DISPATCHES

California Scheming The governor proposes a plan to keep top faculty from going coastal.

Deep in the legisla- tive minutiae of the JEFF MILLER California Stem Cell Research and Cures Act, there is a line that worries Wiscon- sin. It charges the state’s newly minted stem-cell research institute to “recruit the highest scientific 2,100 and medical talent in Students who received men’s the United States.” basketball season tickets free of To many around charge after a computer glitch UW-Madison’s biology excluded some of the 3,700 stu- labs, that sounds like dents who applied for tickets the launching of a from a lottery in October. The talent war that could students’ bonanza eventually make those cow ads Stem-cell researcher Su Chun Zhang PhD’91 (left) explains his lab’s work to Governor Jim Doyle (center) and Michael J. Fox (far right) during a February visit to the Wais- will cost the UW — and the look chummy by com- man Center. Fox’s foundation, which he began after being diagnosed with Parkin- company it contracts with to parison. son’s disease, has awarded $1.2 million to stem-cell research at UW-Madison, which provide ticketing services — “This proposition the actor praised as “the gold standard” for research on the disease. “This is where more than $300,000. is aimed at us,” says we’ve pinned a lot of our goals,” he said after touring the center. Michael Sussman, director of the UW scientists whose work is helping Many potential snags loom Biotechnology Center. “Every- to push the convergence of sci- for Doyle’s plan. Although he one recognizes that the ence and technology. Doyle has described building the insti- research we’re doing now will believes that easing the inter- tute as a public-private partner- lay the groundwork for the action among those disciplines ship, for example, several future of medicine, both eco- — which has helped fuel legislators remain skeptical nomically and scientifically. It’s progress in fields such as about how the state will afford in the state’s best interest to genomics and nanotechnology its share of the investment. have that done here. But other — will yield new discoveries that There is also likely to be debate places are catching up to us, spark the development of high- about whether the state should and we can’t afford to wait.” tech industries in Wisconsin. fund human embryonic stem- “I probably got pretty It was no mere coincidence, Coveting those same indus- cell research, which some con- lucky. I got an ace when I then, that Wisconsin Governor tries, states such as New Jersey sider to be unethical. Eight was down.” Jim Doyle ’67 waited just fif- and Illinois also have pledged states have banned or teen days after California vot- public money for stem-cell restricted using taxpayer — Brian Lomas x’06, one of ers endorsed a $3 billion foray research. But UW researchers money for such purposes. five UW intramural poker play- into stem-cell science to say a strength of Doyle’s plan is “If the people in the state ers who beat nine-time World counter with a proposal of his that it encompasses more than don’t want a star university, this Series of Poker champion Phil own. As part of an overall plan just the promising cells. is their opportunity to make that Hellmuth x’86 during a tour- that would pump $750 million “I’m actually fairly embar- known, because we’re at a cross- nament at the Red Gym in into biological research during rassed by the amount of press roads,” warns Sussman. At the November. Lomas won a copy the next decade, the governor that this one area of research same time, he’s already turned of Hellmuth’s book, Bad Beats wants to create a new research gets, because Wisconsin is a down one job offer from a Cali- and Lucky Draws, and a T-shirt institute at UW-Madison that leader in most areas of biomed- fornia university, and he has no in the no-money exhibition, would help attract and keep ical research,” says James plans to leave anytime soon. sponsored by the campus’s talented scientists. Thomson, the anatomy profes- “I’ve learned to respect the intramural sports division. Dubbed the Wisconsin sor who first isolated human people of the state,” he says. Institute for Discovery, the new embryonic stem cells. “I think “I think they want the best facility would consume two that the [governor’s] initiative research, and I think they want blocks of University Avenue goes a long way in maintaining it going on here, and not in and house not just biologists, our leadership position in an California.” but engineers and computer age of discovery.” — Michael Penn

SPRING 2005 11 DISPATCHES

A Kinder, Gentler Exam Week The new approach to finals stresses low stress.

In the midst of final exams late don’t think they have time to that students are paying Q AND A last semester, a group of stu- take a break once in a while. attention. Tim Sell dents gathered in the Natato- University officials worry that “Everyone I know reads rium to experience something those stresses lead to unhealthy those tips,” she says. “People As business manager of the pretty rare for that time of choices, such as cutting back on are always looking for sugges- SWAP (Surplus with a Purpose) year: an hour of uninterrupted sleep, eating poorly, or drinking tions on how to get rid of some store, Tim Sell has the perfect calm. As they moved gracefully too much. So, in recent years, of their stress.” name for his job, which is find- through a series of yoga posi- they’ve developed new ways to But that’s true for more ing new uses for equipment tions, you could almost see the help students learn how to take than just university students. no longer needed by state or headaches and hassles of exams better care of themselves — Recent studies have shown that university offices. And when melt away, if only temporarily. he discovered that state laws from organized discussions and people who experience less Traditionally, exam weeks forbid selling such items on are synonymous eBay, he had the perfect alter- with stress. But

native. He founded his own MICHAEL FORSTER ROTHBART universities have auction Web site, which in its come around to first year sold $280,000 of sur- the notion that plus goods. finals don’t Q: What was the most have to be an interesting item sold in all-out assault the online auction? on students’ A: The stories behind what we physical and sell are what make things mental well- interesting. For example, we being. Increas- have the chandelier from ingly, they’re the Pabst mansion, which is offering courses incredibly ornate [and] in yoga, medita- covered with crystals, selling tion, massage, for one hundred and fifty and other stress- dollars right now. busting tech- Q: How about at the physi- niques to help cal store — what will students relieve people wait in line for? the pressures of A: When the athletic depart- academia. Michele Price, a graduate student in entomology, takes a break from fall finals to par- ment switched their At UW- ticipate in a yoga class, one of the stress-busting options offered by the UW Division of endorsement deal from Recreational Sports. Madison, Uni- Reebok to Adidas, we had versity Health semi trucks loaded with Services now employs four classes to simple reminders stress are generally healthier Reebok athletic gear, both massage therapists, offers about healthy eating and sleep- and recover more quickly from new and used. The first day relaxation classes throughout ing habits. In his classes, Sepich illness or injury than others. the items were available, the semester, and guides a free teaches students techniques Many businesses are beginning there were two thousand meditation session on Monday they can do on their own time, to realize that helping workers people waiting in line. afternoons. UHS and the Divi- including muscle relaxation, alleviate stress is a good bot- Q: What did people want sion of Recreational Sports also guided imagery, and even the tom-line decision. As Sepich most? sponsor classes in yoga and importance of napping. notes, it’s cheaper to teach peo- A: Shoes. There were hun- other mind-body exercises, “Just taking time out for an ple how to cope with stress dreds of pairs of shoes, which often fill up during the hour a day really helps relieve than it is to deal with poten- sizes three and a half to academic year. stress,” says Melissa Trinley tially serious consequences of twenty. Q: What is the most money “The classes are so popular x’06. “Especially at the end of too much stress down the line. you have ever gotten because they really do help,” says the semester, during finals.” “It is important to teach peo- for an item? Rob Sepich, a UHS stress-man- Shortly before finals each ple now how to deal with stress- A: We sold an eye laser for agement counselor who leads a semester, the university sends ful situations as early as possible,” half a million dollars about course on relaxation techniques. e-mails to all students with Sepich says. “It allows students to two years ago. Sepich says students often advice on how to maintain a cope in a much more efficient neglect their health because healthy diet and relieve stress and healthy way in the future.” they feel overwhelmed and during exams, and Trinley says — Joanna Salmen x’06 12 ON WISCONSIN DISPATCHES

Backward Thinking Documenting campus’s past will guide its future. Announcing retirements in the past three months were Medical The UW-Madison campus is rich School Dean Philip Farrell and MICHAEL FORSTER ROTHBART with historical significance — so Agricultural and Life Sciences rich, in fact, that it’s still being Dean Elton Aberle, and Mary revealed. Within the last three Rouse, former dean of students years, twenty-one new archaeo- who spent the past four years as logical sites have been found on director of the Morgridge Cen- campus, each one containing ter for Public Service. Also on the move is Timothy Mulcahy, fingerprints of people who associate vice chancellor for once called the hills around research policy and one of the Lake Mendota home. most visible advocates for UW- Such discoveries are Madison’s biological research thrilling, but they also under- program. He was lured to the score a potential problem for a University of Minnesota to be campus that is still developing. Near the Lakeshore Path, a goose-shaped effigy mound, built by Wood- vice president of research. The university’s current master land Indians a thousand years ago, hints at the campus’s rich heritage. plan calls for much-needed The redevelopment of Univer- upgrades to student housing, several months before making part of the library system’s Uni- sity Square — one of the most an east campus pedestrian mall, recommendations to consultants versity of Wisconsin Collection visible steps in the planned over- and new classroom facilities — working on the overall master (http://webcat.library.wisc.edu: haul of the eastern part of cam- but can it build the structures of plan this fall. 3200/UW/), a searchable online pus — is moving forward. The the future while protecting the The final resources plan, archive that documents the UW Board of Regents earmarked treasures of its past? along with historic photos and university’s storied past. $58.5 million in its state budget That is the goal of a new papers, will soon be posted as — Erin Hueffner ‘00 request to erect a new student- effort to document UW-Madi- services building on the site of son’s cultural landscape. Beyond the mall. A multi-story building, just physical geography, a cul- housing offices for student health tural landscape encompasses IM@UW services and student activities, is buildings, artifacts, open spaces, These days, when students want to get to know each other better, planned for the site, which will and other expressions of the they don’t ask for a phone number. They trade instant-messenger continue to be privately owned. people who have inhabited screen names. IM, a form of Internet text messaging, has become a today’s campus. Funded by the staple of college life. Most students now tap out a quick text mes- Getty Trust, faculty and stu- sage to friends instead of calling on the phone. But to the uniniti- dents in the Department of ated, the messages going back and forth on campus computers may Landscape Architecture, along look like another language. Here’s a with campus planning and land- key to deciphering some of IM’s scape staff, are studying both unique shorthand: — J.S. archaeological sites and archival records to document those fin- ... I’m waiting gerprints, with the idea that a ? What? A new campus newspaper is thorough accounting of cam- BRB Be right back diving into the crowded pool of pus’s past will help preserve it. BICBW But I could be wrong student-run publications. The “We’re trying to uncover CUL8R See you later Mendota Beacon, supported by what’s happened here and what the right-leaning national DIN Eating dinner it means,” says Daniel Einstein Leadership Institute, debuted in G2G Got to go MS’95, who is coordinating the February, promising a conserva- GL Good luck project for Facilities Planning tive viewpoint on local and and Management. “Our exami- HC Helen C. White national affairs. If that all Library nation ranges from prehistoric sounds familiar, it’s the same HW Homework archaeological inscriptions, like niche The Badger Herald the effigy mounds, to designed HW@HC Doing homework at NP No problem pledged to fill when it emerged Helen C. White landscapes, such as Henry Mall OIC Oh, I see as an alternative to the fiery IDK I don’t know and Bascom Mall.” ROTFL Rolling on the floor, Daily Cardinal in 1969. But the IMS I’m sorry laughing Work is under way to evalu- Beacon editors may have a ate high-profile landmarks such JK Just kidding RUOK Are you okay? point about the void of voices as the Union Terrace, Camp Ran- JIC Just in case TTYL Talk to you later from the right. After all, the dall, and Muir Knoll. The team K Okay WTF What the f***? Herald endorsed John Kerry. will document sites for the next MU At the Union YT? You there?

SPRING 2005 13 RESEARCH

A Short, Tragic Bloom Diaries reveal a different side of Japan’s kamikaze attack force.

The photograph depicts a man not the suicidal doomed to die. Taken near the zealots history OF UMEZAWACOURTESY SHOZO end of World War II, it shows a has made them young Japanese kamikaze pilot out to be. Read- as he prepared to fly his plane ing their own and himself into the side of an reflections as American warship as part of a they prepared desperate effort to turn the for their mis- tide of the war. But was he a sions, she found villain ... or a victim? “idealistic and Sixty years after the end of intelligent the war, little is understood young men who about the lives of the agonized over a kamikaze, the four thousand fate they feel young soldiers who made up had been given Japan’s most mythologized to them,” she attack force. But Emiko says. “They felt Ohnuki-Tierney is out to they were change that. Drawing on per- forced to die.” sonal diaries of kamikaze pilots That came that have never before been as a revelation translated into English, the to Ohnuki-Tier- anthropology professor is put- ney, who was ting a new face on these young born in Japan flowers that are revered in her soldiers: a human one. and lost two uncles to the war. native country. During her In her 2002 book, Her previous research has research, she kept seeing Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, focused on the significance of cherry blossoms deployed as and Nationalisms: The Milita- symbols in Japanese culture, military symbols, and that got rization of Aesthetics in Japan- and she set out to write not her thinking: could flower ese History, Ohnuki-Tierney about war, but cherry blos- power be enough to lead argues that the kamikaze were soms, the delicate, short-lived people into war?

Putting the Habit on Hold

People always say that quitters wins — and boosts the state Chris Hollenback ‘98, the never win, but you won’t hear economy as well. communications coordinator for that from the staff at In 2004, the Quit Line CTRI, says that the key to the the UW’s Center helped some 1,791 smokers effort is counseling. The Quit for Tobacco become smoke-free, more Line tries to match every caller Research than triple its results for 2003. with an addiction counselor and This is good news for the state who can give advice on various Inter- of Wisconsin, which, accord- cessation plans, offer informa- vention. ing to the Centers for Disease tion on insurance coverage, and The Control, spends some $1.5 bil- even call smokers back if they CTRI is lion on smoking-related med- seem likely to falter. the ical care annually. By federal “Our quit rate has held home of estimates, $1,623 can be saved steady at 22 percent over the the Wis- for each person who breaks last three years,” Hollenback consin Quit the habit. says. “The state and national Line, a free This means that, with the average is only 5 percent for service aid of the Quit Line, the resi- those who try to quit cold devoted to helping the state dents of Wisconsin will spend turkey, without counseling or kick the smoking habit, and in some $2.9 million less on med- medication.” its sponsor’s eyes, every quitter ical care this year. — J.A.

