honneus submitted a financial statement covering the period July 1, 2009, through March 31, 2010.  The class treasury (administered by Yale) is healthy.  We started the period with a credit balance of $69,245.  Income, consisting of class dues of $33,236, plus interest of $3,143, brought our total before expenses to $105,625.  Our expenses during the period were $8,671 so the March 31, 2010, balance was $96,954.  The largest expense item was $5,522 paid to Yale for the Yale Alumni Magazine. David also distributed data showing a stable pattern of class dues payment, 37% in both 2008 and 2009 and 38% so far in 2010. The data showed 307 dues payers, with 42 payers contributing at the “50th reunion sponsorship” level of at least $350.

Reporting on behalf of Bill Boyer, Y62 Chair of Yale Alumni Fund Agents, Jim White reported on the progress of our class YAF giving through April 26, 2010.  To that date, $182,000 had been given, 98.3% of our $185,000 goal,  and a participation rate of 40% (290 donors out of 733 solicited).  The target participation rate set for this year was 43%, reachable with 25 more donors by June 30.   According to Ms. Julier our participation rate is consistent with that of the classes surrounding us and is about the same rate as Y62 giving in 2008 and 2009.

Corresponding Secretary Kane’s report followed,  noting continuing progress in upgrading graphics and content of  the class website  www.Yale62.org and reporting generally favorable responses to the site’s new look.  Recent data showed that “readership” of the web site had averaged 300 in the weeks the web site was posted and 25 in other weeks, which compared favorably with readership in past years.  The Chairman observed that future website  postings should prominently feature news of the 50th Reunion and the New York 50th birthday mini-reunion (see below).  Kane reported that the Yale Alumni Magazine 2009-10 deadlines for class notes had all been met and our allotted space fully used.

Al Chambers reported next, noting that a detailed report on his attendance at the annual AYA meeting in November was posted on our website in January and can be found there archived currently.  He commented that the AYA meetings continued to be well organized and productive events, also that the previously discussed “cohort” reunion concept (which the Class Council was opposed to introducing for our 50th Reunion) has been shelved indefinitely.

Kirk MacDonald and Bo Rodgers then reported on their plans for the Y62 “70th birthday party” mini-reunion to be held October 14-17, 2010, in New York City. Council members commented at length on options for housing, entertainment and logistics, with these and other features to be resolved in the coming weeks by Rodgers and McDonald.  There was agreement that rooms needed to be reserved now for the Fall weekend, with several midtown clubs identified as preferred locations.  A boat tour of Manhattan Island, with dinner, was discussed as an attractive highlight for Saturday evening.

Next on the agenda was discussion of the e-mail pilot project.  Jim White explained that following a recent process of correcting wrong email addresses in our files, there was still approximately 35% of the Class, or some 260, unreacheable by email because we lacked their addresses.  He reported that he and Kane had separately conducted successful telephone campaigns in 2009 aimed at completing missing email addresses from, respectively, greater Washington, DC and Massachusetts residents.  Based on that experience and recognizing the importance of email communication as the 50th draws closer, the members agreed to expand the effort to cover the 260 or so classmates for whom we still do not have an e-mail address; Jim then asked for volunteers in that effort and Council members Weeden, Honneus, Wechsler, Danetz stepped forward, joining Richard Davis who had previously volunteered; more volunteers are needed and Jim said he would lead the effort to put together a team.

The final agenda item was Bob Oliver’s report, which showed he was already deeply engaged in the planning process.  He touched on a multitude of topics, including possible activities, panel discussions, food and budgeting.  Jennifer Julier commented that the size of the class fund appeared ample to cover any likely shortfall between reunion fees and expenses.  She shared with the Council a summary of revenue and expenses for the  50th reunions of the  YC Classes 1950-59, which indicated that class funds were tapped for an average of $66,000.  Bob noted that commencing this year he planned to visit the 50th reunions on campus  and assess with a view toward identifying best practices and gathering other ideas for  our class.  In response to a question Bob said that neither the exact date nor the residential college venue for our 50th had been determined. Ms. Julier said the likely dates would be either the last week of May or first week of June, 2012, and  added this should be scheduled by the AYA next February.

The meeting adjourned at 3 PM with the Secretary reminding all to plan to return for the 2011 council meeting, which will be held on a Saturday early next May.

Signed,
Mike Kane, CorSec.
May 13, 2010

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The Class Council held its third annual  meeting in New York on May 1, with much of the discussion devoted to  the 50th Birthday Mini-Reunion set for New York City  October 15-17 (2010), and our 50th  Reunion, date to be set – by Yale – either the last weekend in May  or the first weekend in June (2012).  Save these dates! Plans for both reunions are shaping up under Co-Chairs Bo Rodgers and Kirk McDonald (NY) and the 50th (Chair Bob Oliver). These guys are already putting a lot of thought into each event.  Don’t have to wait for surveys asking what you want on the schedules – send me your thoughts/wishes and I will see they get to the right Chair-people.

