By Arthur Greenwald
Okay, it’s mid-July and the class notes are due. I know I promised an update on our class activities, but Treasurer Mike Greenwald and I don’t meet until next week in New York. We ask your forgiveness and promise more info next issue.
Speaking of class activities, they cost money — frugal though we strive to be. Even the magazine in your hands comes courtesy of our class treasury. Yet the AYA reports that fewer of us have been paying our class dues. This is what leading economists call “a bad thing.” Soon you’ll receive a letter from Mike explaining how paying your dues not only defrays expenses, but also slows global warming and prevents E.D. So whether you like the environment or sex or both, please pay up!
I recently enjoyed lunch with Aimee Liu, whose latest book Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders arrives in February 2007 from Warner Books. The book incorporates Aimee’s thesis from her recently completed MFA from Bennington. Aimee’s goal, she writes, “was to examine eating disorders the way another Yalie, Andrew Solomon, studied depression in his masterful The Noonday Demon. Gaining has already garnered preliminary praise for its artful blend of the latest science and sensitive personal insights. Next for Aimee? Teaching graduate-level creative writing at Goddard. “If any of you are thinking of going back to school, I highly recommend it!”
They don’t give MVP awards for university faculty, but UCLA has something close. And Rob Watson is the latest recipient of their biennial Gold Shield Faculty Prize, which cited Rob’s “exceptional accomplishments in research, undergraduate teaching, and service to the university and beyond.” (Details available at http://www.today.ucla.edu/2006/060627people_watson.html.) Rob, too, has a new tome to tout: Back to Nature: The Green and the Real in the Late Renaissance.
Rob also reports, “Fred Cantor is back in Westport, Connecticut, working full-time on projects for page, stage, and screen — including some collaborations with our freshman roommate, Michael Stein. The fourth of our group in 333 Wright Hall was Richard Swift, who just moved from Morgan Stanley to a managing director position at Bank of America.” Rob also enjoyed a recent “visit from Michael Salzman (who, having wisely majored in HAL, handles interesting art cases for Hughes, Hubbard, and Reed in NYC) and his wife Joan ’76, who is an administrative judge for the city, and their two kids.”
Also winning praise from his peers is Rob Tauxe. “This spring, I was awarded the Center for Disease Control’s Charles Shepard Lifetime Scientific Achievement Award. They usually give it to someone on their way out the door, but after 23 years here, I feel like I am just getting started. We are staying busy in Atlanta, with an empty nest, now under renovation. Cynthia’s architecture practice has never been busier, and she’s doing great two years after the bout with breast cancer. Our daughter Genevieve will graduate from Yale next spring and our son Will is now teaching biology in a Brooklyn Public High School. I am working on the idea that we are all adults now.”
Some happy news comes courtesy of Charles Leiserson, who writes, “Dwight Morita is newly engaged and will be getting married next January in Hawaii. He has put up a great website in preparation for the wedding: http://dwightandmary.com.”
Trudy Bialic spent part of July scouting jazz programs at eastern colleges with her bass-playing son. On Martha’s Vineyard she visited “former roommate Stacey Keen, whose daughter Rachel just graduated from Yale, got married, and is continuing at Harvard Law.”
I’ve been feeling all virtuous having recently upped my exercise by bicycling around Studio City for simple errands. I even got a foldable Dahon bike for travel. Alas, my fitness level is no match for that of Mitchell Tilner in nearby Encino. On July 4, Mitchell and two friends climbed 14,160 feet to the peak of Mt. Shasta in northern California — nine hours up, three hours down. This was Mitchell’s third time and the first in 12 years. He reports, “I now retire from climbing Mt. Shasta to focus on a more arduous task: controlling two teenaged boys. When not on vacation or pulling my remaining hair out, I practice civil appellate law at Horvitz & Levy.”
My predecessor, Lori Laitman, writes that her third solo CD, Becoming A Redwood, is a fall release by Albany Records. It contains “settings of contemporary poets, including Mary Oliver, Paul Muldoon, Thomas Lux, and Dana Gioia, (plus) a fantastic cast of musicians — including Yalie Sari Gruber.” More info at Lori’s website: www.artsongs.com.
Please send your news to yale1975@aya.yale.edu, and please keep your contact info current by visiting www.alumniconnections.com/yale/. And please subscribe to our class listserv: go to www.aya.yale.edu/lists.