14 ON WISCONSIN RESEARCH

helped Japan coerce the Now at work on a second kamikaze, many of whom book that will include more were liberal-minded students diary excerpts, Ohnuki-Tierney of prestigious universities and has spent nearly a decade on would seem unlikely candi- what was supposed to be a dates to volunteer for a death two-year project. In her search, sentence. Contrary to popular she has tracked down and read belief, the official kamikaze some thousand diaries, many force, known as the tokko¯ tai, of which were published by did not form until late in family members of the pilots. 1944, when officers envisioned The photograph shown here, it as a last-ditch attempt to for example, was given to her stave off American victory. The by the pilot’s brother, in the “volunteers” were plucked hopes that people would see Kamikaze pilot Umezawa from the ranks of draftees and not a ruthless warrior, but a Kazuyo (left, before his fatal barraged with imagery boy stripped of his future. mission) grew up reading text- designed to stoke their patri- “I feel like I have a moral books that mixed military and otism and sense of honor. obligation to introduce these aesthetic symbols, such as The Cherry Blossom Reader (above). Prospective pilots were told young men,” Ohnuki-Tierney that their duty was “to fall like says. “They did not commit cherry petals for the emperor,” suicide; they were murdered “The danger of symbolism and blossoms adorned their by their government.” is its multiplicity and ambiva- planes and uniforms. — Michael Penn lence,” she says. “Symbols can Ultimately, it worked. mean many things to different While their diaries reveal grave people, and people can res- doubts about the war, many of onate with them for different the soldiers tried to convince reasons.” themselves that they were like

Ohnuki-Tierney believes cherry blossoms, destined for a COOL TOOL JEFF MILLER that such use of symbols short, brilliant life. The Center of the Earth … in Wisconsin Tuned In Otto Lidenbrock had it easy. When the hero of Research grants often require running as part of the “Univer- Jules Verne’s Journey to that faculty widely distribute sity of Wisconsin Presents” series the Center of the Earth their findings, a fact of aca- — three featuring acclaimed became curious about the demic life that creates an UW dance professor Li Chiao- planet’s molten core, he annual flood of books and Ping and one chronicling the simply slid down a volcanic conference papers. But some inaugural year of the UW’s crater and saw it for him- research is more show than tell Women in Science and Engi- self. But physics professor Cary Forest ’86 may have the next best — and that’s where the neering Leadership Institute. thing. He rebuilt the center of the earth in a much more convenient Research Channel comes in. Professor Douglas Rosen- place — a Wisconsin cornfield. As research universities’ berg, who directed the three Seeking new ways to study dynamos, the fascinating but inac- answer to reality TV, the Research dance documentaries, says he cessible engines at the cores of planets and stars, Forest and col- Channel broadcasts lectures, inter- usually presents his work at film leagues created a small-scale dynamo in an underground bunker views, and documentaries twenty- festivals, and the Research outside of Madison. Powered by two electric motors, propellers four hours a day. UW-Madison Channel brings a unique oppor- churn more than two thousand pounds of molten sodium in a joined with a consortium of lead- tunity to share it with new audi- steel sphere, replicating the currents in the earth’s core as a way ing universities to supply content ences. “I’m hoping institutions to understand how the planet generates its magnetic field. for the channel, which is available that teach classes in related “We’d like to see this big ball of molten metal flowing in a via the Dish Network, many cable topics will be able to access [my certain way to produce a magnetic field,” Forest says. That would operators, and online at documentaries] as course mate- allow them to do what even Verne could not have imagined — to www.researchchannel.org. Cur- rial,” he says. tinker with the controls that drive the planet. rently, four documentaries are — Erin Hueffner ’00 — M.P.

SPRING 2005 15 RESEARCH

Waste Not, Want Not UW-Madison’s Pine Bluff Observa- A paleontology student finds a new view of T. rex in a pile of trash. tory has a new device that is help- ing to light up the dark, murky Some discoveries come in the as much scientific detective the bone.” He compared the parts of space. The Spatial Het- laboratory. Others are made in work as if he’d dug it out of striations to the Geology erodyne Spectrometer, the field. And others — well, the ground himself. Museum’s T. rex fossils and attached to a small telescope, they’re hard to classify. Daniel The rib had been in a pile found their size — 0.7 millime- analyzes invisible rays of ultravio- Hyslop x’05 and his hadrosaur of other objects, and by exam- ters apart — matched a series of let light that emanate from vast rib fall into the last category. clouds of dust and gas that lie Hyslop created a small sen- between stars. Developed by a sation at a meeting of the Geo- JEFF MILLER team led by UW astrophysicist logical Society of America in Fred Roesler MS’58, PhD’62, the November, when he gave a device gives researchers new clues presentation describing the to the elements that make up hadrosaur rib and its implica- those clouds, which are important tions for the most famous pred- in the development of stars and ator of the Cretaceous period, galaxies. Tyrannosaurus rex. The fossil bears striations — a series of The notion that kids get taller parallel grooves — indicating overnight may actually be true, that its original owner, a large, according to new research from duck-billed, herbivorous the School of Veterinary Medi- dinosaur, had been eaten by a T. cine. Seeking to explain how rex. What’s more, the markings young bodies grow and seem to show how the predator develop, scientists placed sensors consumed its meal — pulling at on the leg bones of lambs to it with a sideways motion. monitor changes. They found Though it may not seem like that 90 percent of bone growth an epoch-making discovery, pale- took place when the lambs were ontologists previously had little asleep or resting, while bones indication of how T. rexes ate hardly grew at all when they their meals. And anyway, Hys- were standing or moving. The lop’s fun has come more from revelations may help doctors the process than the end result. understand growth spurts in kids Hyslop, a geology student, has made repeated trips to excavate with other UW stu- Student Daniel Hyslop’s remarkable discovery about how the famed dents and faculty, and he’s put T. rex ate proves that one man’s trash is another’s treasure. in hours of work in the Geology Museum lab. But his discovery ining the items immediately serrations that run along the came in neither place — it came above and below it, Hyslop was back of the teeth on the preda- when he and several other stu- able to date its arrival in Madi- tor’s lower jaw. dens were digging through son to somewhere in the mid- He concluded that the only someone else’s garbage. 1990s. The only excavation the way that a predator could have — both the four-legged and “We were cleaning up an UW had going on then was in made the markings was by two-legged varieties. office in the museum,” he says, Hell Creek, Montana, and thus pulling meat away with a side- Those red, yellow, and purple “when I came across a package he was confident that the fossil ways jerk of its head. carrots cropping up at farmers’ wrapped in foil. I didn’t know had been unearthed there — a “It may not be a controver- markets have more than sight whose it was — a lot of differ- fact he later confirmed through sial discovery,” Hyslop says, appeal. A new study confirms ent students used that office, the museum’s catalog index. “but it adds a little more to the they’re great for rounding out a and the mess had been building Hadrosaurs lived during the picture of T. rex. Also, anytime healthy diet. Researchers studied up for some time — but when I Cretaceous, and the only siz- you say ‘T. rex,’ you get a lot of the newly developed lines of multi- opened the foil, I realized it was able predator in the Hell Creek attention.” hued carrots and found that they something exciting.” area in that period was T. rex. He hopes that this attention are far superior to dietary supple- The package contained the “You can tell by these marks will help get him into a gradu- ments at delivering substances such striated hadrosaur rib, and Hys- here,” he says, pointing to the ate paleontology program — as beta-carotene, lutein, and lop decided to turn the fossil grooves, “that something and out of the garbage. lycopene to the body. So while into a project — which required pressed in and dragged along — John Allen there’s no way around eating your vegetables, it may pay to make it

16 ON WISCONSIN ARTS &CULTURE

Verse with Voice James Kass gives young poets a chance to speak their piece.

Sometimes, children just want to be heard. James Kass ’91 YOUTH SPEAKS has found a dynamic way to give those young voices a national forum: through poetry, and more specifically, through poetry slams — oral, open-mic performances in which presentation is often as important as the poems themselves. Kass is the executive direc- tor of Youth Speaks, a San Francisco-based program that networks with youth organiza- tions across the country to hold workshops, writing programs, and poetry slams designed to James Kass believes oral poetry is a democratizing art form. His Youth get the next generation of Speaks program gives a voice to aspiring young poets. poets and writers interested in expressing themselves through effect, allowing them to have If that’s true, hundreds of the written and spoken word. their say on the issues that young poets are going to be In doing so, Youth Speaks is affect them. And the immedi- feeling pretty powerful in the fueling a national youth poetry acy of performance is a huge coming months. In February, movement that’s moving the draw. Youth Speaks hosted a teen art form far beyond couplets “When I was a kid, if I poetry slam; the top ten poets and quatrains. wanted to share [one of] my scored a chance to compete in Kass, a creative writing poems, I could send it off to a the eighth annual Brave New major, always loved poetry, but magazine or a journal, where it Voices National Youth Poetry his brushes with it in public might get published — three Slam Festival, set for April 20 to school left him cold. “For me, months later,” Kass says. 24 in San Francisco. Don’t poetry was always taught tradi- “Today, a kid can write a poem worry, parents: the competitive tionally, focusing on the form on a bus, go to an event, read element is definitely de-empha- — blank verse, haiku, it, and get a response from an sized. “They’re competing for cinquain,” he says. “It was audience. That’s huge, because bragging rights,” says Kass. “It’s always, if you do this or that, without an audience, a poet supportive, not cutthroat.” you’ve written a poem.” doesn’t have power.” — Aaron Conklin MA’93 Modern poetry, fueled by popular influences such as spoken-word and hip-hop, left traditional forms in the dust decades ago. Kass stumbled Gateways to the Big Apple’s Core across performance poetry in Working for an artist whose artists Christo and Jeanne- 7,500 sixteen-foot metal gates 1995, about the time that latest exhibition called for sixty- Claude. draped with vinyl. Garver, who poetry-slam creator Marc Kelly five miles of fabric was no easy “People would come in and has known the artists since the Smith was crafting the concept task, but it’s one that Thomas say, ‘Who is this guy, and why is 1970s, says Christo is a visionary at jazz clubs in Chicago. A year Garver, liaison to the Friends he spending $20 million for who enjoys taking on projects later, Kass founded Youth of UW-Madison Libraries, came something that lasts two that most people view as Speaks and began staging to love. An art historian by weeks?’ ” says Garver. impossible. slams of his own. training, Garver recently spent For sixteen days in Febru- “Christo creates things that When Kass nurtures these two weeks in New York work- ary, The Gates wound its way rest very lightly and very beau- future Aya de Leons, he isn’t ing at an information center through twenty-three miles of tifully on the landscape and just encouraging their literacy for The Gates, the latest in a Central Park’s footpaths like a then are gone without a trace,” — he’s also teaching them that long line of public works by the massive, saffron-colored snake. he says. oral poetry has a democratizing renowned environmental The installation comprised — Erin Hueffner ’00

SPRING 2005 17 ARTS &CULTURE

All in the Family After breaking from tradition, the Karps are on their way back.

It’s like forgetting to move your Karp MMusic’77, his father, Friends have joined in white clothing to the back of Professor Emeritus Howard throughout the years. “My fel- the closet or failing to phone in Karp, and mother, Frances low members of the Pro Arte your telethon pledge. Labor Reiche Karp, along with his Quartet have played at one time Day just wasn’t right the last brother Christopher and various or another,” says Parry. “Won- two falls, as the Karp family

missed its annual concert, a KATRIN TALBOT UW-Madison tradition that has been building for nearly three decades. Since 1976, UW-Madison School of Music professor Parry

COLLECTION Cloth Art A single glance will tell you that the three-and-a-half-inch-square piece of cotton below isn’t just another hanky. This is Chinese Lady, one of the nearly twelve thousand pieces of cloth art that make up the School of Human Ecology’s Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection. “Music is all I know,” says Parry Karp (left, with his father, Howard). Allen was a professor of textiles and interiors from 1927 to “My parents are passionate musicians.” That passion has infused 1968, and through four decades of teaching and research, she put the entire family, to the benefit of the UW community. The Karp together one of family will resume their annual concerts this fall.

the nation’s CHINESE LADY largest and most friends, have performed for derful wind colleagues have per- varied private classical music fans on Labor formed — Professor Linda assemblages of Day. “It was my idea when I Bartley, Associate Professor BY MARY BERO, 1986 cloth. She left the came to teach here in 1976,” Stephanie Jutt — and many of collection to the says cellist Parry. “What a per- my string colleagues, as well.” university when fect time for a concert: the day Having had a brief break, she retired (well, before classes start. We didn’t the family is excited about the plan to do it year after year. But no one has that 2005 Labor Day concert. Parry after ten years, we realized this much dresser Karp and Katrin Talbot’s daugh- is an annual event. And since space), and the ter Ariana will be joining the then, it has always been the UW has continued group as a narrator, and they’ll first performance of the year in to add to it. Under be trying out some new music. the faculty concert series.” the direction of “We even have a world pre- curator Mary Howard was on UW-Madi- miere of a piano trio written Ann Fitzgerald, son’s School of Music piano fac- for us by Joel Hoffman, a fac- the collection ulty from 1972 to 2000, and ulty member of the University acquires around fifty new pieces a year. Frances is a renowned pianist, of Cincinnati,” says Parry. The collection boasts items that represent a vast variety of eras, as well. Christopher, “a very The Karp Family Concerts places, and techniques. Its oldest piece is Peruvian and dates from fine violinist and pianist,” are held in Mills Concert Hall around 400 B.C. Its newest items were created in the fall of 2004, according to Parry, is a research and, in recent years, have in Professor Jennifer Angus’s print and dye class. But the collec- scientist and doctor at the Uni- tion won’t take on just any bit of lace. “We’re pretty packed right versity of Cincinnati and has drawn crowds of seven hun- now,” says Fitzgerald. “Any new acquisition has to be an excellent occasionally played at the con- dred or more. “I think now example of something — embroidery, design, and so on.” certs since 1981. Parry’s spouse, there are people in town who Although primarily used by students in UW-Madison’s Depart- Katrin Talbot MS’85, a violist expect a concert from our fam- ment of Environment, Textiles, and Design, the collection is also with the Madison Symphony ily on Labor Day,” Parry says. open to other researchers and to the general public. Visitors Orchestra and an award-win- “We plan to keep going. It’s a should call (608) 262-1162 in advance to make an appointment. ning photographer, has taken nice tradition.” — J.A. part since the early 1980s. — Candice Gaukel Andrews ’77