There has been a growing consensus among the class leadership that email is a far superior way to communicate with the class than US Mail, and far cheaper.  The problem is we have many more classmates with no email address on file than was previously thought.  After accounting for classmates totally missing (21), deceased (130), and a few (7) who have requested no contact, our class stands at 849 living and recorded members.  However we have emails for only 569 classmates (67%). We think the main cause of this is that many classmates have not appreciated the increasing importance of email and therefore haven’t bothered to put email addresses on annual class dues forms.

Secretary  Jim White has endorsed a program in which volunteers will make a team effort  to collect the missing emails by telephone.  This approach was successfully done on small scale last summer by Jim himself (made calls in the DC area)  and by Mike Kane (calls in Massachusetts). No respondents declined to provide their email addresses, and in many cases we had fun conversations by means of catching up and reminiscing.  Volunteers to date are Wechsler, Weeden, Honneus, Danetz and Richard Davis, but another 20 or so are needed.  Contact Jim at jameskwhite@me.com to offer your services- he has the master list of the missing and will cut off a small slice for you to start calling.

Chris Lydon (whose long-lost email address was sleuthed out last summer thanks to a classmate) has just published on his blog site a fascinating interview with an Indian man of letters named Amartya Sen  (link to interview). Says Chris, in an email:

(He – Sen) is tuning up his warning that India could yet become “half California, half Sub-Saharan Africa.” To me he sounds “half Victorian gent, half liberal social critic.” I thank him for the pleasure of engaging with “an old-fashioned Indian wiseman.”
“Shame on you,” he says, laughing.
Did I get it wrong? I ask.
He says: “You got it exactly right.”
The pleasure will be yours, too.
Very best to you, with thanks,
Chris Lydon

Bill Weber, whose delightful mini-article appears here on our site, has reported that he met up again this year with old friends and classmates Tony Giamei and Chuck Post, at a residence Chuck keeps in Prescott, Arizona.  This group has agreed to keep on with these annual mini-reunions until, well, indefinitely.

Ken Cascone has a new publication, this time a book review:  “My book review of Washington’s Spies (by Alex Rose) is being published soon in New York History, a quarterly put out by the New York State Historical Association. For those interested in a copy see this link for a subscription form. The review appears in its spring edition this June.

And Murray Wheeler continues his long record of service to Yale in the Boston area by helping to find housing for student summer interns.  At this writing Murray had  successfully placed 100% of the interns with local families. Let the file show that your CorSec volunteered some space but was disqualified for specifying preference for an extremely attractive female student.

Earlier this Spring John Chapman found time from his rigorous semi retirement to spend a week in Nepal  checking up on a school construction project that he raised money for.  He has returned safe and sound now,as this email confirms: “Back from a pretty tiring but rewarding trip – saw a number of diplomatic and political types in Kathmandu I had met before (of course Nepal is still a mess) and trooped up for a dedication of “my” school in the middle hills north of Gorkha with my friend Dhruba Bhatta. Actually quite touching – a few pix for your viewing. I was sure you would want to know all about it, but no, no plans for a story for the Yale website.”  Rather than pen the report we had asked for, the reclusive author has headed off to Costa Rica for some much needed rest. Maybe he will relent and contribute for our next posting.

John speaking with community members

The plaque awarded to John

Students and teachers outside their school

Steve Howard from LA  confirms the passing of his 70th birthday, and thinks this experience is worth some further reflection by us all,  in his words:  “Mine (70th) was two weeks ago.  I was feeling pretty cocky as the date approached — I’m pretty healthy, very active (two high altitude treks a year and lots of other travel), and I recently shed about 25 pounds — so I thought I was pretty cool.  But, when the big 70 actually arrived, I was very subdued.  Seventy is indisputably ‘old.’  No way you can kid yourself that you are just ‘middle aged.’  And that launched me onto thinking:  What did I accomplish in my life, what can I (should I) still do with the time that remains.  No easy answers.”  We can all agree with Steve that this moment in our lives may trigger more than the usual birthday musings and I have some more to say about it in my CorSec column on this site.  Please weigh in with your comments here.

Of course, one thing we can do with the “time that remains” is go to the 70th Birthday Party in New York in October!

