By Thomas J. Bourgeois
After filing this column, I’m off to New York and New Haven to meet with classmates and to attend the YAA’s (yes, get used to it) assembly and Alumni Fund convocation. Next go-round will bring news of all that and our annual class table at the Bowl, which this year precedes The Game. I hope you will have heard many glad tidings of that contest, and of the holiday season, by the time you read this. By the way, Happy New Year!
John Lipsitz Esq. writes from Buffalo, where he practices at Lipsitz & Ponterio LLC, “Over the years I have kept up with a handful of friends from Trumbull College and the Class of 1975. I was delighted to find when I attended our 40th reunion that many of the assumptions and self-doubts that had plagued us as college students had since faded or disappeared completely, revealing a large number of genuinely interesting and compassionate human beings. So I am looking forward to returning to Yale for our 45th reunion.” Thanks, John, for checking in, for your kind assessment of our community, and for encouraging my readers to join us May 28–31 at our reunion headquarters in Pierson College, which for three happy years I called home.
Margo Hudson MD sends this update from Concord, Massachusetts: “I am pleased to announce that I have three grandchildren, Ephraim, Asher, and Leah. I continue to work as an endocrinologist with a focus on diabetes, currently at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. I most recently have started doing international volunteering, helping establish diabetes programs in Phnom Penh and Kampot, Cambodia. Professionally, this has been some of the most rewarding work I have ever done.” Well done on all counts, Margo!
Aimee Liu, now a resident of Venice, California, has exciting literary news: “My next novel, Glorious Boy, will be released in May 2020. It’s a WWII thriller that revolves around a missing child on a remote Indian island under Japanese occupation.” Aimee, who remains on the faculty of Goddard College’s Master of Fine Arts in Writing program, recently posted on the class Facebook page that she’d like to hear from all authors in the class who’ve had books published since our last reunion, so they can join her in a group signing at the Co-op during reunion weekend. Interested parties can contact her at gainingthetruth@gmail.com. Aimee reports that the store manager will start coordinating this event in early January, so by the time you read this, planning will be under way.
Speaking of books—and the class Facebook page, John Tierney posted, “My book, The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Rule Affects Us and How We Can Rule It, came out in December 2019. I wrote it with Roy Baumeister, the psychologist with whom I wrote Willpower. The new book explains how the brain’s negativity bias skews everything from romance to politics (including the media, of course).”
But wait, there’s even more book news, also courtesy of the class Facebook page. Julie Sullivan posted this item about Megan Baldrige: “Megan’s book Knitting Matters (which to tell you the truth is not strictly a crafts book—it’s poetry and a lot of other things) has just won the New Mexico and Arizona Award for Best Crafts Book. Congratulations, Megan!”
Yet another entry on the book front comes from Stanton Krauss, Carmen Tortora Professor at Quinnipiac University’s School of Law. Stan, also a guitar enthusiast with whom I enjoyed many hours of music-making during our undergrad days, emailed: “I’m writing because our classmates have recently been sharing news of the release of their books, including some on legal history. I figure I might as well make my debut as a contributor to our class notes by letting you know that the final installment of my trilogy of books dedicated to making new swaths of eighteenth-century American legal history readily accessible to modern readers has recently been published. In case anyone is interested in the subject (or in buttressing an insanity defense), here are their titles: Three Neglected Pieces of the Documentary History of the Constitution and Bill of Rights: Remarks on the Amendments to the Constitution by a Foreign Spectator, Essays of the Centinel, Revived, and Extracts from the Virginia Senate Journal (2019); Newspaper Reports of Cases in Colonial, State, and Lower Federal Courts Before 1801 (2018); and Gentlemen of the Grand Jury: The Surviving Grand Jury Charges from Colonial, State, and Lower Federal Courts Before 1801 (2012). I’ll try not to wait another 45 years before writing again. In the meantime, I look forward to seeing you at the reunion!” Stan’s note gives me another prompt to urge you to make your reunion plans now. It promises to be a memorable occasion or, at least, an ideal place to find a lawyer.
Finally, I offer congratulations to Robert Cohen, who also emailed that he’ll be at our 45th. Bob has joined the governing board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The Bulletin’s newsletter announcing his appointment cites his previous roles as publisher of the New Republic, executive vice president of Primedia Consumer Magazines in New York, and president of PlanetOut Publishing in Los Angeles. Bob is currently president of Four Corners Media, a management outsourcing company that specializes in marketing, production, finance, and brand development.
As always, I invite news of your comings, goings, milestones, and especially of your time spent with classmates.