By Thomas J. Bourgeois
Last year’s March/April notes reported Storey Publishing’s 2017 release of Nathaniel Wheelwright’s The Naturalist’s Notebook, illustrated by Bernd Heinrich. Nat retired from the Bowdoin College faculty last June, but that milepost merely opened the way to the next chapter in his academic work. Eugenia Stevens Wheelwright recently wrote, “Nat and Genie Wheelwright spent fall 2018 on a Fulbright grant in Cali, Colombia, teaching a course entitled Produccion de videos de historia natural at the Universidad del Valle. The course was inspired by Nat’s Nature Moments, the yearlong series of two-minute videos he made in his backyard in Maine. After a brief visit home, they headed back to Colombia for two more months, this time for Nat to speak at universities around the country about the importance of long-term studies and about how to be a naturalist.”
From February 9 through March 16, James Danziger’s Upper East Side photographic gallery featured Robert Frank’s America—the third exhibit Danziger Gallery has shown since 2012 of previously unpublished photographs taken by Frank in connection with his iconic 1959 publication The Americans, which resulted from a project funded by a Guggenheim Fellowship. The book included 83 photographs, but the venture, as well as subsequent related work, yielded nearly 28,000 pictures. The New York Times published a February 4 article about the exhibit under the headline “The Unseen Robert Frank: Outtakes from The Americans.” James hosted a March 1 event for classmates at the gallery. The gathering included Robert and Jamie Davis, Michael and Kate Farewell, Serena Fox, Tia and John Gavin, Patty Greenblatt Hambrecht, Phil Kann and Rowene Weems, Charlie Keefe and Lila Locksley, Lee Kravitz and Elizabeth Kaplan, Jeff McAulay and Patricia Bouley, Daniel and Devon MacEachron, Al Moras, BK Munguia and Jon Mark, Wilkie and Becky Sawyer, Michael Stein and his sister Susan, Richard Swift and Linda Drake, Aimee Troyen, Ariane Van Buren, Jordan and Susan Yarett, and Nancy Young and Paul Ford. Hats off to James for his hospitality and to Nancy for her organizational efforts!
Also attesting to Nancy’s organizational efforts, the March NYC class lunch was held at the Yale Club’s Tap Room a few days later. Joining Nancy, Charlie Keefe, and Michael Stein were Rick Carnell, Andrea Miller, Mark Peters, and Michele Anderson, who traveled cross-country from San Francisco and, according to Nancy, “was thrilled to receive her first-timer award, an apple.”
Mini-reunions are noteworthy, no matter how sparsely populated. In February, I caught up with Philip Kanter, who treated me to lunch during a whirlwind (as in one-day) visit to Los Angeles from Las Vegas, where he continues to practice law. Lori Laitman ventured to Chicago in March, flagging down ’75 Whiffenpoofs Robert Cohen and Mark Fisher; I’m sure pitchpipe Bruce Rosenblum was present in spirit.
Finally, I have sad news: Barry Eckman Goldfarb died on January 20 at his home in Santa Fe. After earning his BA in English, Barry continued his studies back in his hometown at the University of Cincinnati. He went on to the University of Chicago, and in 1985 he completed a PhD in classics at Johns Hopkins. He taught at Penn State and the University of Southern California before concluding his almost 30-year academic career at St. Johns College, Santa Fe. In the parlance of its Great Books program, Barry was a tutor, and he delighted in the school’s requirement that professors teach across all disciplines. He felt equally at home in the realms of Euclidian geometry, Platonic philosophy, and explication of literary texts. His students reciprocated his passion and love of learning. Along with his brother Richard, his sisters Joan and Nancy survive him. His family asks that donations in his memory be made to the Santa Fe Animal Shelter and the Humane Society.