Old friend Ed Kelly sent a very welcome letter full of news of his interesting pathways since the early 1970’s, when  we last met in Harvard Square as he finished graduate work at Harvard.  Ed has pursued very advanced areas of psychology research, as his own words tell it:

“I started working in experimental parapsychology at J.B. Rhine’s lab in Durham NC right out of grad school. Lasted about 15 months there and then moved to Electrical Engineering at Duke, where with several others I began developing a laboratory facility to study possible physiological correlates of success in controlled psi (ESP, PK) tasks of various kinds.  Kept that going for about 12 years, the last 4 or so under the auspices of a non-profit research institute we set up for that purpose, but eventually had to abandon it for lack of resources.  Partly in order to put food on the table for the two children of a disastrous first marriage, I went back into academia in 1989 as part of a big UNC-Chapel Hill neuroscience group studying mammalian somatosensory systems (touch, temperature, pain, ..), my main role being application of high-resolution EEG techniques of the sort we had been working on at Duke to visualize cortical adaptation to flutter-vibration stimulation of the hand in humans.  Sounds pretty exotic, I’m sure, but actually plugs into a vast body of prior neurophysiological and psychophysical research in a very elegant way. Did that for another dozen years or so and then retired early at age 62 in order to resume working on parapsychology and allied subjects here at U. of Virginia, this time in the company of my second wife Emily, who was already a long-time member of the research group founded here by Ian Stevenson in 1969 specifically for the study of these subjects (see Information about the Division of Perceptual Studies).

Emily and I had commuted back and forth between Charlottesville and Chapel Hill for almost a decade, and at 4 hours a pop that was getting VERY tiresome. To make a long story short, we then spent almost 5 years putting together a huge book called Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century, published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2007, which is an all-out assault on the sorts of reductive physicalism that dominate contemporary psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind – basically, the view that “mind is what brain does, full stop”, as our chairman here in psychiatry never tires of saying. I’ll attach a brochure here, and will send you a copy of the book too if you’re interested (but I’ll need a snail-mail address). We’ve had a bunch of good reviews (plus a couple of nasty ones from persons who apparently felt no need to read the book first), and it’s recently come out in paperback at under half the original bite, which we hope will put it in the hands of lots of students. Since then I’ve mainly been involved in setting up another nonprofit research institute, a sister-organization for our Uva group, and getting it equipped to carry forward the work we started at Duke 35 years ago (and with many of the same people involved (!) – some now from considerable distances). See Cedar Creek Institute for lots more information about that. Those are the main professional & personal highlights, I guess, but I would be remiss if I didn’t also confess that like many of our classmates, no doubt, I am slowly growing deaf, blind, forgetful, flabby and weak – despite somewhat greater than normal efforts to prevent all these things from happening.  Have some contact with fellow 62ers Steve Kaplan, Jim Keaten, and Marty Kaminsky, but that’s about it.”

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Had a good email exchange and phone talk with Dave Willis, who this year celebrated not only his 70th birthday but also his 43d wedding anniversary with wife Lillian. He generously credits MKane with introducing the couple, and goes on to say that his kids are giving him for his birthday a) an outing to Formula 1 races in Montreal and b) a ride in a Texan AT6 antique trainer. Dave is uncomfortably straddling two houses at the moment, one in Vermont (future home) and one in Connecticut (for sale). A keen hockey fan, he has agreed to join Oliver, Lipsher, Kane and Hedlund at rinkside for next season’s campaign at Ingalls Rink.

H Lee Rust writes that he has spent the last 25 years as a sole proprietor corporate finance consultant in Orlando, Florida, where he has just written a new book with a companion website. The book is titled Is This Any Way to Run a Company, and can be located, with its website, at Just 60 Days. Lee and his wife Karilyn of 20 years have many kids and grandchildren.

Jerome Yurow retired from the US Dept of Energy last year and continues living in the DC area (Rockville, Md). He has a son working in the NY area and a daughter working in Georgetown, both in technology related fields.

(Prof) Lew Spratlan, whose opera Life Is a Dream, unseen since written 32 years ago when it earned Lew a Pulitzer Prize in music composition, will have its world premier and four additional performances at the prestigious Santa Fe Opera beginning July 24, and on July 28, August 6,12, and 19.  Says Lew: “All old friends will be warmly welcomed.”  (Not clear if this means comp tickets.) Lew’s milestone achievement was the subject of a big NY Times Arts section feature on April 12th. Lew and his wife Melinda (also a Prof) live in Amherst (Ma), where he retired from the Amherst College faculty in 2006 and Melinda from the Mt Holyoke faculty this year. Their three kids are all working or in graduate school, and two married daughters have recently had baby girls, so Lew joins our growing grandfathers club.  He continues composing and producing, currently working on a song for the 150th Yale Glee Club celebration next February, and has a CD out on the Navona label.