18 ON WISCONSIN ARTS &CULTURE

Fighting Poverty with Poetry The Geology Museum has a very The Odyssey Project takes humanities to the underprivileged. different idea of what the term Rock Concert means — but Each Wednesday evening, Pro- Maddox, says that the pro- springs from her own back- that’s just what it’s calling the fessor Emily Auerbach goes gram helped give her a goal in ground. “One reason I have a April event in its Stony Muse on an odyssey. Leaving her life. She had graduated from passion for this is that my par- series. The concert will feature office in Lowell Hall, she travels high school without being able ents came out of poverty the oldest known terrestrial some thirty blocks south to the to read, she says, and “I’d through education,” she says. object, a bit of the mineral zir- Harambee Center in one of always felt dumb.” But Odyssey Her father immigrated to con found in Australia, as well as Madison’s poorest neighbor- opened her eyes to the ideas America after fleeing the Holo- a performance by the band Jazz hoods. With her she takes what of Socrates and Thoreau. Now caust, and her mother grew up Passengers. The group will play she believes are the tools of she’s enrolled full-time at MATC in Appalachia. They met as stu- music composed by Roy survival — the poetry of Nathanson especially for this Blake, Wordsworth, and occasion — a collection of words MICHAEL FORSTER ROTHBART Shakespeare. and music that will explore the These are vital not idea of “deep time” and answer only for Auerbach, but the question What is 4.4 billion for her students, the years? The Stony Muse is a series participants in UW- of events that feature intersec- Madison’s Odyssey Pro- tions between geology and art. ject. They may not have much in common with Throughout the spring, the their counterparts on Elvehjem Museum of Art will be campus: all have exhibiting the ceramic work of incomes near the Don Rietz, who taught at the poverty level, most are UW from 1962 to 1988. Some single parents, and none seventy pieces, created over the is in a UW degree pro- last forty-four years, will be on gram. To outside eyes, hand. what they seem to need “I thought college was beyond me until I ran into this project,” says Joe most is practical help — Robinson (right), who works for Head Start. “I learned more about myself vocational training, than anything else, and it gave me the confidence to go on.” Robinson, who The Wisconsin Film Festival participated in Odyssey last year, has recruited his brother into the program. childcare, access to will run in Madison from March health facilities. But, 31 to April 3, and once again it Auerbach insists, this is short- and hopes to work toward a dents at Kentucky’s Berea Col- will feature competitions for sighted. The best tool for fight- career in writing. lege, an institution that was students and for independent or ing poverty, she believes, is “I want to write people’s founded to educate the poor. emerging film-makers with Wis- poetry — and philosophy, his- stories, to speak for those who Both eventually came to consin ties. For the festival sched- tory, art, and music. can’t write for themselves,” she work for UW-Madison, her ule, visit www.wifilmfest.org Now in its second year, the says. “I’ve lived with abuse and father as a professor of zool- Odyssey Project aims to offer the hunger and learning deficien- ogy and her mother as a med- Wisconsin’s impact on show busi- benefits of a liberal education to cies and dyslexia. I understand ical librarian. “Only through ness is highlighted in the docu- some of Madison’s poorest resi- people like that. I want to write education can you break the mentary Wisconsin Born and dents. People come to learn, down how they feel.” cycle of poverty,” says Auer- Bred: the Entertainers, which and if they finish the yearlong Auerbach says she’s been bach. “It opens the door for was shown on Wisconsin Public course, their reward is six credits impressed by the support the whole families.” Television in February and which from the UW’s Integrated Liberal Odyssey Project has received. The Odyssey Project is may now be seen on the digital Studies Program. “I’m so privileged to be joined in Auerbach’s attempt to pass that cable network Wisconsin On Of the twenty-four stu- the classroom by a whole team gift along. “When people ask Demand. The program highlights dents who graduated from of distinguished UW faculty me why we bother with the the accomplishments of Daniel J. Odyssey’s first year, three have members,” she says, noting the humanities, I remember an Travanti ‘67 and Jim Abrahams been accepted at UW-Madison, contributions of Jean Feraca, eloquent statement of my x’70, among others. ten are students at Madison Craig Werner, Laura McClure, mother’s,” Auerbach says. “The Area Technical College (MATC), Marshall Cook, Kathleen Sell, poor, she told me, are closer to and one is enrolled at Madi- Gene Phillips, Booth Fowler, issues of justice and struggle, so son’s Edgewood College. and Nellie McKay. the humanities have more One of those former Auerbach explains that the meaning.” Odyssey students, Denise motivation behind Odyssey — John Allen

SPRING 2005 19 CLASSROOM

Plants and the Man Tim Allen encourages students to give him something to chew on.

Some may say the title of The first page of Allen’s “I have never put more Botany 240, Plants and Man, is forty-five-page syllabus dis- thought or time into a project outdated. The class, which cusses the title, which in the for a class,” senior Maggie debuted in 1971, is about how past, the university has asked Stack says as she chops vegeta- plants and humans have him to change. But the class bles and throws them into a affected one another through- and its name are iconic. In spite pan. She and Mogren are con- out the ages. of the title’s possible sexism, ducting a practice run of their But if the title is supposed hundreds of students continue meal before they have their TA to reflect what students learn to enroll each fall on the recom- over for dinner in a few nights. during the semester, then Plants mendation of their peers. “Is there too much rosemary and Humans wouldn’t be suit- Plants and Man focuses on in this?” Mogren asks Stack as able. Students learn the most the evolution of the biological, she tastes a red pepper from from the latter part of the sociological, and political inter- their roasted vegetable dish. course name: the Man. Profes- action between people and This is the last dinner Stack sor Tim Allen. plants in the twenty-first cen- and Mogren will make before tury. The course specifically their final presentation. The studies aspects of agriculture — menu tonight consists of mahi including plants associated with mahi, roasted vegetables with CLASS NOTE historical wars and human olive oil and rosemary, squash, Library Liberty migration, modern agriculture, Irish soda bread, and a caesar Library and Information economic plants, and sociology salad. For dessert: chocolate Studies 645: Intellectual and ecological crisis. ice cream with a raspberry Freedom and Libraries Still, there’s more to the puree. But in a few days, it class than that. Allen also tries could all change. BARRY CARLSEN Change is afoot in this to make his students more “We will have to wait and venerable library school mindful about their relationship hear what Sue recommends,” offering: there’s a new law- to the food in their lives. Stu- Stack says. Sue is the local fish- man in town. The voice dents need not write term monger, and Stack and Mogren telling the next generation papers on plants and the effects have become well acquainted of librarians about the of the Industrial Revolution. with her since signing on for rights and responsibilities Instead, they have the option of the project. Allen advised any- of intellectual freedom brewing and bottling their own one cooking dinner to get to belongs to Anuj Desai, a Law beer or making dinner for their know local food providers in School professor. And though teaching assistant. order to get the best produce. he’s an expert in First Amendment But do not be fooled. No Stack and Mogren plan on call- law, copyright, and international ramen or Kraft macaroni and ing Sue the night before their issues regarding intellectual property, he isn’t a librarian. cheese will be served. dinner and asking what will be “Because I’m a lawyer, and I don’t have an LIS [Library and The dinner “is a reflection fresh the next day. Information Studies] background, I have a different perspective,” “We don’t want to end up he says. “I suspect this course has a different look when I teach it of personal standards,” says than it might have had before. It’s more theoretical and historical.” Molly Mogren x’05, who took with farmed salmon,” Mogren The course, which includes twenty LIS graduate students, the class in the fall. says, and both she and Stack discusses the meaning and importance of intellectual freedom, as Allen is quick to note that laugh at the absurdity of the well as its limits and its relationship to other values that are impor- the dinner should not be a spe- idea. tant to American society. Students gain a knowledge of the philo- cial occasion and is not just an The dinner, like the rest of sophical issues surrounding intellectual freedom, and then apply excuse for him and his teaching the course, isn’t meant to be them to current and historical issues, such as whether libraries assistants to be fed a delicious easy. Allen’s exams are difficult, have a duty to allow or restrict access to sexually explicit materials. meal. The dinner should show with a page of instructions on Desai hopes that his position as a lawyer will make the class how well the students under- how essays should be written. more informative — for himself, as much as for his students. stand the food they consume. No one recommends the class “There are some things that are well known in the library “Do you have high personal because it is a breeze. community that I don’t know,” he says. standards? That is what this is “But it is a spectacular — J.A. all about,” Allen says. “I am very course,” Allen says. “I don’t tough on them,” he admits. know a teacher better than me.”

20 ON WISCONSIN CLASSROOM

Professor Gordon Smith is encour- aging Law School students to exercise their legal minds in the public sphere with the launch of Law & Entrepreneurship News, a Web log (or “blog”) that tracks developments related to launch- ing new businesses. Sixteen student-editors are responsible

MICHAEL FORSTER ROTHBART for the research and writing that is posted on the site, which can be found at http://entrepreneur. typepad.com/news/.

The Sloan Consortium named UW-Madison’s Master of Engineering in Professional Practice (MEPP) degree plan the 2004 Most Outstanding Online Teaching and Learning Program. Sloan granted the honor in December. MEPP was launched in 1999, and aims to give engi- neers the tools and capabilities to be more effective leaders.

Steroid use, total body makeovers, obesity surgery, limb lengthening — are they unethi- cal or simply ways to use science to make people healthier and happier? Students in the fall Professor of botany Tim Allen teaches about the chemical composition of spices and the history of the medical history course Body spice trade while simultaneously making a caesar salad and cooking bananas Foster for his students. Modifications: Biology, Cul- “Lecturing should be theater,” says Allen. Students “are numbed by music television stations. I have to ture, and Technology, taught get them to respond some way.” His popular class Plants and Man feels like an intellectual cooking show, and students may forgo a term paper and instead try a culinary project, such as bottling their own beer or by Linda Hogle, discussed these cooking a meal for their teaching assistant. very topics. As a bonus, they heard from Stelarc, an Australian performance artist who’s experi- His lectures are sometimes Stack and Mogren are now Homemade dinners are now mented with extreme body mod- compared to a theater produc- taste-testing wines to judge standard fare at their house. ifications, including a third ear, a tion. In one well-known ses- which one will fit best with “I love when you guys study for robotic third hand, and a sculp- sion, Allen makes bananas their meal, while constantly this class,” one of them says ture implanted in his stomach. Foster and a caesar salad while checking the oven to monitor with a smile. simultaneously giving his lec- the mahi mahi. Stack and Mogren begin In December, students in the ture. Students, he says, “are “Do you think this is going serving the food to their eager biomedical engineering depart- numbed by music television sta- to detract from the taste of friends, and all of them spoon ment showed off the real-world tions. I have to get them to the dinner?” Mogren asks, heaps of squash and vegetables application of their academic respond some way.” wincing at one wine’s too- onto their plates. Etiquette is skills at From Bench to Bed- Their response is nothing sweet taste. “Because I think it not a part of the course. side: The Biomedical Engi- short of an acute understanding is a hangover waiting to hap- “This is not about the seven neering Student Design of his message. pen.” Stack agrees, and they forks,” Stack says. “It is about Expo. More than a hundred “He is trying to inspire our quickly make a note to find a the quality of the food.” undergraduates participated generation,” Mogren says. replacement. Just like Botany 240 — it’s and created some twenty proto- “People are so lazy. No one Soon the students’ room- not about the exams, it’s about types for devices ranging from a takes the time to prepare and mates begin to follow the the lessons learned from the disposable drug-delivery system enjoy food anymore. Our soci- aroma of rosemary and fill the Man. to a more ergonomic ultrasound ety is obsessed with fast food.” kitchen, waiting to be served. — Joanna Salmen x’06 probe.

SPRING 2005 21 With applications that may include everything from supercharged electronics to self-cleaning windows, nanotechnology is a science with tiny proportions and huge possibilities.

By Rena Archwamety Beyer MA’04 Photos by Jeff Miller black cloud looms over Crone, a UW-Madison engineering springing up across the country, and the Nevada desert as a physics professor, as she rummages already a handful of nanotechnology- small group of computer through the bookshelf in her office. “It’s a related companies have opened in programmers and scien- very entertaining book. I enjoyed reading Madison, many grown directly out of tists wait, terrified, inside it, but the reality of it, as described in that university research. To further explore the laboratories that pro- book, is never going to happen. There are the potential of the emerging field, the duced this runaway a lot of scientific flaws in that scenario.” National Science Foundation has aswarm of nanomachines. In a matter of Crone is one of dozens of UW-Madi- awarded grants to several universities — hours, the tiny devices were able to son researchers working on nanotechnol- including one in September 2004 to coordinate, attack, kill, evolve, and ogy — a term that loosely classifies establish UW-Madison’s Nanoscale Sci- reproduce. How long will it be, the several emerging methods of working ence and Engineering Center, or NSEC, scientists fear, until they multiply and with things on an extremely small scale. the second large-scale center the founda- spread, creating an epidemic beyond While these researchers may not share tion has funded for nanotechnology human control? science fiction’s grim view on this tiny research on campus. This center not only In his novel Prey, Michael Crichton’s technology, they do agree with Crichton provides funding to faculty working on vision of what nanotechnology holds for about at least two things: nanotechnol- new nanoscale technologies, but also the future is bleak, predicting tiny, intel- ogy will be everywhere, and its impact supports research on the societal implica- ligent, self-replicating machines that can will be beyond anything we can imagine. tions of nanotechnology, as well as edu- either kill humans or take over their Like Crichton’s nanomachines, the cational outreach programs. minds. offspring of this new technology are Already, nanotechnology is all “The publisher sent me a copy, which beginning to spread and multiply. Indus- around us. We only need to know where I loaned to somebody,” says Wendy tries based on nanotechnology are to look.

