One of the more interesting submissions I received following my request for classmates to send me artifacts from our days at Yale, was a 3-minute, 16mm film Steve Bemis created for Art 50b, a second semester, senior year seminar. The film shows his roommates, Ralph Schmidt and Mabry Rogers, playing squash, set to an Erroll Garner jazz soundtrack.
Check it out.
At our Freshman Assembly in Woolsey Hall, held at the end of that frenetic first week of moving in, buying used furniture, getting new books, and meeting scores of new people, we gathered to hear Kingman Brewster address us as Yale men for the first time. Among other things, he observed: “You’ll notice something unusual about this place: About half the students walk around as if they own the place. The other half walk around,…
“The most talented, driven Americans chased the American dream — and won it for themselves. Then, in a way unprecedented in history, they were able to consolidate their winnings, outsmart and co-opt the government that might have reined them in, and pull up the ladder so more could not share in their success or challenge their primacy.”
from the dailycaller.com FLASHBACK: That Time George H. W. Bush Met Babe Ruth While Playing Baseball At Yale By Evie Fordham | Politics and Health Care Reporter|Dec. 1st, 2018 Former president George H. W. Bush passed away Friday at the age of 94 after a life full of historic experiences — including meeting famed baseball player Babe Ruth before anyone knew Bush would become the 41st president of the U.S. Bush was captain of the…
Here’s everything you ever wanted to know about our email discussion tool, the 1969 Listserv. It’s an easy way to talk with the class as a whole. How to join. How to use it. How to manage it — the whole works, all here.
You have recently joined a book club.
Before each meeting, one member of the literary collective sends an email to the club secretary offering a few thoughts on the assigned text. This month, it’s your turn to compose the brief review.
A new study suggests that the words you use may depend on whether the club secretary’s name is Emily (“a stereotypically White name,” as the study says) or Lakisha (“a stereotypically Black name”). If you’re a white liberal writing to Emily, you might use words like “melancholy” or “euphoric” to describe the mood of the book, whereas you might trade these terms out for the simpler “sad” or “happy” if you’re corresponding with Lakisha.
Cartoonist Garry Trudeau has entertained millions with his Pulitzer Prize-winning strip “Doonesbury,” but he never expected it to be his career when it started 50 years ago, he says in an interview with his wife, “CBS Sunday Morning” anchor Jane Pauley, to be broadcast December 2.
“It was more or less an accidental career,” Trudeau said. “It didn’t seem to me that I was going to be bound to this thing, for any extensive period of my life – and here it is, 50 years later.”
(Update: 1/10/2019: Yale Daily News reports that the plan was illegal and will be abandoned.) Yale University students who want to use the “morning-after pill” soon will have the emergency contraception available via vending machine, the Yale Daily News reports.
The YDN reports that the machine will be “installed in Silliman’s Good Life Center” prior to winter break. The so-called “wellness-to-go” machine also will sell other “over-the-counter medications, condoms” and lubricants, YDN reports.
A major gift from the Poorvu family will establish a permanent endowment for the Yale Center for Teaching and Learning, covering the center’s operational costs and supporting its future programming, the University announced on Nov. 19.
The center will now be called the Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning in recognition of the gift from William Poorvu ’56 and his wife, Lia Poorvu, and their children Alison Poorvu Jaffe ’81 and Jonathan Poorvu ’84.
Classmates, Your scribe has learned from Barbara Plyer that her husband Bruce Plyer died in November, 2018. She reports that “he had just finished lifting weights and came upstairs. His death was a sudden catastrophic event and took only minutes.” “He loved his time at Yale. He was a member of the Dramat; he rowed for four years; he was an architecture major. Bruce was also a talented artist who drew the cover for the Whiffenpoofs’ album….
Now that we are about to move past the semicentennial of the Yale-Harvard game of 1968, maybe it is safe for me to emerge from the shadows and make a confession and pose a question. First, the confession. Like many of my classmates, I journeyed from New Haven to Cambridge on November 23, 1968. But while my car-mates were on their way to watch the game, I was not. The first semester of my freshman…
A Report From Yale Harvard Weekend The whole weekend was fun, although The Game was disappointing. The Bulldogs defense in the second half collapsed, and the Cantabs won 45-27. But that didn’t stop the 100 Classmates (and their guests) from catching up, chatting, posing with a Handsome Dan mascot, drinking Fenway beers and enjoying the uncharacteristically nice weather. Attendees: Alan Hurwitz (PC) Bill Newman (JE) Carney Mimms (JE) Eliot Norman (DC) Eric Lenck (JE) Frank Aronson (JE)…
This is also an older controversy, having started with a student petition in 2016 and resulting in a faculty vote to make the change in graduation requirements in Spring, 2017. Liberals see it as reform and adding flexibility in course requirements for an English major, allowing more diversity and not forcing a canon of Chaucer, Shakespeare and other “Major English Poets” on students. Conservatives see it as another example of Faculty and Administration caving into…
Three Yale seniors were among the 32 recipients of the prestigious Rhodes Scholarships this year. Yale, Duke and Princeton each had three winners. (Full list). This years’ group also set a record for the most women (21) and, for the first time ever, a DACA recipient. The news office at Yale reported: Yale seniors Rayan Alsemeiry, Eren Orbey, and Riley S. Tillitt will head to Oxford University following graduation as Rhodes Scholars representing the United…
Frank passed away on Saturday, August 25, 2018. Frank was a resident of Alexandria, Virginia at the time of passing. Please send any information you may have to support@Yale1969.org. See also https://www.martindale.com/washington/district-of-columbia/frank-m-northam-377480-a/ [in_memoriam_closing]
Michael Emery Smith died April 23, 2018, at home with his family by his side after a short, but hard fought battle with pancreatic cancer. Here is what we know: “Michael’s career was mostly in commercial banking. Michael was an involved member of his community as part of the MDI Lions Club and served on boards of various local charitable organizations including the Southwest Harbor-Tremont Ambulance Service, the Tremont Historical Society, the Acadia Family Center,…