Recently heard from but without much news attached: Don Banks (Decatur, Ga) and Philip de Chabert (France). Philip says he is retired. We will pursue them for more info!

Yale’s alumni records office has only recently notified us of the deaths of Charles Gantz (1999), Henry Adams (2001), and Paul R. Johnson (1996), but obituaries have not been written pending Bob Oliver’s receipt of additional information.

The family of Boyd Brown (Maine) has notified us that, with a developing Alzheimer’s condition, he has moved into a residential care facility and no longer can participate in class communications. We are honoring the family’s wishes.

From Henry Childs, this gracefully composed report of his recent (2d) marriage and recent literary achievements:

“I have been asked to inform you of my recent marriage to Helen Elizabeth Mercier, having been divorced from Mary Adams now for some 15 years. My name is Henry Clay Childs, BA ‘62. I don’t know if you are interested in the fact that I have just had two books published – novels, one entitled H – An Urchin’s Tale, and the second (about to come out in a matter of weeks) entitled The Pyrite Years. The latter is narrated by a member of my class (fictional, of course) who is married to an English Lit major from Vasser (sic). They flee the suburbs of New Jersey for the wilds of the Adirondacks. Very funny, with an increasing dose of mind-expanding experiences only partially brought on by the bi-products of an Athabaskan woman’s chickens and hogs, fed ‘natural substances’. A must read for all Yalies and their spouses, Vasserites (sic) or no. “H” is a bit more esoteric, involving a young orphan from Bermuda who is kidnapped aboard a splendid sloop and winds up in the Amazon rainforest helping a Scots lady salvaging the wealth of knowledge the rainforest holds for natural healing. Magic, romance, the Bermuda Triangle, pirates, disinterested Harvard medical establishment, this has it all for most of us, though not necessarily all. Respectfully submitted, Henry C. Childs.  (Ed note: Careful readers of the May-June YAM Class Notes will notice a close resemblance to this entry.  This is not  a sign of CorSec’s Alzheimer’s, but rather because at different dates Mr. Childs had submitted two similar but not identical notices  to Alumni Records, and the above version seemed to include a little more information and therefore worth printing here.)

Steve Buck, who wrote the other article on this site, returned to his career turf earlier this year as a guest of the US Army and sent in this brief report: “This spring, in January, February and March, I spent a week each month in Saudi Arabia advising a U.S. military team negotiating with Saudi generals on a review of the country’s land forces and had the opportunity to talk with Saudis at all levels. While Saudis and other Arabs were pleased by the Obama administration’s reaching out to the Islamic world and strong stance on Israeli settlements, they were concerned about the U.S. administration’s inability to stop them and how this provides fodder for recruiting terrorists.”

Bill Stott from Austin, Texas (wstott@mail.utex.edu) has reported in, happily claiming now two families, one in Santiago, Chile involving his wife’s daughter by her first marriage, and the other in the US involving his ex-wife Jane and their two children. In addition to his family news, Bill sent a fascinating reminiscence about Victor Brombert of the Directed Studies faculty of our day:

“The teacher who most influenced my career choice was my freshman Directed Studies literature teacher, Victor Brombert, who taught many years at Yale and then even more years at Princeton. I think I have the following facts right. He was born in Berlin in 1923 to Russian Jewish parents who had fled the Revolution; when Hitler came to power, the family moved again, to Paris. In 1941 they moved again, to New York. Picture three shows him in his French phase, the aspiring writer. In 1943 he was drafted into the US Army, where he was trained to be an interrogator of prisoners of war and, I think, trainer of spies. He and nine other men who did this work are interviewed in the wonderful documentary film The Ritchie Boys (2005), which was shortlisted for an Academy Award. (The fourth photo shows him in the movie. I point out that he was 22 when, as you learn in the film, he and a Jeep of co-workers liberated Paris before De Gaulle.) Camp Ritchie trained 10,000 foreign-language speakers for WWII work, among them (though not interviewed in the film because they are long dead) were Klaus Mann, Hans Habe, and David Seymour (Chim); the camp, which trained soldiers for other intelligence work, referred to these 10,000 as the “Psycho Boys.” To my amazement, The Ritchie Boys, which I have bought a DVD of that is waiting for me in Austin, can now be seen for free on YouTube here.   It’s a film with touching, surprising, and amusing moments. And it will show you Victor Brombert, a teacher-conversationalist of genius. He has an autobiography, Trains of Thought: Paris to Omaha Beach, Memories of a Wartime Youth, that I bought and immediately loaned to a friend who keeps promising to return it; I imagine it’s being a second Speak, Memory. Brombert is very much alive; his email can be found in Princeton’s webdirectory.”