The face of physics graduate student Pengpeng Zhang is reflected in a port window of a scanning tunneling microscope, which uses electric cur- rents to measure features the size of atoms. Such tools are enabling researchers to see and build a new breed of nanoscale devices that improve the efficiency of things like traffic lights. The signal on the facing page employs atomic-sized structures to hold light-emitting diodes, or LEDs.

SPRING 2005 23 prompt different kinds of catalytic activ- small science ity when added to compounds, making nano on campus A crowd gathers to see the two large dis- new reactions possible. Those special Because nanotechnology is defined by play boards that have been set up in the properties open up new possibilities in scale, it is not limited to any one disci- atrium of the Engineering Centers build- just about any field you can name. pline. It is often considered more of an ing. Pieced together in pastel orange, yel- “Medicine, biology, computers, com- approach — a new way of looking at low, green, and purple circles, the display munications, transport, bioterrorism things that cuts across many disciplines is arranged to resemble atoms, with each defense, customer products, entertain- and technologies. Nanotechnology can atomic “bubble” holding information ment — these all could be influenced by be seen in departments ranging from about this new field of nanotechnology. nanotechnology,” Lagally says. “It’s computer engineering to biology to social In one bubble are tubes of ferrofluid, a important in fishing rods, and better science, and often, the teams exploring magnetic black liquid containing material in golf clubs. And in public the nanoworld are interdisciplinary. nanoscale particles that can be moved by health and safety, some are working on a One of these is a group of physics magnetic fields into dramatic shapes and and engineering researchers who are spikes (see box, page 26). It looks like a creating nanoscale devices to test the magic trick — and that’s the key to nan- Medicine, biology, possibilities of quantum computing. otechnology. There’s always more than Instead of relying on transistors to store meets the eye. computers, communica- information, quantum computers would

“The first sort of question that the ‘‘ take advantage of the properties of a public needs to grapple with is, ‘How tions, transport, bioterrorism particle, such as the spin or magnetic small is the nanoscale?’ ” says Crone, pull of an electron. The team is working who helped develop the interactive defense, customer products,‘‘ with quantum dots — box-like patterns exhibit in collaboration with Milwau- about four hundred nanometers wide kee’s Discovery World Museum. “It’s entertainment – these all and ten nanometers thick that are etched hard to appreciate how different it is and into silicon chips. The dots would each how challenging it is for scientists and could be influenced contain a single electron, whose spin engineers to work at the nanoscale if could be used to perform computations. [you] don’t understand how small it is.” by nanotechnology. In theory, quantum computers could The nanoscale is defined by the solve certain types of problems millions nanometer — one billionth of a meter — of times more quickly than traditional which gets its name from the Greek pre- DNA detection device that could identify computers could, but the work is in its fix for “dwarf.” A single strand of human a single molecule at a crime scene.” beginning stages. hair usually measures about fifty thou- The broad reach of nanotechnology “It’s our fourth year of this, and in sand nanometers. Ten hydrogen atoms or is one of the reasons scientists expect it reality, when will we see a quantum com- five copper atoms, laid side by side, equal to eventually infiltrate nearly every part puter?” asks Lagally. “I don’t know, one nanometer. of our lives — from faster computers to twenty to forty years. It will be a while, Generally, the field of nanotechnol- stronger metals, to ... because we’re still really studying the ogy involves work done at scales as large “When do I get the self-cleaning fundamental physics of it.” as several hundred nanometers or as windows?” One of the main advantages of a small as less than one. “We work from the Back at the Engineering Centers quantum computer would be its ability to size of an atom up to typically the size of building, a woman reads from a bubble factor large numbers and break encryp- cells,” says Max Lagally MS’65, PhD’68, that lists products already in the market- tion codes. Its potential power has gar- a materials science professor who is place that use nanotechnology, including nered the interest of the U.S. Department researching how nanotechnology can self-cleaning windows. They’re made by of Defense, which partially funds the improve the performance of computers. coating glass with a transparent layer of group’s research. But because of their lim- At that size, materials often exhibit nanoparticles that, when exposed to sun- ited functions, quantum computers would different properties than they do lumped light, act as catalysts to break down dirt, probably not replace traditional comput- together in larger quantities. For allowing it to be easily rinsed away. The ers. Yet those, too, are becoming more instance, Lagally says, you can emit light bubble goes on to list stain-resistant powerful thanks to nanotechnology, from some nanosized objects that you pants, which are coated with nanoscale which has enabled the creation of increas- wouldn’t be able to get from bulk materi- fibers that keep water and oil from pene- ingly smaller and faster transistors. als. Magnetic particles can exhibit trating the fabric, and privacy windows While quantum computers may be strange behavior when they’re at that that use nanosized liquid crystals to turn decades away, other avenues of UW nan- scale, and sometimes particles can from opaque to transparent. otechnology research are much closer to

24 ON WISCONSIN JEFF MILLER

In the sterile environment of a campus photolithography lab, students and staff fabricate nanoscale patterns on semiconductor chips under the glow of yellow-filtered lights designed to keep the highly light-sensitive materials from being exposed.

real-world applications. In biological uncoil and separate long strands of organized, each strand occupying a research, for instance, nanotechnology is DNA, enabling scientists to read their specific location within the channels. bringing about a revolution in how we genetic information like a barcode. When “It’s like you have a hundred thou- read and interpret the genetic codes of held to the light, the fingernail-sized chip sand people showing up for a football living things. Researchers can now use gives off a rainbow gleam. The irides- game. It’s no problem fitting the people tools on the same scale as single strands cence, Schwartz explains, is what you into that space because you have seats, of DNA — which are typically two can see of the tiny channels. you have aisles, you can arrange the nanometers wide — to speed up the The students in Schwartz’s lab use people, and it’s logical, it’s rational, it’s meticulous process of analyzing syringes to inject a mixture of DNA and systematic,” Schwartz says. “We do the genomes. This may hold keys to under- water through long, thin funnels, which same thing with DNA molecules.” standing a host of genetic disorders. connect to the surface of the chip. The Once strands of DNA are “seated,” Some of the most promising work is chip contains a series of channels their genetic information can be fed into being done in the laboratory of David through which strands of DNA are powerful computers that can churn Schwartz, a professor of chemistry and pulled and separated, placing each in its through millions of pieces of data. Even- genetics who specializes in analyzing own compartment. tually, the chip may allow researchers to genomes. Schwartz’s laboratory invented Sitting at his desk, Schwartz points pinpoint the abnormal genes in a tumor a process involving a silicon chip to the foil compartments in a package of cell or determine what medical therapies imprinted with nanosized channels that Nicorette gum to illustrate how DNA is best match a person’s genetic makeup.

SPRING 2005 25 Containing billions of nanoscale particles, ferrofluid at first looks like nothing more than a black puddle. But apply a magnetic field, and those seemingly invisible particles react by clumping into spikes — a prop- erty researchers think can be used to help drugs find the right target in the body.

LEAPING FERROFLUID

“It’s not quite ready for a population- straight up or lying down — creates light big, study and manipulate nanosized wide diagnostic yet,” Schwartz says, “but or dark areas on the screen. Electrical objects, which are so small they cannot it’s well on the road.” fields control how the crystals are even be seen through the most powerful aligned. Platypus does much the same optical microscope? The solution to this thing, but instead of fields, the problem lies in the tools. an emerging industry researchers fabricate nanoscale topogra- “Tools are the most important part of With so many projects racing toward phy on the surface of materials such as this business at this stage,” Lagally says. the marketplace, the excitement about glass or gold to control the crystals’ ori- “Tools enabled the nanotech revolution. nanotechnology’s potential as an eco- entation. Take, for example, a monitor Being able now to see and manipulate nomic engine is also booming. “When Platypus has designed to detect the pres- the things at that scale allows us to do you look at research communities, five ence of pesticides. No larger than a something. The first stage is always some years from now, nanotech is going to be credit card, it sandwiches liquid crystals discovery, and then some tool to make it the driving force,” says Paul Peercy between two layers of glass, the surface happen for everybody. Once the tools are MS’63, PhD’66, dean of the College of of one layer containing nanosized ridges in place, then the research can progress Engineering. “Every important quality and patterns. The monitor is then sealed into fabricating materials and devices, of a material is controlled at the on three of the four sides. When pesti- and products that use them.” nanolevel. It’s going to cut across every- cides leak in at the open end, the diffu- The nanotechnology revolution thing. The economic impact of nanotech- sion of chemicals causes the liquid began to take off with the development nology is going to be huge.” crystals to shift, making the tiny event of scanning-tunneling microscopes and A handful of nanotechnology-based visible to the human eye. atomic-force microscopes, two powerful companies already exist in Madison. One Such devices are ideally suited to devices that create two-dimensional of these is Platypus Technologies, which nanotechnology because the viruses, images of nanoscale objects by tracing was co-founded in 2000 by UW-Madison proteins, and other molecules they are their surfaces. Those tools allowed faculty Nicholas Abbott, Barbara Israel, designed to detect are also small. researchers to see down to the atomic and Chris Murphy. The company creates “Because the nanoscale is on the same level easily for the first time. Now some diagnostics, sensors, and monitors that size range as antibodies and viruses and of the most influential nanotechnology combine liquid crystals with nanostruc- proteins, we can create a surface so that companies don’t actually make anything tured materials, using technology devel- if one of those target molecules binds, it nanosized themselves, but instead create oped by Abbott. One of its diagnostic disrupts that regular structure along the equipment that makes the work pos- devices can detect antibodies to the West which the liquid crystals orient,” says sible. Former UW professor Tom Kelly, Nile virus in animals. Another is Israel, Platypus’s CEO. The company is for example, started the Madison com- designed to signal when chemical currently working with prototypes and pany Imago after developing a new type weapons are present in the atmosphere. testing, but Israel says she expects the of microscope called the Local Electrode They are also working on a monitor to pesticide monitor will be on the market Atom Probe, or LEAP, which yields measure a person’s exposure to environ- within the next two years, and other images of a level of detail similar to those mental toxins such as pesticides. products will follow soon after. provided by a CAT scan. The key to Platypus’s devices are liq- Another challenge is that the margin uid crystals, similar to those that light up of error for measurements at the a laptop computer screen or a digital tools to see the unseen nanoscale is much smaller than it would watch. In computers, the orientation of But the first obstacle to any nanotechnol- be for work at larger scales. Lagally the crystals — whether they’re standing ogy work is basic: how can we, who are founded the Madison company nPoint,

26 ON WISCONSIN which produces motion-control products faster, cheaper in some fashion by intro- concern right now,” Miller says. “But called nanopositioners. These square, ducing some element of nanoscience into exposure is going to explode over the next metallic, ashtray-sized tools can be built the materials.” ten years. If it’s going to happen — and into a microscope to provide researchers But with new technologies often there’s no reason to believe that we can’t with very precise control, reducing the come controversy and new concerns. do a good enough job to prevent that from typical margin of error from ten or Heated political and ethical arguments happening — that’s when we’d see it, twenty nanometers to only a few tenths continue over stem-cell research in the when exposure goes up dramatically.” of a nanometer. United States. And a public fear of Right now, Miller says, there’s very genetically modified crops has effectively little public opinion about nanotechnol- banned their import in parts of Europe. ogy. Much of what is there has been nano in society Still in its infancy, nanotechnology has driven by science fiction — the scary, neither extended into the public sphere futuristic scenarios of self-replicating It will, however, take more than just nor progressed far enough to raise such robots engaging in mind control. There’s tools to transform nanotechnology from widespread concerns. But there have nothing in the current research that research labs and science fiction novels been some. The environmental groups would even hint at the possibility of such into real-life applications. The future of Greenpeace UK and the Action Group things, Miller says. But on the other nanotechnology contains a world of on Erosion, Technology and Concentra- hand, he adds, “Michael Crichton’s novel open-ended possibilities. Will it lead us tion, or ETC, have each written reports has probably been read by more people to a positive and productive future, as addressing the potential environmental than will ever read all government researchers predict? Or does it hold an risks of nanotechnology. reports about nanotechnology put unforeseen danger, as science fiction together. So I actually think that if you writers such as Crichton have envi- want to create a dialogue about nanotech- sioned? The only certainties, says public We will discover that nology, it might be better to try to do it affairs professor Clark Miller, are that via interacting with the science fiction nanotechnology will greatly affect our there isn’t anything that can’t community, which might then write future and that we can greatly affect the about these issues in interesting ways.” future of nanotechnology. ‘‘ be made better, faster, The immediate challenge, however, is “The things that happen in science getting people to realize that nanotech- and engineering laboratories have an cheaper in some fashion ‘‘ nology is science fact, not fiction. At the impact on all of us,” Miller says. “I think unveiling of the new Nanoworld Discov- part of being a democratic citizen is to by introducing some ery exhibit, that point seemed to settle in, recognize we all live in a high-tech soci- as people perused the pastel bubbles and ety, and we need to be able to be part of element of nanoscience played with the experiments. Paul Kraj- decisions about the future of science and niak, executive and creative director of technology.” into the materials. the Discovery World Museum and one of Miller leads a group studying the the exhibit’s chief architects, looked on as societal implications of the emerging sci- passersby fiddled with the magnets and Miller says those are worthy con- ence. Their focus encompasses not only ferrofluid, encouraged by their curiosity. cerns. “If you want a short-term scenario how people perceive new technologies, “I think the most important thing about where a risk issue might arise,” he but also the environmental, workforce, people could take from this exhibit is that says, “the potential environmental risks educational, social, and ethical issues nanotechnology is real, and that we’re at are where that might happen.” Little is related to nanotechnology. The research the tip of the iceberg, and that here on yet known, for instance, about the effects is also part of the new Nanoscale Science this campus, people are really doing [it],” of exposure to nanoparticles or about and Engineering Center, but instead of he said. “We used to have a phrase at how they will interact with the environ- working on how nanotechnology can Discovery World: ‘Don’t be afraid of ment. There are ongoing studies about help us better understand DNA, Miller tomorrow.’ Here, we don’t have to worry the potential toxicology of nanoparticles, is more concerned with how people can about that, because the people that are but since there are only a handful of better understand nanotechnology. here are part of tomorrow, part of the products currently being mass-produced, “I have no question that thirty years future.” from now, every industrial process will not enough data have been collected to look different because of things we make these studies conclusive. Rena Archwamety Beyer MA’04 is a graduate of the learned from nanotechnology,” Miller “At the moment, exposure is proba- School of Journalism and Mass Communication says. “We will discover that there isn’t bly very limited. From that point of view, master’s program. She lives in Madison and has I don’t think there’s a lot of room for written for publications such as The Capital Times, anything that can’t be made better, Madison Magazine, and Muse.

