Report: Yale’s Ties to Slavery

Report: Yale’s Ties to Slavery

ByWayne Willis

Since October 2020, the Yale and Slavery Research Project has conducted intensive research to provide a clearer and more comprehensive understanding of the university’s past involvement with slavery. 

In a major announcement on Feb. 16, Yale announced the publication of results in a book, a free pdf and an incredible interactive website that I strongly recommend you visit. Unlike Georgetown and Brown, Yale didn’t own slaves directly, but many of its early leaders and benefactors did.

Last, the university issued a Statement acknowledging some of its institutional failings re: slavery and announcing some constructive programs, especially for New Haven.

It’s survey time again!

It’s survey time again!

ByMike Baum and Tom Guterbock

One of the many interesting things about our 50th Reunion was the Class Survey.  The response (both statistical and emotional) was so strong that we’re doing it again! The same team that created the 50th survey is about to launch a shorter but just as incisive questionnaire focused on what’s changed, what’s stayed the same, and what’s new, as we totter into the second half of our 70s.

Look for the email with the survey, coming soon.

Is Anyone Else Raising His Grandchildren?

Is Anyone Else Raising His Grandchildren?

ByWayne Willis

Jeff Horton is dealing with a twist of fate in his life and wants to hear from other classmates who are raising their grandchildren.  He writes: “After my 33 year old son died in 2022, his two children came to live with me in Palmdale CA, north of Los Angeles.  As you all can imagine, it is exhausting, but it is also invigorating. 

I’d love to hear from any other grandparents acting as parents from our class at [email and phone in the full story].

Calling Classmate Musicians: Reunion Ideas

Calling Classmate Musicians: Reunion Ideas

ByDerry Allen and Bill Newman

We are working on two ideas to add a little music to our reunion. Eliot Norman suggests:

1. Putting “Street” Pianos at the two ends of the tent in the courtyard at TD. Folks can just play a bit as they feel like it, while walking by, whether to entertain friends, jam or just communicate their thoughts.

2. Organizing a “pop-up” band and sing-along participation fun event after dinner on Saturday.

For further information, read more or contact Eliot (email).

Hoop and Tree Explained

Hoop and Tree Explained

ByWayne Willis

As we have profiled before, Chris Hoffman has published four books of poetry and a bedrock book called The Hoop and the Tree, which went through a second edition with some revised and updated materials in 2021.  He explained the image and the metaphors of hoop and tree in an article published recently on the Climate Psychology Alliance website. For you audiophiles, Chris also explained the model in a Zoom at Noon presentation hosted on YouTube. 

Class Notes, Jan-Feb 2024

Class Notes, Jan-Feb 2024

ByDaniel Seiver

Dick Williams sends this news about Mark Klugheit which he gleaned from the Yale Law Report: “Mark Klugheit continues his second (third?) career as director for Next Stage Theatre Southwest in Tucson, AZ, with very successful 2022 productions of David Ives’s Venus in Fur and Halley Feiffer’s  A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center of New York City.

Re-releasing your music using new digital editing tools
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Re-releasing your music using new digital editing tools

ByAdmin

Michael Folz and wife Maureen have been working and re-working some of their songs using some of the newer recording and engineering technology.  And it’s mind-blowing … well, more ear-blowing. Compare, for example “Right Through My Heart” from 2015 vs. the revision of the same song they created a couple months ago,  The 2015 version…

Matt Flynn’s new book – about a judge on the Court of Appeals
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Matt Flynn’s new book – about a judge on the Court of Appeals

ByWayne Willis

Matt Flynn’s newest book differs from his series on Bernie Weber, math genius.  His new thriller is set closer to home, namely, Matt’s experience as a court clerk on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago.  He hastens to add that the scenes in the book about cheating with an attractive Asian co-clerk are pure fiction. 😉
Plot Summary:  In The Court of Last Resort, Federal Judge Adam Willow, a former Marine commando, demands perfect justice. Some defendants …

Donald Ferguson, December 13, 1968; Updated

Donald Ferguson, December 13, 1968; Updated

ByAdmin

UPDATED comments, posted 4/8/24 Remembering Donald P. Ferguson, ’69 Mark Alden Branch’s “Old Yale” article, “The Stories Behind the Names,”, in Yale Alumni Magazine, November/December, 2023, focuses on five of the 35 Yale alumni killed in the Vietnam War. One of them, Donald Ferguson, ’69, is also part of another group of five men killed…

This Forgotten American Orwell Had a Lot to Tell Us

This Forgotten American Orwell Had a Lot to Tell Us

ByJim Sleeper

Note: In this essay, Jim Sleeper reports on Death of a Yale Man, a memoir from Malcolm Ross, Yale 1919. Ross, a son of an “old stock,” prosperous family, who graduated Yale in 1919, sold bonds briefly and then turned to years of body-wracking labor alongside miners and oil drillers and became a New Deal official with the National Labor Relations Board.

Richard Lavington Farren, December 3, 2023

Richard Lavington Farren, December 3, 2023

ByAdmin

Ken Brown, who roomed with Richard Sophomore and Junior years offered the following for the class notes.

Richard L. Farren of New York City, age 76, died suddenly at his home on December 3, 2023.  Richard was a practicing attorney at the time of his death.  He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1965.  He matriculated with the Yale Class of 1969 but graduated in three years …

Map of hotels near New Haven

Hotel Hacks (and Parking Ideas) For Reunion

ByWayne Willis

Yes, it’s quaint, and a bit nostalgic, to sleep in our old rooms … on those “Yale single” bedframes that squeak when you sit on them.  But many spouses or partners are not so, um, adventurous, nor brave enough to deal with shared bathrooms, third-floor walk-ups and the other limitations of dorm living. They (or we!) want a regular hotel room, thank you very much.

November at Yale: YAA, football, and feting two ’69ers

November at Yale: YAA, football, and feting two ’69ers

ByArthur Segal

Every member of the Yale community knows that November in New Haven is filled with compelling and colorful events.  Whether Princeton or Harvard is the opponent, the campus is energized by championship football, the YAA Assembly, the Yale Medal Dinner, and the Blue Leadership Ball, all concentrated into a single long weekend. This year Harvard…

Bruce Robert Bolnick, November 19, 2023

Bruce Robert Bolnick, November 19, 2023

ByWayne Willis

Bruce was born May 12, 1947, in Detroit, Michigan. He grew up in Skokie, Illinois and attended Niles West High School where he became a state champion gymnast.

He studied economics as an undergraduate and for his PhD (Yale, 1972). For his graduate research he studied how human behaviors can cause departures from the principles of rational economics, a topic that was not well received at the time, but which (as Bruce would wryly note) led to a Nobel Prize for some later researchers.