Speaking of John Chapman (as we were on Page 1 of our This Just In column), he has passed on to me an opinion column spotted in the Minneapolis Star Tribune by his old friend Les Michaels (Yale ‘60).  In it the author has fun making light of   Yale’s  “Sex Week”, apparently held every other year since 2002.  (It seems the author did not attend but claims her facts are from an eye-witness account appearing in The National Review online version).  Knowing we all like sex or at least like thinking about it, and once in a while it is healthy to see the lighter side of Yale, I reproduce excerpts from the article here:

KATHERINE KERSTEN,  Minneapolis Star Tribune – March 6, 2010

These days, you see, Yale is gaining fame for stimulation of a different kind. In classrooms where lectures on moral philosophy once got students’ intellectual juices flowing, Yalies recently poured in by the hundreds to hear the likes of transsexual porn star Buck Angel, and porn icon Sasha Grey, winner of seven Adult Video News Awards, including “best group sex scene.”

It was all part of last month’s “Sex Week at Yale” (SWAY) — a nine-day series of lectures and demonstrations that has been a biennial campus tradition since 2002. This year, SWAY featured a star-studded line-up of how-to-do-it experts — the “it,” of course, being everything any human being has ever found remotely sexually arousing, from erotic piercings to sadomasochism.

This being Yale, the week started with a veneer of academic respectability: a lecture by museum curator Katharine Gates (Yale ‘85). Gates has served as a curator — not at the Smithsonian, but at the Museum of Sex in New York City. The author of “Deviant Desires: Incredibly Strange Sex,” she presented a “video-and-slide-illustrated talk” on the Kinkmap — “her ongoing project to collect and organize the world of sexual subcultures from Adult Babies to Body Inflation, Cannibal Play to Zoophilia,” according to the Sex Week schedule. Nathan Harden, a 2009 Yale graduate who reported on Sex Week for National Review Online, explained that Adult Babies include “men dressing up like babies (complete with diapers).” . . .

Yalies eager to learn more could follow up with a workshop on masturbation, a “sex toy demonstration,” a lecture entitled “Beyond Monogamy” or a seminar on sexual fantasies by Dr. Susan Block (Yale ‘77). There, Block handed out a video she said contained footage of an orgy she had held in celebration of President Obama’s election victory, according to Harden. Or students could attend “an interactive workshop on sexual self-realization,” led by Diana Adams (Yale ‘01) — a “sexual civil rights lawyer, polyamory activist, and national jiu-jitsu champion.”

You might suspect that Yale’s focus on sex is entirely student-driven. Not so. The university’s administration is doing its best to ensure that the subject becomes a year-round preoccupation. In February, the Yale College Dean’s Office announced a new “sex@yale” initiative. The project will be led by a 22-person advisory board of faculty and administrators. It will solicit essays for the Dean’s website from students — almost 100 so far — who will “reflect anonymously on their sexual experiences at Yale and their impressions of the sexual culture here.”

No doubt these student essayists will draw inspiration from Sex Week’s other events. These included an “Erotic Bondage Suspension Performance” (moved off-campus at the last minute, according to Harden) and a “fetish fashion show.” The fashion show — held in Yale’s dining hall — featured erotic lingerie designed and modeled by Yale students. “The outfits evoked various role-play themes, including devil and angel, boss and secretary, and one that I can only describe as girls in leather with chains,” according to Harden.

Sex Week’s grand finale was a lecture by the 21-year-old Grey, described by the SWAY schedule as “one of the biggest names in porn.” Grey is known for her on-screen performances of “consensual degradation,” according to Los Angeles Magazine.

Is there any dissent at Yale? Any countercultural types, any rebels?  There was one. His name was David Schaengold, and the Sex Week schedule described his speech as “a philosophical defense of the institutions of marriage and the family,” based on “a Thomist-Aristotelian argument about natural ends. “Natural ends? Philosophy? Marriage? How did this weirdo crash the party?

Schaengold is in the minority for now. Only a dozen students showed up for his talk, according to Harden. But who knows? After a few more years of men dressing like babies, and after sneeze fetishes have lost their erotic glow, more folks may give him a listen.”

Katherine Kersten is at kakersten@gmail.com.

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After our web posting in January, I turned my attention to a consulting job that involved looking into the finances of three large hospitals. Wow!  Who would guess how much profit a  non-profit institution can make!?  Another reminder of how much hard work lies ahead to get control over health care costs.