SPRING 2005 27 The Ford Boys In the 1950s, the UW joined an experiment that But in spite of the program’s apparent success, COURTESY OF CHARLES HOLBROW (2)

n the summer of 1951, in the tiny it employed just one teacher, and Dol- town of Horace, North Dakota, ven’s graduating class consisted of four Earl Dolven ’55 stumbled over students. Advanced learning didn’t seem I destiny. He had just turned sixteen to be in his future. and was flipping through a month- The Senior Scholastic article would old issue of Senior Scholastic when he change that. It described a new program spotted a headline: “Hurry-Up School- funded by the Ford Foundation, the ing.” Underneath, an article announced, nation’s largest private charitable endow- “A group of high school boys — juniors ment. The Ford people would pay to and seniors — will have a chance to step send some two hundred boys to study at right into college next fall.” Yale, Columbia, Chicago, or the Univer- For Dolven, the story was magic. He sity of Wisconsin. All Dolven would was an intelligent boy, but his prospects need was a high score on the entrance were bleak. Horace contained just a few exam — and the willingness to leave his hundred souls, the care of which was the home and family. responsibility of his father, a clergyman “Really, there was no question,” he whose salary didn’t leave much for Earl says. “I asked my father to drive me to and his four siblings. The Horace high Minneapolis, and I took the college school offered only a two-year program, boards.”

30 ON WISCONSIN enrolled dozens of precocious teenagers. OF PAULCOURTESY THOMPSON it’s never been repeated. BY JOHN ALLEN

A thousand miles away, in Hunting- number of prodigies entering as fresh- ton Station, New York, John Israel ’55 men each year. In the five fall terms also had an appointment with fate. His from 2000 to 2004, the UW has aver- father sold surgical and corset fabric to aged just four new students aged sixteen make women’s undergarments. “It wasn’t or younger. Between 1951 and 1955, exactly Victoria’s Secret,” Israel says. some 165 fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds The old man may not have had much enrolled at the UW, at a time when the formal schooling, but he was curious and university’s student population was only read the New York Times, where he spot- fourteen thousand, or a third of today’s ted a story, “Fund to Give Boys Pre- total. The Ford Boys (and, eventually, Draft Study,” which described the Ford Girls) became highly accomplished Foundation offer. “My father was very alumni, such as Raymond Damadian impressed with the University of Wis- ’56, who pioneered magnetic resonance consin,” says Israel, “and socially, I imaging, and Roger Perkins ’55, former wasn’t very happy in high school. The deputy associate director for research at decision was a no-brainer.” Los Alamos National Laboratory, as Around the country, the same notice well as dozens of doctors and lawyers, appeared in newspapers and magazines physicists and mathematicians. and on the bulletin boards of high school And yet, half a century later, the principals. From New York City’s elite Ford Boys and the experiment that pro- Bronx High School of Science to one- duced them are almost forgotten. What room rural schools, hundreds of boys happened? (and a few girls) applied for the Pre- Induction Scholarship Program, later Once Upon a Time in known as the Early Admission Experi- Pyongyang ... ment. These were the Ford Boys, and The Early Admission Experiment was their purpose was to challenge a basic the unlikely product of two largely unre- assumption of the American education lated events during the summer of 1950. system, that a student had to be eighteen On June 25, the army of North Korea and a high school graduate to be emo- crossed the thirty-eighth parallel and tionally and academically prepared for invaded South Korea; on September 23, college life. Congress passed the Revenue Act of The Fund saw America’s reliance on 1950. this regimented structure as the cause of The start of the Korean War put a looming shortage of educated leaders. massive pressure on the U.S. military, “In our own dynamic society,” wrote which had been gradually demobilizing Philip Coombs, the Fund’s director of since the end of World War II. The army research, “it must be assumed that the had only about half a million soldiers demand for talent will continue to out- in 1950, and as American and South Opposite: At 16, John Israel left his home strip the supply. We will need more of Korean forces reeled backward that on New York’s Long Island, where, he says, “socially, I wasn’t very happy.” Among the every kind, not merely more nuclear summer, the Pentagon realized it needed circle of friends he built in Madison was Ford physicists and engineers, but more first- more men — some 3.5 million of them to scholar Charlie Holbrow (above, modeling rate biologists and doctors, teachers and meet the global Communist threat. his ROTC uniform). politicians, economists and ministers, Such numbers would require a mas- Top: In 1952, Paul Thompson entered the UW at 15, although, he says, he lacked self- poets and philosophers.” sive overhaul of the draft, which allowed discipline. He flunked out once, dropped Today, UW-Madison announces the many young men to bypass service by out once, and didn’t graduate until 1961.

SPRING 2005 31 COURTESY OF LOUISE TRUBEK (2)

There was no room for the Ford scholars in the UW’s residence halls, so their adviser, Herbert Howe, found them other accommodations. Louise Trubek (sitting on step, second from top) lived at Groves Co-Op during her junior year and found that the diverse mix of people there added another dimension to her education.

The Conant Plan made college officials nervous. If all eighteen-year-old males entered the army, they reasoned, most would never return to school, depriving the country of a generation of talent.

taking a student deferment and going to Association of American Colleges met in Enter the Revenue Act of 1950. Like college. This not only deprived the armed Atlantic City, New Jersey, to voice their the Conant Plan for the draft, this law forces of manpower, but many felt it was concerns. While they wrung their hands, tried to create a more equitable society, unfair. The editors of The Nation com- Mark Ingraham MA’22, the UW’s dean using taxation as its tool. Many in Con- plained that exempting the college-bound of Letters and Science, met privately gress felt that big businesses and wealthy created “an aristocracy of draft-proof with his counterparts from Columbia, families were using charitable founda- students on the basis of aptitude tests and Yale, and Chicago to come up with a tions to conceal their money from the from the economically most fortunate plan to deal with the looming problem. IRS. The Act opened foundation tax groups. The dumb young men,” they Aiming “to preserve the values of gen- returns to public scrutiny so that the noted sarcastically, “can do the fighting.” eral, liberal education during the pro- people (who, Congress reasoned, were To address the inequity, a group tracted period of emergency which the supposed to be the charities’ ultimate called the Committee on the Present nation now faces,” they proposed run- beneficiaries) could know just how such Danger suggested doing away with ning an experiment: suppose that Amer- funds were managed. student deferments altogether. As it was ica’s brightest young men were invited to The Ford Foundation was one of the led by Harvard University president college two years early — would they targets of this provision. In 1950, it had James Conant and prominent scientist have the minds and maturity to handle a declared value of half a billion dollars, Vannevar Bush, many people listened — the load? though some estimates put its actual including George Marshall, the secretary The deans reasoned that boys who’d value at $2.5 billion, significantly more of defense, who requested that Congress had a taste of college would be more than the assets of all other American adopt the idea. likely to return after a hitch in the mili- foundations combined. But it had only The Conant Plan made college offi- tary. Moreover, they would provide the paid out some $27 million for charitable cials nervous. If all eighteen-year-old army with a nucleus of educated soldiers works over the previous fifteen years. An males entered the army, they reasoned, to fill emerging high-tech duties, espe- internal study concluded that the founda- most would never return to school, cially in medicine. It seemed like a good tion could afford to spend that much depriving the country of a generation of plan for everyone — all the deans needed every year without depleting its endow- talent. In January 1951, members of the was someone to fund it. ment, and to some outsiders, it appeared

32 ON WISCONSIN These institutions were less concerned with the draft than with the idea of changing education, and many of them dropped the gender requirement.

to be nothing more than a vast holding to show evidence of social development, company. The Revenue Act of 1950, with including interest in non-scholastic activ- its threat of public scrutiny, gave the ities and a letter demonstrating their Ford Foundation incentive to spend its maturity. cash much more freely. The program sparked immediate In January 1951, the Ford Founda- interest. Two thousand high-school stu- tion appointed a new associate director, dents applied, and in the first year, the Robert Hutchins, who created within the UW took in fifty-two, including Dolven foundation a Fund for the Advancement and Israel. But it wasn’t just students who of Education. The deans saw in Hutchins wanted in — other colleges did, too. By their deliverance. As the former chancel- summer, the Fund had expanded its Early lor of the University of Chicago, he was Admission Experiment to include eight not only one of their own, he was an edu- more schools of varying size, location, and cational iconoclast. He was highly critical character. There would be Ford students of American schools and had pushed at the public Universities of Utah and Chicago to take on more underage stu- Louisville, the private liberal arts colleges dents. The deans applied to Hutchins, and of Shimer, Oberlin, and Lafayette, the all- the Fund for the Advancement of Educa- women’s Goucher College, and the histor- tion pledged $1.2 million to pay for the ically African-American Fisk and Pre-Induction Scholarship Experiment. Morehouse Colleges. These institutions were less concerned with the draft than Youth carried less stigma for the Ford Girls Weeding Out the Twerps with the idea of changing education, than it did for the Boys. Here, Trubek chats with fellow Fordie Paul Friedman ’55. The experiment the deans designed was and many of them dropped the gender relatively straightforward. The schools requirement. In 1953, the UW followed Howe MA’41, PhD’48, a professor of were to recruit some two hundred high suit, adding Ford Girls to its mix. classics, was one of the most junior mem- school students a year, then match them In 1951, only one of the UW’s Ford bers of the UW faculty in 1951, and ILS, with “comparison groups” of students — Boys came from Wisconsin. The bulk of or Integrated Liberal Studies, is an inter- eighteen-year-old freshmen with similar them — twenty-nine — came from New disciplinary program that attempts to cre- test scores and economic backgrounds. York, eight from the Bronx High School ate a small, liberal-arts college atmosphere The institutions would follow each of Science. “The main thing that has within the university. Both Howe and his group’s academic development and social made the Ford program a success,” wife, Evelyn PhD’46, taught within ILS. adjustment, and then submit their obser- wrote David Rothman ’54, MA’55, a As the UW was collecting its Ford vations to the Fund for the Advancement member of that first class, “is that all the Boys in the summer of 1951, Letters and of Education. geniuses have been put next to each Science dean Mark Ingraham tapped The UW chose its prospective Ford other. This knocks the ego out of some Howe to be the boys’ handler on cam- Boys based on a variety of criteria. First of the guys and promotes a rather fierce pus. Howe had previously been a of all, applicants had to be males of the competition.” teacher at a preparatory school, and proper age (no older than sixteen years But if ferocity and a cosmopolitan Ingraham thought his experience might and six months on September 15, 1951). flavor aided the program, they also cre- help him relate to fifteen- and sixteen- They had to have the permission of their ated some of its biggest challenges. It year-old boys. parents and principals and meet certain would be up to one UW professor to “It was sort of an odd idea, really,” academic requirements, such as being in make sure the Ford Boys received more says Louise Trubek ’57, one of the first the top 10 percent of their high school benefit than pain. Ford Girls. Most of the experiment’s stu- class and scoring well on the College dents had gone to public schools on the Entrance Examination Board, forerun- The Invaluable Mr. Chips East or West Coast, and most of the UW ner of the SAT. Then, because none of “If you want to understand the Ford pro- students they met had attended public the schools wanted to end up with, as gram, there are two things you need to schools in the Midwest. Howe, she says, one of the deans put it, “a bunch of know,” says Charles Stephenson ’55. who “had taught Latin and Greek to bright young twerps,” the students had “Herbert Howe and ILS.” prep school boys, was sort of a Mr.