As winter wound down, I followed the final phase of  the Yale men’s hockey season, frequently accompanied at rinkside by hockey guru Gus Hedlund.  This included a solid victory over Harvard at Ingalls Rink, followed a couple of weeks later by  the ECAC tournament series against Brown.  As the top seed, Yale had home ice advantage but lost to Brown 2-1 in a close third game. The deciding game 3 loss  was one of those familiar to hockey fans where we played well but a)took a dumb penalty at a critical time and b) the opposing goalie  went into an elevated mental zone where he  blocked every  Yale shot.  But that wasn’t the end of the season.  Yale has a  national caliber hockey team that the NCAA recognized  with an invitation to the NCAA tournament.  For the first round, Kane and Hedlund trekked to Worcester, Mass to see Yale play – and defeat – the much feared North Dakota “Fighting Sioux”, first time since the 1950’s that Yale has advanced past the first round.  NDakota has won the NCAA any number of times and some 16 guys on  the team  had been drafted by the  NHL.  By the demeanor of their many fans in Worcester,  all  wearing actual hockey shirts, they seemed to expect to blow by Yale, but it didn’t happen.  Yale took the lead with a bunch of goals in the 2d period and held on with composure and grit in the third period to get the W.  The next day Yale had to play the eventual NCAA champs Boston College and lost 9-7, no disgrace.  It has been a long wait, but Yale has arrived in college hockey.

Yale played all  its tournament games without  their leading scorer,  a senior breaking an ankle in a late night  frolic in Payne Whitney Gym, rumored as a  spooky event.

After the Harvard hockey game, I visited Tom Luckey as he recovered from  pneumonia and bed sores – thankfully nothing  turned out to be  critical – in the Yale New Haven Hospital.  He was  in good spirit and obviously a favorite of the nursing staff.  As we talked, he skillfully operated the computer mounted over his bed by means of a metallic sticker on the end of his nose.  Some days later I got the good news that  he had been discharged in good health back to his res. in East Haven.

The weekend of the Harvard  game was, by the way, the kickoff of Yale’s biennial  “Sex Week”,  critically reported in this posting’s  “This Just In” section.  This involved (apparently) many forums, panels, speeches, manifestos and other utterances and surveys all to improve  the sex life and/or fantasies of the undergraduates.  Too weird for old fuds like me.

After Yale’s hockey journey ended, I flew out for  spring break to Arizona, with a visit to Tucson and former Yale Dean Bob Porter as the highlight.  Bob, as some recall, kept bachelor quarters in Davenport  and some of us were regular visitors and beneficiaries of both his hospitality ( unlimited beer and cheese) and learned sayings.  Greece has been in the news, reminding  me of a time when  our undergrad chatter  at Bob’s place turned to the touristic charms of Greece, upon which Bob, a classics scholar and known for an epigrammatic conversation style, said (as ever, squinting far into the distance:  “The only thing wrong with Greece is the Greeks.”  Of course we had no idea what he meant, but perhaps it’s clearer now.  Bob moved with his family to Tucson in 1934, and he returned there when he left Yale in 1984.  He now  enjoys what he calls “foothills living”  in a suburb with his  niece, Christine,  and her small but ferocious dog.   He put on several gourmet dinners in my honor, preceded by  hand-crafted frozen margaritas, making a point of  using blue agave nectar in lieu of sugar.  When not entertaining visitors and puttering around the residence, Bob drives himself into town to his favorite trading post, “Trader Joe’s” market, and serves as a volunteer guide for the US Forest Service in the Santa Catalina National Park.  He has reached 89 with gusto and it was good to see him after about 40 years. On my last day in Tucson, Andy Block (YC’61) drove down from Phoenix and the three of us had lunch.

Andy Block (Y'61), Bob Porter and CorSec Kane, Spring '10

In our “This Just In” section Steve Howard poses the question of how best to respond to the arrival of one’s 70th Birthday.  Myself, I am going to be spared some unwelcome fuss because my birthday is July 29, and by chance my eldest daughter and fiance picked July 31  for their wedding date.  But Steve’s question is a great one and I hope we will hear comments from many classmates. Steve’s email seems to  frame the main issue as “what have I accomplished” and “what can I still accomplish,” making me also hope that most will opt for a broad definition of accomplishment.  For sure, our class has its fair share of  distinguished authors, scholars, lawyers, doctors, corporate chieftains, community leaders, artists and others whose professional accomplishments if listed would circle the earth.   Yet, in three years as your Corresponding Secretary, as I have learned of  many remarkable achievements by our classmates, I have yet to hear  much about  how we feel about our lives.  I suspect this is tricky terrain for many.  Maybe another  question on reaching 70 is, what kind of life have I led and what is the right yardstick for that?   Looking forward to hearing what many of you think.