SPRING 2005 33 For many of the Ford students, the goal was simply to blend in. Some, like Dolven, who was tall for his age, concealed their participation from all but their closest acquaintances.

even brought around high-school stu- the word Jew used as a verb for the dents for us to date. But it wasn’t really first time.” until the third year, when they let girls For many of the Ford students, the into the program, that things got any goal was simply to blend in. Some, like better.” Dolven, who was tall for his age, con- COURTESY EVELYN THOMPSON COURTESY EVELYN Howe was not just the students’ cealed their participation from all but procurer — he was also their protector, their closest acquaintances. Others keeping an eye on the students’ progress, weren’t so lucky. In an essay he wrote maintaining records for the Ford Foun- just before graduation, Charlie Holbrow dation, and trying to smooth their vari- ’55, MS’60, PhD’63 warned that “Ford ous troubles. When one Ford Boy was students are generally not emotionally Evelyn Thut Thompson ’57, MS’58 was caught in a panty raid, Howe helped equipped for college.” He recommended thrilled to leave the “stultifying” environ- keep him from being expelled. When that “better psychological, emotional, ment of high school for the UW. another refused to join ROTC, a require- and adaptive screening should be insti- Chips type. That wasn’t what we grew ment for all male students, Howe worked tuted, and size should be of quite a bit of up with, nor was it what Wisconsin was with the boy and campus officials to importance. Mature individuals, both like. And yet his efforts did help us find a resolve the situation. physically and mentally, should be home here.” “On the whole, they did very well,” obtained, or none at all.” As far as most of the Ford Boys were he says. “I always felt it was surprising Academically, however, the Ford concerned, Howe’s chief purpose was to how little trouble they had adjusting.” Boys tended to excel. In grades and on find them food and housing. Due to the Still, the 1950s weren’t necessarily an standardized tests, they scored better program’s late start — recruiting hadn’t easy time to be on campus, especially for than the comparison group and far better begun until May — the students couldn’t those who were young and liberal and than the general student population. get space in the residence halls. Conse- from New York. Wisconsin’s junior sena- Fewer Ford students flunked out or with- quently, Howe spent much of the sum- tor, Joseph McCarthy, was at the height drew than did the comparisons, and they mer of 1951 making arrangements for of his influence, and the politics of some were more likely to enter post-graduate the Ford Boys to stay in rooming houses. of the Ford Boys didn’t endear them to education. Approximately 90 percent of “Howe went pounding the hot streets of conservative Wisconsinites. Henry Ford scholars reported that the program Madison to find us homes,” says Israel. Wortis ’55 and Arnold Lieber ’55, for was profitable to them personally, that “And to make sure that we ate, he and instance, headed the Labor Youth they would recommend taking part to a Eve would have us over to dinner on League, which the House Un-American friend, and that they felt the program some Sundays. I can remember Howe Activities Committee had labeled a should become a regular part of the having an ulcer and only being able to Communist front organization. admission policies of American colleges. eat milk toast while the rest of us had “Really, what we think of as the poli- After the first two Ford classes — one roast lamb.” tics of the 1960s were born in Madison hundred boys — had finished their pro- Howe heavily encouraged the Ford in the 1950s,” says Trubek, who served gram, Howe wrote that “forty or fifty Boys to enroll in ILS, and some 60 per- on the university’s Human Relations have benefited greatly [from early admis- cent of them did. “It was a wonderful Committee, which promoted a some- sion], about as many more have not been program,” says Wojciech Kolisinski ’55. times-unpopular campaign for racial harmed, and perhaps three or four would “Its professors were outstanding, and its integration in fraternities and sororities. have been better off if they had not taken small size helped us adapt socially. We “A lot of that had to do with the Ford the scholarship.” About the program in all knew we were smart, especially the program — with this influx of people general, he was very positive. “Perhaps I group of us who had been at Bronx Sci- from around the country, all very bright am over-optimistic, but I cannot see that ence. But we felt we weren’t really with and motivated.” [the boys] have suffered any permanent it in the social areas.” “Occasionally you’d hear politicians harm to offset the intellectual gains they Nowhere was this more evident than complain about the New York radical have made.” in dating. “No self-respecting girl wanted element on campus,” says Israel. “And The Fund for the Advancement of to be seen with one of us,” says Kolisin- there was perhaps a bit of anti-Semitism Education published two reviews of the ski. “Howe made valiant attempts. He in that. It was at Wisconsin that I heard experiment while it was still in progress:

34 ON WISCONSIN schools involved in the study, only the UW declined to make a standard policy to accommodate early admissions. Today, the university remains reluc- tant to welcome high-school age students into the student body. A high school diploma is a requirement for all incoming freshmen, and though Rob Seltzer, UW- Madison’s director of admissions, can waive that requirement for particularly qualified students, he very seldom does. “It’s a UW System policy,” he says. “High schools really wouldn’t be happy if colleges came along and raided all of their best kids. Their statistics would start to look awful, and then No Child Left Behind gets after them.” But for most of the Ford Boys and Girls, the program opened a path to a brighter future. “At the very least,” says Howe, “most of them managed to avoid Though they retired in the 1980s, Herb and Evelyn Howe still keep in touch with many former the draft.” Ford scholars, such as Earl Dolven (right). In 2000, many Fordies returned to Madison to create a named professorship in the Howes’ honor. Holbrow, who felt the program didn’t pay enough attention to the students’ Bridging the Gap between School and College In 1954, the Ford Boys’ most power- maturity, picked up a bachelor’s in history in 1953 and They Went to College Early in ful advocate departed. Increasingly and graduate degrees in physics and 1957. Both studies trumpeted the pro- worried about McCarthyism, Robert served on the faculty at Colgate Univer- gram’s achievements, the second con- Hutchins left the Fund for the Advance- sity. He remains friends with several other cluding, “It has become increasingly ment of Education, becoming instead the Ford alumni, including Israel, who did clear that ... we must not fail to provide president of the Ford Foundation’s Fund graduate study at Harvard and became a for the fullest possible development for for the Republic, which was concerned professor of Chinese history at the Univer- our ablest young people. The Fund for with protecting civil liberties. sity of Virginia. Romantic entanglements the Advancement of Education believes Worse, the program began to meet continued to haunt Kolisinski, who earned that the Early Admission Experiment resistance within high schools, which a degree in physics, and then fell in love has clearly demonstrated its promise as a were growing reluctant to surrender with a friend’s fiancée and dropped out of means to that end.” their best students to college ahead of graduate school to join the army. He even- But that was the last the Fund had to schedule. Sensing a need to be diplo- tually earned a PhD and now works in say about the Ford Boys. It never exam- matic with education officials, the UW aerospace. And Dolven, who escaped ined the study again. gave the Early Admission Experiment a Horace, North Dakota, earned a degree in “In the end the program was just an cautious review. In 1957, when the Fund mathematics. Along with David Rothman, experiment,” says Howe. “The classes for the Advancement of Education gave he spent a year doing post-graduate math ran their course, the grant ran out, and it its final evaluation of the Ford Boys, the study at Harvard before leaving to work came to an end.” university reversed Howe’s appraisal: for Rocketdyne in Los Angeles. Today he’s “Our experience shows that early admis- an attorney in Berkeley, California. Meanwhile in the Cold War ... sion demands what appears to be an “Ford brought together a unique But the program was the victim of more unusual combination of intellectual and combination of the young and success- than an expiration date. Throughout the social precocity. It is probably not as rare ful,” says Louise Trubek, who studied 1950s, the pillars of support for the as it seems on the surface; there may be law at Yale and is now on the faculty of Early Admission Experiment fell away as many as a fifth of most high school UW-Madison’s Law School. “That gave one by one. classes who could make the grade. But me a sense of courage the rest of my life. In 1953, the fighting in Korea the vast majority of these would proba- It really is a shame that this program isn’t stopped. There was no peace, only an bly gain nothing by early admission, and done anymore.” armistice, but that was enough to allevi- the principals have undoubtedly been ate the Pentagon’s personnel crunch. wise when they have hesitated in recom- John Allen, associate editor of On Wisconsin, was Talk of a universal draft ceased. mending many applicants.” Of the twelve not a Ford Boy, though he has driven a

SPRING 2005 35 Paul met Caryl while dinner with you. As long as DAVID NEVALA (2) they were both working at I’m in Madison, I’ll work the University Co-Op (now here,” says Davis. University Book Store) in Paul’s Bookstore’s the early 1950s, and they fiftieth anniversary came married shortly after. She and went a few months stayed home to raise their ago with little hoopla, not four children: Libby ’76; because it wasn’t a signifi- Gregory ’77, MD’81; David cant milestone, but ’79; and Martha ’81, JD’85. because time has little When Paul died suddenly in meaning inside Paul’s 1975, Caryl found herself doors. “Time is erased in the owner of a business here,” says Askins. “These she’d never been much books continue to lead involved in. She was forced lives. Paul had a great to learn how to run it on quote: ‘Your best book is the fly. the one you just sold. The Askins personally buys scarcest book is the one all the books, sets prices, and you don’t have.’ ” makes the final decision on A look at the window shelf placement. “It’s sur- display on a day like today, prising what you can however, would suggest no remember and learn just by scarcity of books on any handling the books every topic. A recent sampling day,” she says. ranged from a copy of And every day, she’s at Icebound Summer by Sally the store, usually assisted Carrigher to The 24th by one employee. Staff can Wisconsin Infantry in the work anywhere from one to Civil War: The Biography twenty hours a week, but of a Regiment by William J. once you work for Askins, Despite the competition, says owner Caryl Askins (left), “we’re doing fine.” K. Beaudot and Caribbean you tend to always be on her She attributes this to the store’s location “at the gate of the university,” as Cooking by Devinia Sookia. well as the fact that she owns the building. Employee Adam Pergament ’88, call list. MA’01 says it’s because Askins has “always invested in keeping the business The eclectic covers prom- “It really is a family about people and not just products.” ise a world of plenty just bookstore,” says Lori Mer- inside the door — from In an increasingly high-tech era, riam MA’85, a former employee who has through my certification period. And recent books to titles you thought you’d taught art at Madison East High School every once in a while, she still hauls me never be able to get your hands on. Paul’s Bookstore has shown amazing longevity. for fourteen years. In the late 1980s, after in to work!” Such diversity has even lured inside serving in the Peace Corps, Merriam That family feeling is echoed by the people like children’s author Shel Sil- came to Madison to attend graduate store’s current employees. “For a lot of verstein and A Prairie Home Companion’s school. “I had a hard time finding a job us, it’s our first year away from home,” Garrison Keillor. BY CANDICE GAUKEL ANDREWS ’77 week. You have to step carefully around Bodhi and Lucy, a because everyone wanted local and says Kaitlin Davis x’07, from Omaha, Like a page from one of its once- Tibetan terrier and Labrador retriever, sleeping somewhere recent references. Nobody would hire Nebraska. “Caryl’s my boss, but she was loved books, Paul’s is a reminder of an You won’t find a computer here. On a warm day, the air is amid the stacks. It’s about as low-tech as you can get. me — except Caryl,” she says. a mom when I needed one. She’s that for earlier State Street. And its record of conditioned by a propped-open door. Handwritten signs jut That’s how Paul’s Bookstore has been doing business on In the early 1990s, Merriam moved a lot of people who work here. If we hiring and helping students is something out from the wooden bookshelves — “Poetry,” “History,” the campus end of State Street for fifty years. And owner to Washington, D.C. When she returned need advice on getting a credit card or that still has a strong shelf life. “I plan to “Children’s” — in no obvious order. The sides of the bookcases Caryl Frederickson Askins ’51 says she plans to keep it to UW-Madison to get a teaching degree, opening a bank account, she’s there to be here for a long time to come,” says are decorated with cards full of warm messages from friends that way. Askins took her on again. help us out.” Askins. “I hurry to get here in the morn- living in far-off places or on the other side of town. Taped up in Her spouse, Paul Askins, opened Paul’s Book Stall in 1954 “When I was student-teaching, I The shop’s remarkable reputation for ing. I’m so lucky.” every other spare spot between the greetings are tattered bits on what is now Library Mall. After a brief relocation to 604 didn’t have a whole lot of time to work,” employee longevity is something Davis that have fallen out of the surrendered tomes. There is the smell University Avenue, the business moved to its current spot at remembers Merriam, “but Caryl made can attest to. “People will walk through Candice Gaukel Andrews ’77 is an avid fan of old of old leather, and aging rugs cover a once-white, tiled floor. 670 State Street in 1962. It’s one of the few businesses on the sure I got a few hours and was very the door and say, ‘I worked here in 1960- Among thousands of pages of print, you’ll often find inscrip- books and is proud to say that one of her business street that’s been around long enough to be as familiar to grads generous with my pay so I could get something.’ That night, they’ll go out to cards is now gracing a wall at Paul’s. tions — snippets from lives lived long ago or from just last of a half-century ago as those of today.

28 ON WISCONSIN SPRING 2005 29 They took Madison. They took Manhattan. Now, they’re going Hollywood.

Will the university’s most famous “area people” get the last laugh in the cutthroat business of comedy?

36 ON WISCONSIN BY JAMES NORTON ’99 can comedy, stacking up a titanic vault of Current Onion editor Carol Kolb ’95 calls laughs along the way. him the paper’s “godfather.” Since selling “I have enough anxiety disorder in my This would be no small achievement his interest in the paper in 2000, he has life already,” says Todd Hanson x’86. for a hand-picked group of writers and gone on to write and direct independent The senior writer of The Onion — editors bankrolled by serious money and films. His second, called Bad Meat, is in “America’s Finest News Source” — is launched in New York or Los Angeles. the process of being sold to a distributor. sitting in a stairwell, wearing a “F*** Dozens of sitcoms are canned each year. Dikkers had seen enough promise in ’Em Bucky” T-shirt and smoking a Pilots never see the light of day, and fea- the venture to buy out Johnson and Marlboro 100. He’s just been asked ture flicks die on the video shelves. The Keck, but the paper was still little more about the release of The Onion Movie, the pantheon of successful comedy periodi- than a local curiosity available in only a newspaper’s first venture into feature cals — which includes a scant few titles few places around Madison. He and part- film. Smoke forms a hazy cloud around such as Spy, Mad, and The National Lam- ner Rich Dahm ’89, who has since writ- him as he mulls it over. poon — is about as populous as Door ten for Da Ali G Show, among others, “Thinking about this movie coming County in February. began recruiting “people from the town out, it’s kind of like — well, I imagine But The Onion has managed some- who we thought were funny to help us,” myself in a barrel,” he tells me during an thing even more remarkable. Even as the recalls Dikkers. One of the first was interview in October, as the picture was paper has grown more structured and Hanson, whom Dikkers calls “the soul of being hustled toward completion. “And professional, it has retained much of its The Onion.” the barrel is very slowly rolling toward original unfettered creative license. In 1995, Dikkers kickstarted a major the release date of this movie. It’s at a “It was a place where you didn’t have overhaul of the paper’s look and feel that very gentle slope, and it’s just sort of to deal with a lot of outside factors that helped The Onion find its groove. “It was a slowly rolling ... and then the release date were going to water down your instinc- total redesign, and a total conceptual of the movie is like a cliff. What’s on the tive approach to writing comedy,” says redesign as well,” says Mike Loew ’96, a other side of that cliff? Could be wonder- former Onion staffer Ben Karlin ’93, now former Daily Cardinal staffer who is now ful things. Could be terrible things. It’s an the executive producer of The Daily Show The Onion’s graphics editor. “We had been unknown quantity.” with Jon Stewart. “It was the crack more of a Weekly World News tabloid. It Hanson, who has been with the news- [cocaine] of comedy. It was a luxury and was a lot more silly, and it was in black paper since its early days in Madison, is a pleasure.” and white. After the redesign, it became one of two writers credited for the movie, more of a USA Today parody. Now we which is still awaiting its theater release. were behaving like a real newspaper.” But the entire Onion comedy staff worked ike the vegetable for While the paper’s humor moved for- on the script, and it’s not just Hanson’s which it’s named, The Onion ward, so did its means of distribution. It reputation at stake. This is a big moment began underground, launched in was among the first humor publications for the nation’s premier satirical newspa- Johnson’s one-room efficiency to jump on the Internet, forming its Web per — another in a series of big risks for L off Langdon Street. “It was just such a site (www.theonion.com) in 1996. Taking the collection of transplanted Badgers, seat-of-your-pants operation,” recalls advantage of the low production costs, almost all of which have paid off. Scott Dikkers x’87, who bought the international reach, and little real compe- Since its founding in 1988 by UW- paper in 1989 and edited it for more than tition of cyberspace, The Onion found a Madison students Chris Johnson ’90 and a decade. “There was one computer and cult following that soon caught the notice Tim Keck ’90, The Onion has spun off five no printer, so we had to run to Kinko’s of mainstream outlets such as The New satellite editions, launched a path-blazing [to print it].” Yorker. By 1997, readership in the three Web site, radically changed its editorial Most of the writing was done by Matt cities where the newspaper was distrib- voice and page design, and moved most Cook ’89, a student whom Keck and uted (Madison, Milwaukee, and Boulder, of its editorial staff to offices in Manhat- Johnson knew. “Tim and Chris would Colorado) surpassed ninety thousand. tan and Chicago. It’s produced a number- pretty much put him in front of the com- Then, in 1999, came publication of one best-selling book and seen its alumni puter and just move his fingers until the Our Dumb Century, for which the writers infiltrate the highest echelons of Ameri- column inches were filled,” Dikkers says. created a bogus back-history of Onion “And there was no editing at all. And front pages, satirically documenting such that’s sort of when I stepped in and said, world events as the sinking of the Titanic Facing page: Onion staffers (from left) Carol ‘You guys need an editor.’ ” (“World’s Largest Metaphor Hits Ice- Kolb, Joe Garden, John Krewson, Todd Dikkers, the cartoonist behind The Berg”) and World War II (“French Hanson, and Mike Loew moved the paper’s operations to New York in 2001 — but they Daily Cardinal strip “Jim’s Journal,” Surrender After Valiant Ten-Minute didn’t stay underground for long. became The Onion’s guiding editorial light. Struggle”). The book won a Thurber

SPRING 2005 37 Award for humor writing and cemented Still, the coasts have their advantages, nearby lot stacks the cars of Manhattan the newspaper’s place as a weekly must- namely a teeming pool of entertainment commuters vertically. Like much of the read for millions of people. connections. It was those opportunities city, it’s an area in flux, where old build- Many critics have said The Onion that led The Onion comedy staff to uproot ings in decline sit shoulder-to-shoulder owes some of its success to its Madison from Madison in 2001 in favor of the Big with bistros. roots. It’s been said that, as Midwestern- Apple. (The AV Club section is mostly The Onion has been evolving, as well. ers, the writers are able to lampoon the produced in Chicago.) The process of making each weekly edi- bland enthusiasm of mainstream Ameri- Ironically, Hanson says the staff got tion is more refined and systematic than can media without East Coast pretension. more attention arriving in the big city in the old days. It begins with the head- Keith Phipps MA’96, editor of the than they did around their old haunts. lines. Each writer generates lists of ideas, review-filled AV Club section, says it’s “By the time we were leaving Madison, which are vetted during staff meetings. probably true, particularly when it comes everybody there was used to The Onion. It From hundreds of candidates, editors to The Onion’s nonsatirical arts reviews. didn’t mean anything to them,” he says. choose a few that make the paper. Only “We’re not insiders,” he says. “I’m not “When we got to New York, people then are the stories assigned. hip. I’ve never been on top of the trends really welcomed us with open arms and “Every single week, it feels like we’re or anything — I just like what I like.” wrote articles about the fact that we were racing against the clock to get the issue But Dikkers disagrees. “I think we arriving. Usually, if I go into a bar and out on time,” says Kolb. But it’s a far cry could have done The Onion in any place,” different comedy heroes of mine are from the disorganization of The Onion’s he says. “We could have done it in any hanging out in there, they’ll recognize me youth. “It was just kind of crazier and small town. There’s always the guy who and say, ‘Hey, come over and sit with us!’ more hectic,” she says. “We used to only works at the convenience store who’s And itt’s a cool thing.” have one day off a week, and it was Mon- cracking jokes. There’s the funny guy day. And it was kind of because we never who sits there all day at the gas station, he paper’s comedy scribes got our [act] together enough to work it you know, reading, and possibly even now labor in a semi-indus- out to get the weekends. Things like that writing. Every high school has a class trial section of Chelsea on are better, because we’ve worked out clown. You know, those people are funny T Manhattan’s west side. The some of the kinks.” people. I don’t think there’s anything building itself is unassuming, tucked There are still plenty of Wisconsin unusual about the comedy talent pool in away on a quiet street lined with parked influences around the offices. Mike Loew Madison.” delivery trucks. A mechanical device in a — the easygoing yang to Hanson’s intense yin — is typical of the staff’s Mid- western vibe. Classically laid-back and good-natured, he reminisces about the Union Terrace — “It’s a nice big spot. Here in New York, there’s a lot of places to go, but you can feel a little cramped,” he says — and misses the loose, casual feel of Madison. “You can have a lot of fun in New York, but there’s something about Madi- son,” he says. “You’re just surrounded by all these kids going nuts and acting like goofballs. I kind of miss that energy. Sometimes the New York kids can be a little too cool for school, you know?” Kolb is another Badger transplant, hailing from a small town called Spencer. “What’s it near?” I ask. “Nothing,” she says, laughing. (“It’s near Stevens Point,” she admits, when pressed.) “I have adapted to New York. I love it, but I love Madison so much,” says Each edition of The Onion springs from the eclectic chaos of the paper’s Manhattan offices, Kolb. “I really do think of it as where I where writers surf the Internet and hundreds of “legitimate” publications to gather material will want to be when I get sick of the dirt for their satirical take on the news.

38 ON WISCONSIN and the things that are bad about New basically — you know, someone throws York. I think it’s great.” Clinton’s lunch on top of the school,” he The Manhattan surroundings have says. “While with George Bush, it’s much Laughing Till We Cry rubbed off in small ways. “If you see a more sort of trenchant political commen- Memorable Onion headlines from its archives: joke about ‘buses’ in the paper, it’s usually tary, basically. I look back at Clinton as August 1988 code for ‘subway,’ ” says Maria Schneider kind of a more innocent age.” The very first Onion headline: ’90, one of the paper’s senior writers. While he agrees with some of the cri- Mendota Monster Mauls Madison “But we don’t want to alienate our read- tiques, Ben Karlin is more sympathetic to 1989 ers who live outside of New York.” the challenge of staying fresh. “They have Pen Stolen From Dorm Study Area to do it every week,” he says. “When you he move had another, have a rigid format that only allows for a 1990 unintentional effect. It certain amount of deviation, it’s really, Everybody’s Eatin’ Bread plunged the writers in the really, really hard to inject originality and 1991 Taftermath of the September spontaneity into it. Look at Saturday Night The Joke’s on You! The Onion Admits: 11 terrorist attacks, leading them to pro- Live — they’ve been doing sketches for “We Created The Badger Herald as a Hoax” duce a spectacularly successful edition, twenty-eight years! You try to come up which rallied terror-numbed readers with with an original character after twenty- 1992 Angry Lumberjack Demands Hearty Breakfast a combination of warm, genuine empathy eight years ... it’s really hard!” (“Hugging up 76,000 Percent”) and gen- Which is why there’s so much riding 1993 uinely punchy comedy (“Hijackers Sur- on The Onion Movie. Making the film gave Man of the Year: The Guy From Police Academy prised to Find Selves in Hell”). The issue writers a lesson in some of the harder Movies Who Can Make Funny Noises with His Mouth realities of the movie business — the was mentioned as a Pulitzer Prize con- 1994 tender, and it gave the comedy writers a struggle for creative control, the many Thompson Changes Title from visceral connection to their newly different cooks packing into the kitchen “Governor” to “Sexecutioner” adopted home. — and they’ll soon get a taste of its risks. Some critics argue that the paper has What if the movie is bad? Bad drama can 1995 been in a holding pattern in the years pass as unintentional comedy, but bad Man, Ape Cause Roadhouse Ruckus since, falling back on formulas for stories comedy is just horrible. As Hanson 1996 and, in the ramp-up to the 2004 election, knows, a major flop could lend ammuni- Secondhand Smoke Linked to getting politically involved at the expense tion to those who say The Onion’s run is Secondhand Coolness of the paper’s comic detachment. petering out. 1997 Still, it hasn’t often paid to bet against “I think it’s in danger of becoming too Republicans, Dadaists Declare War on Art partisan, frankly,” says former editor Dan this group. They’ve proved willing and Vebber ’92, who has written for shows able to negotiate the tradeoffs before — 1998 including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Futu- to walk the tightrope between daring Everyone Involved in Pizza’s Preparation, rama, and the upcoming animated pro- experimentation and the workaday for- Delivery, Purchase Extremely High gram American Dad. “I think we used to be mulas of a professional laugh factory. 1999 a lot less concerned with politics at The “Even though our format is standard- U.S. Bedwetters Decide against Nationwide Onion, and more with just being stupid ized, and a lot of the surprises have been Awareness-Raising Campaign and trying to get laughs with different revealed, and we are getting repetitive ... 2000 we are still really capable of doing bril- types of humor.” Funyuns Still Outselling Responsibilityuns Loew acknowledges that “we really liant stuff every week,” says Schneider. have lost the silliness a little bit, especially “Even if we can do just one or two great 2001 lately. I don’t know, it seems like it’s been jokes every week, I think we’ve suc- U.S. Vows to Defeat Whoever It Is We’re at War With a little bit too long since I’ve put a Photo- ceeded in that issue with flying colors. I 2002 shop [illustration] together that was think that’s what keeps me going.” Bush Seeks U.N. Support for ‘U.S. Does really surreal-looking ... like the one of She pauses a few seconds, then adds, Whatever It Wants’ Plan Jesus Christ dunking a basketball. It “Also, the health insurance. And I also 2003 seems like the photos are coming straight have to pay my rent.” 48-Hour Internet Outage Plunges off the wire recently. Nation Into Productivity “When you look at the Clinton photos James Norton edited The Daily Cardinal in 1997 and and stories we used to do, those were so 1998 and is one of the founding editors of Flak 2004 Magazine (www.flakmag.com). He lives in Brooklyn Documents Reveal Gaps in Bush’s silly. Clinton we just treated as a child, and works for Air America Radio’s Al Franken Show. Service as President

SPRING 2005 39 During powera UW planttrip todisaster, witness the the author lingering finds effects the legaciesof the world’sof Chernobyl biggest – nuclear like the By Mary Makarushka MAx’05 invisible radiation that still poisons the land – are felt more than they are seen. The week I got back from Chernobyl, Jay Leno joked on The

COURTESY OF NATALYACOURTESY MANZUROVA Tonight Show about a baby in Georgia, the former Soviet republic, who was born with two hearts. “Two hearts,” Leno smirked. “This is what happens when you get a good deal on a house near Chernobyl!” By some strange coincidence, later that night Craig Kilborn did a bit about Russian sporting events, including “the Chernobyl three-

TATIANA GUNDLACH legged race.” A few months before, I wouldn’t have noticed these jokes. Hearing them as I unpacked, I was heartsick. I thought immediately of Ivan, a teenager I’d met the week before, one of a group of teens who had agreed to talk to me about Chernobyl, a disaster that had happened before they were “I am like an apple that is beauti- born. ful on the outside, but you find inside is all rotten and full of worms.”