Mike Kane
mkane40@gmail.com
Newton, Massachusetts
May 14, 2010

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Class Secretary Jim White reports:  It’s with special delight I report Bill Reilly has agreed to chair our 50th reunion gift committee. 50th reunion Chair Bob Oliver and I spoke with Bill, Bob sent him a serious amount of information, and – despite his way too busy work schedule – Bill agreed to do it. What a coup for Y62! This speaks volumes for Bill’s affection for Yale and of course for our class.  He will do a terrific job, of that Bob and I have zero doubt.

Next 50th step: forming the full gift committee. I have two other important items to report. First, the next Y62 Class Council meeting will be next May 1, at the Yale Club of New York City. Second, Bo Rodgers and Kirk MacDonald are working on plans for our next class mini-reunion, to be held in NYC the weekend of October 15-17, 2010. This mini-reunion will be a celebration of our 70th birthdays and as such is a “companion” to the Y62 60th birthday mini-reunion held in New York 10 years ago. One event for this weekend already on the drawing board is Betsy Rodgers’ (Bo’s wife) walking tour of beautiful and historic Brooklyn Heights.   Stay in close touch with this website, Yale’s best thanks to Mike Kane’s efforts, for further news about all these events.

Jim’s email: jameskwhite1221@aol.com

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All have heard our pleas for missing email addresses so that this web site can reach more classmates.  And we do want those addresses so keep ‘em coming. But what about the guys who are logged in  but still don’t read  www.Yale62.org ?  Yes, they exist.   I know that because  good friends  of mine  have confessed to not having read  it even though I told them they were featured!  Thank goodness for the many satisfied readers, but it still gives pause. It makes me realize there are a lot of claims on our reading time, and attention spans are not what they once were either.   So I write this column with due humility.  I have to ask myself, even for those loyal website readers,  how fascinating do I have to be to keep them scrolling on  after they have worked their way through the AYA report, the Secretary’s bulletin, THIS JUST IN,  the 50th Reunion update, our feature articles etc., etc. – maybe future technology will allow us to imbed a voice version of the whole site that you can download to an iPod and listen  as you head off to sleep.

One area I am going to try to avoid hereafter is commentary on the heavy issues of the day.  After all, who cares what I think about Afghanistan? Or health care?  Etc., etc.  I do know more about the US health care problem than the average person (and more than the average doctor, I might add), and I have strong views, but who has time to read me on this when there is so much else out there already, and from real experts?   But can’t resist a  couple of highlights for color:  How about the enraged tea party lady who shouted “Keep Government out of my Medicare!”  Or the cardiologist treating my mother-in-law who told her, fully seriously, that under Obama-care Medicare was going to drop cardiology services.  Footnote: Florida attracts some of the nation’s worst and most unethical doctors.

I got to thinking on this topic  when I  got a Christmas letter from a (pre-Yale) friend  that went on and on about his only son’s academic achievements, and then concluded with a lengthy discourse on current events  (i.e., his take on state of the union).  My friend is a  bright Harvard grad but with no particular credentials to opine on these issues.   So is it just me, or do we all have very limited appetite for amateur Limbaughs, Maddows and O’Reillys?

And yet, there have to be lots of people eager to hear ignorance and stupidity because what else is afternoon talk radio?

In sum, my plan is to stick to human interest in this column.

And let me start by reporting that my approaching 70th birthday has been thrust into the background by my oldest daughter’s decision to get married  two days after that date.  It should be a wonderful event, much grander than my birthday would have been.  She has been busy planning for months now, a drama that is familiar to many of you, but new to me, late to marriage (38) and fatherhood (40).  Fortunately or not, my input is not in great demand, so except for enjoying the festivities and refreshments. I hope to relax and enjoy it. And her fiance‚ is a great guy who went to Brown undergrad and Yale MBA, so the Harvard flavor in the family from my wife’s side (father, brother) is being watered down further.

Wife Nancy and I last summer journeyed even farther Downeast from our rental cottage near Bar Harbor to the home of Roger and Judy Clapp in Addison, Maine.  I should say “estate” , not “home”, because we are talking here about a compound of three large and relatively new buildings, set on a bluff with spectacular views westward over salt water, and reached by a mile-long dirt driveway, all on his property that doesn’t even start until you  are about 10 miles from US Route 1. And yes, Roger is the bearded lobsterman pictured in our last web posting (no one has guessed this).  The Clapps treated us to wonderful hospitality, including a picnic on his lobster boat, and let me go off  alone  for a joyride in the little whaler outboard rig.  Next day while Roger and I hauled lobster traps, Judy took Nancy  shopping where she bought a 5-lb box of Maine blueberries that lasted us through about 4 pies back home in Newton.

At my urging Roger has sent in this New Year’s report and I am shamelessly bulking up my column by quoting it here, instead of in This Just In:

“Classmates have asked why we moved to the Downeast coast of Maine, 50 miles east of Ellsworth and 50 miles from Campobello, Canada. My answer is that we wanted a big, new adventure. We’d lived on a farm in northwest New Jersey for the previous 25 years and when I retired from practicing law, we chose to make our home on the rocky, ruggedly beautiful coast of Maine, in an area new to us where we hardly knew anyone, an area not frequented by tourists. I’m having fun hauling five lobster traps in the summer and giving back all year round in land trust, charitable and community activities (18, but who’s counting). We are enjoying the challenge of sinking our roots into a culture unlike any we’d ever lived in before.”

view of the Clapp estate from the water

Roger Clapp and Your CorSec, August '09

Roger went on to report that later in ‘09 he and Judy traveled down coast to Boston, where they met up with  met up with Chris Cory and Helen Rattray,  and all toured the Tom Luckey climbing structure at the Boston Childrens’ Museum.  This was packed with happy kids, a nice postscript to the drama about constructing this contraption that many of you saw in the Sundance movie about Tom that aired in October.

And now to press, and to rest up for another edition.

Best to all,

Mike Kane

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By Chris Lydon
Boston, MA
January 27, 2010

My reading/interviewing/podcasting year ends on the gorgeously swinging, dissonant, modernist note of Robin Kelley’s “Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original.”  Kelley lovingly moves the complex Monk story from the ragged edge to the creative center of 20th Century American music.  And it offsets Monk’s many eccentricities and trials with the man’s private kindnesses and his belief, unshakable through thick and thin, in his own voice.  Monk emerges as a true Emersonian at the keyboard.  “To believe your own sound,” (paraphrasing “Self-Reliance”) “… that is genius.”  There may be another jazz biography as thickly detailed, as audibly lyrical, as passionate, as thrilling as this one, but I can’t bring it to mind. See: Robin Kelley’s Transcendental Thelonious Monk.

2009, all told, felt like a recovery year.

Joseph O’Neill’s “Netherland” felt like the book of the age, and may well have been my book to remember for 2009.   A post-911 tale of the cricket leagues that thrive in third-world New York City, it’s a parable of how we confront “otherness” in the world, in our midst; and perfectly fitted for the Obama inauguration and, it turned out, for the presidential night table.  See:  Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland: The Novel of the Age.

Another surprising novel, Paul Harding’s “Tinkers,” an offbeat New England peddler’s family saga in a transcendentalist spirit, made it miraculously from the quirky brilliant Bellevue Literary Press to Amazon’s Top 10 list of fiction for 2009.  See:  Paul Harding’s Magical ‘Tinkers’.

Nicholson Baker, in “The Anthologist,” makes the huge loss of John Updike a bit less bitter.  Another adoptive New Englander and ex-urbanite, Baker is a one-off stylist, profoundly though nimbly erudite in poetry, history and music, and hilarious as well.  In his fiction and his New Yorker fact pieces, Nick Baker seems to have become our Great Noticer.  See: Whose Words These Are (16): Nick Baker’s Chowder.

Favorites  in non-fiction were two early warnings about the booby-trapped obstacle course President Obama can’t finesse:

Jackson Lears’ “Rebirth of a Nation,” is a glum reflection on the revivalist, bully-boy, anti-intellectual stream in American culture and psychology that’s been flowing strong since the US Civil war, embodied by Teddy Roosevelt on his bad days and by G.W. Bush every day.  See: Jackson Lears: on Obama’s Sorrows of Empire.

Chris Hedges’ “Empire of Illusion” is a sort of draft death certificate for an American economy, culture, foreign policy and mainstream media that refuse absolutely to reflect on, much less correct, their self-destructive trajectory.  See: Chris Hedges: Requiem for the Reading Republic.

George Scialabba’s essay collection, “What Are Intellectuals Good For?” is outwardly a lament for the civic culture and the late great public intellectuals.  But it more truly a modern model of wondrously civilized dedication to the ecstatic discipline of ideas.  See: George Scialabba: the untethered, untenured mind.

My biggest investment in a giant writer this year was in the Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk: in his new “Museum of Innocence;” his Nobel-nailer, “Snow;” his masterpiece, “My Name is Red;” his memoir “Istanbul;” and his essays, “Other Colors.”  Pamuk is the Proust of melancholy Istanbul.  He’s still more absorbing as a sort of Dostoevsky of today’s moral tensions between West and East, with rather more cheer, less spleen than Dostoevsky brought to the subject when the critical difference seemed to be Roman vs. Orthodox Christianity.  Pamuk is, finally, a marvelous exponent of novels as a way of knowing, a way of life. See: Orhan Pamuk and his Museum: This is your brain on novels…...

To all you fellow travelers — courage!  thanks!  love!

Chris Lydon

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