40 ON WISCONSIN These were kids who had spent much of the long-term medical consequences of Overwhelmed by the needs of their their lives in and out of hospitals, kids the radiation release. But the psychologi- damaged communities, the centers were who lived in parts of Ukraine where radi- cal fallout is undeniable. Berkowitz, an desperately short of funds. FOCCUS ation lingering in the soil could be instructor at the UW-Madison School of has raised tens of thousands of dollars absorbed by their growing bodies. Some Social Work for twenty-five years, has and done numerous professional training had ailments that doctors blamed on the been trying to educate Americans about sessions for the staff. But Berkowitz contamination. With others, the doctors it since 1996, when she founded Friends wants to raise awareness and under- weren’t sure. Nonetheless, they face of Chernobyl Centers U.S. (FOCCUS) standing of the disaster’s ongoing toll as lonely hospitalizations, lost school days, soon after her retirement. She had never well. To that end, last June she led a painful procedures, and fears about their given much thought to Chernobyl until UW-Madison study tour to Ukraine, a future health. learning at a conference about commu- two-week trip organized by FOCCUS “I think the greatest Chernobyl prob- nity outreach centers that had been and sponsored by the university’s Center lem is psychological, not physical,” six- established by UNESCO in 1994. They for Russia, East Europe, and Central teen-year-old Ivan had told me sternly. were intended to support people living in Asia (CREECA). The group of twenty “I’m really frightened by the way for- the sixty-three thousand square miles of visited all five of the Ukrainian commu- eigners treat the subject. They think of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine that nity centers, heard lectures at the Radia- us as Mutants from Chernobyl.” remain poisoned. That’s an area the size tion Research Center in Kiev, and toured I was startled by his vehemence. This of Wisconsin, much of it farmland, the ghost town of Pripyat, a mile and a was a handsome group of kids — tall and forests, and small cities and villages, half from the power plant, ending up at straight, with clear, smooth skin and home to 7 million people, 3 million of the infamous reactor itself. intense gazes. None of them looked sick, them in Ukraine. I went along as a journalist, but also and I hated the idea that they could feel At the time of the accident, many for my first experience of Ukraine, the so stigmatized on top of everything else people were forcibly evacuated, sepa- At the Boyarka community center, teenagers they were dealing with. Now that I was rated from neighbors and relatives, able such as Ivan, born two years after Chernobyl back home, this pair of late-night wise- to bring almost nothing with them. Oth- exploded, worry about their health and their cracks seemed to prove his point. ers lost their jobs, as entire industries — future. For Natalya Manzurova (facing page, top photo, as a liquidator in the late 1980s; This was exactly why Norma agriculture, dairy, heavy equipment — bottom, on the UW trip), cleaning up after Berkowitz MS’68 had organized this became too contaminated to sell con- the accident left her with radiation poison- trip, and why she was so committed to sumer goods. As years passed after the ing and posttraumatic stress. teaching people in the United States that explosion, people still had nightmares, what happened nearly two decades ago still grieved their losses. Those who in the former Soviet Union was by no weren’t themselves sick were often para- means over. lyzed with worry about their future health — and their children’s. Over time, in some homes, the build-up of stress When the Chernobyl Reactor Num- contributed to violence, or alcohol or ber Four exploded and burned on April drug abuse. 26, 1986, it spewed tons of nuclear mate- rial and aerosolized heavy metals a mile into the air, creating a toxic cloud that “I’m really frightened by orbited the earth before showering a deadly rain on trees, fields, and cities. the way foreigners treat

Chernobyl was a prize project for the OKSANA TSEATSURA Soviets, intended to be the most power- the subject. They think of ful nuclear complex in the world when us completed. But international scientists had warned that its design was inher- as Mutants from ently dangerous: because it couldn’t be safely slowed or shut off, they said, an Chernobyl.” accident was very likely. To this day, scientists disagree strongly about how many people died as a result of the accident, as well as about front of them. In Ukraine, every food was more delicious, every custom more gracious. It was a peculiar utopia, where they would be respected, where all their sons would have agreed to be doctors and all their grandchildren (unlike me) would be able to speak Ukrainian. They lived to see the country declare AP PHOTO/VOLODYMYR REPIK independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, but neither they, nor my father or uncle, had ever been back.

Coming in from the airport, I got my first glimpse of Kiev, a star- tlingly green city of 3 million that spreads out for miles along either side of the sweeping Dnieper River. Pear- shaped gold domes glinted atop churches and monasteries dating to the eleventh century. On the broad boulevards and in the subway stations, catwalk-chic young women navigated the rush-hour hustle on stiletto heels, while old women in ker- chiefs sold fruit, flowers, scissors, and kittens to eke out pensions that have grown harder to live on in the post- Communist economy. During the poisonous spring of ’86, Kiev, eighty miles from Chernobyl, was hit first with the radiation, then with thousands of evacuees, many of whom had no idea what they were fleeing. The Soviet government had tried to conceal the disaster, but succeeded in hiding it only from its own people. When soldiers Reactor Number Four exploded and burned on April 26, 1986, spewing tons of nuclear material came to their doors and ordered them to into the air, and showering a deadly rain on trees, fields, and cities. The shelter that liquidators built over the damage is still in place, though now leaking badly and in need of replacement. leave without explanation, those who had lived through the last world war believed that a new one had begun. country that gave me my long name and orange they offered me was a hedge The tour’s first stop was the remark- long nose. My grandparents had left in against scurvy; a potassium-rich banana able Chernobyl Museum. Standing beside 1946, at the end of the war, making it to would keep my heart beating. When I Natalya Manzurova, a Russian radiobiol- New York with their two small sons: my arrived, and my mother told them on the ogist, I studied a black-and-white photo- father and uncle. They came from the far phone that she could see her newborn graph of a thatch-roofed cottage being west of the country, hundreds of miles daughter waving her arms and legs in the bulldozed into an enormous hole in the from Chernobyl, but still I thought I bassinet, they exclaimed: “She is having ground, one of the uninhabitable villages might glimpse something of the world a seizure!” that was buried deep in the earth. they’d left behind. They were never completely comfort- “I did that,” she said. I thought I Not that they would have approved able with their new language, nor their must have heard her wrong. of this trip for a second. My grandpar- new country. They never, ever talked It turned out that for four and a half ents were famously, comically pes- about the war. To my frustration, they years, starting in 1987, Manzurova was a simistic, despite our being of long-lived seemed forever focused on what they’d “liquidator,” one of thousands of people and uncommonly lucky stock. Any left behind, rather than the life right in

42 ON WISCONSIN As outlined in the map at left, large areas of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia remain contami- Community Centers nated by radiation. The UW group traveled 1. Boyarka from Kiev to the reactor, visiting the five 2. Borodyanka Ukrainian community centers in between. 3. Ivankiv 4. Korosten 300 mi. 5. Slavutych numb that she didn’t even flinch when she discovered the bodies of some infants 200 mi. in an empty village. The experience left her bedridden for 100 mi. three years and suffering from posttrau- matic stress for much longer. She is still 50 mi. plagued by headaches, fatigue, and other ailments. At the base of her throat is a thin 5 white crescent scar — what the liquida-

4 tors call a “Chernobyl necklace” — where part of her thyroid was removed. Many 3 liquidators developed thyroid problems 2 and thyroid cancer from exposure to

1 radioactive iodine. A number of the peo- ple she worked with have since died. She wants to make a documentary about the from all corners of the Soviet Union who says, than could the police and firefight- liquidators she’s known, but she feels she volunteered or were conscripted to make ers at the World Trade Center. has to hurry, while some are still alive. it, as the government demanded, as if She worked from an office in But like Ivan and the other teenagers, Chernobyl had never happened. They Pripyat, which had been a thriving com- on the outside she looks healthy, an were firefighters and soldiers, doctors pany town of fifty thousand people. unforgettable lesson in how the effects of and scientists, truck drivers, farmers, and Obsessed with hiding the accident from Chernobyl can hide in plain sight. She prisoners — an estimated six hundred the world, the Soviet government didn’t has a cuttingly sharp mind and a mischie- thousand to 1 million in all. evacuate Pripyat until the reactor had vous sense of humor, and she can dance Manzurova had come by train from been burning for a full day and a half. the rest of us right off the floor. her home in the Ural Mountains to travel Even then, people were told there was “I am like an apple that is beautiful with Berkowitz’s group and revisit the just a small problem, and they should on the outside,” she says, “but you find sites where she’d worked. A radiation pack for only a three-day evacuation. inside is all rotten and full of worms.” scientist and activist, she was interested They left home without realizing they in how the Chernobyl-affected lands and would never return. people were recovering. She was also a One of Manzurova’s jobs was to cat- generous and eloquent teacher, clarify- alogue and destroy or bury everything ing, personalizing, and giving us perspec- those people left behind. She confiscated DONNA ULTEIG tive on what we would see. contaminated furniture, clothing, books, Manzurova was completing her doc- appliances, cars, even whole cottages, as torate in radiation biology when the reac- she says, to keep their owners, and loot- tor exploded. Her adviser was one of the ers, from taking the deadly property out first scientists called to the site. He died into the world. It was backbreaking, within months, and she never defended soul-flaying work, to handle people’s her dissertation. She was in her mid- most private and treasured items and thirties, with a young daughter, and thus then trash them. For all involved, could have gotten an exemption from Manzurova says, there was a lot of cry- going to Chernobyl herself. But, she ing on the bus to work every morning, says, this was what her training was for. and a lot of drinking to forget at night. Someone with her expertise could help After a while, she was so emotionally make decisions about how to contain and At the cemetery in the town of Slavutych, reclaim the poisoned area, decisions that decals mark the gravestones of people who might yet save lives. She could no more were liquidators. “Now the cemetery is turn away from this catastrophe, she growing faster than the town,” says a worker at the Slavutych community center. JEFF MILLER sparked in part by a post-chernobyl generation, there’s new energy around nuclear engineering. Tracy Radel x’07 was three years old when the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl blew up, too young to remember anything about it. And so when she toured UW-Madison’s nuclear engineering facilities as a high school senior — including its own one-megawatt reactor — she didn’t think about the past. She saw her future. “Everything they told me about nuclear power just fascinated me,” she says. “I became really excited about the possibilities.” Radel is part of a generation for whom the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were historical events from an era they never knew. Growing up without the sense of present nuclear danger that their parents have often felt, they’re embracing nuclear power in record numbers. As recently as 2000, there were fewer than six hundred undergraduates studying nuclear engineering in the United States. Now, there are more than 1,500, and many pro- grams are scrambling to accommodate the renewed interest. “The career interest in nuclear energy is exploding,” confirms Built in 1960, the one-megawatt nuclear reactor housed in the UW’s Michael Corradini, chair of the UW nuclear engineering program. Mechanical Engineering Building is a small-scale plant used for The question is whether the nuclear industry will grow to accommo- research and teaching demonstrations. date all those new graduates. Nuclear power provides about one- “There are significant risks to operating these plants,” says fifth of the energy generated in the United States, but no new plants Alfred Meyer, a Madison activist with the national Physicians for have been built in more than two decades. Regulations and public Social Responsibility who joined the UW tour to Chernobyl. “They opposition have something to do with that. In Wisconsin, for exam- aren’t flawless, and I think Chernobyl is a clear example of that.” ple, a state law forbids construction of any new plant unless new off- The exact Chernobyl scenario may be unlikely now, as that site waste containment facilities are built first. reactor had design flaws that experts say exacerbated the disaster. But chiefly, in an era of cheap oil, nuclear power plants were No plant like it exists in the United States, and those of similar bad investments. Despite initial hopes that nuclear power would be design elsewhere have been significantly modified since the acci- “too cheap to meter,” the plants turned out to be pricey to build dent. But that doesn’t mean new reactors are mistake-proof. and operate. “It was a terrible business proposition for a while,” Although Bier has observed the industry to have a strong overall says Vicki Bier, a professor of industrial engineering who studies safety record, for instance, she allows that “the industry is not so the power industry. uniformly safe as to guarantee that there won’t be a single accident Now, with oil and natural gas prices spiking and rising concerns somewhere. And with nuclear power, any one incident is enough to over the environmental effects of burning coal, nukes are again cause a major problem.” looking appealing to some in the industry. At least a few power As the nation ponders its energy future, the central issue will companies have taken the first regulatory steps toward constructing become whether we can live with those odds. “Nuclear energy has a new fission reactor. residual risks, and we need to be continually vigilant of them,” says But economics aren’t the only factor. A proposed federal waste- Corradini. “But we have to weigh the risks comparative to the alter- containment facility, which was to be built by 1998, is stalled in a natives.” And that’s a question that requires us neither to remember political dogfight, and many social and environmental groups Chernobyl too well, nor forget it entirely. oppose new reactors on the grounds that they’re too dangerous. — Michael Penn MA’97

44 ON WISCONSIN I met Ivan in the community was broken in them,” he said. By 1996, a When Natalya Manzurova was a center at Boyarka, the newest center and subtle shift had taken place. In that year’s liquidator in Pripyat, a bronze statue the only one connected to a hospital. youth survey, the most prevalent fear was stood outside her office. I’d seen it in pho- Although there are similarities among all no longer their own health; it was that tos — a towering, muscle-bound the centers, their populations call for dif- their parents would die early. In his most Prometheus, stealing a flame from the ferent resources: while one may serve gods to bring the gift of fire to mortals. Erected when Pripyat was bustling with Psychologists at the community centers jobs and optimism, it symbolized the tam- ing of the atom and the power of Soviet encourage children to come up with their own rep- technology. resentations of radiation, and then to empower It wasn’t there when our group walked through the deserted town, themselves about how to defeat it. shards of glass crunching under our every step. This is what a neutron bomb more far-flung villagers, another may be recent study, being happy and healthy would leave behind, we imagined: intact in a city struggling with waves of layoffs. now rank among teens’ top values. buildings, windows smashed, and fifty One thing they have in common is Not all the teens I met agreed with thousand people gone. inadequate resources for all the people Ivan’s assessment that the world sees The vast power plant complex, by they could help. And several of them them as mutants. But Olesa, fourteen, contrast, hummed like a town square. fear deeper budget cuts, losing their said she has experienced it firsthand. Though the last reactor was taken offline leases, or even being forced to close, as She’s traveled to Italy a few times, as in 2000, thousands of workers are still the government continues to cut back on part of a program that gives kids holi- needed every day for security, construc- Chernobyl-rehabilitation funding. days from living in areas that are still tion, and maintenance. When we got off One center director told us govern- contaminated with radiation. Even a the bus, I was startled to find that statue ment officials want things like buildings month of eating safe food and drinking Continued on page 63 and hospitals to show for their funding. safe milk and water seems to decrease If you build a hospital, one official told the burden of radiation on the body dra- her, then you have a structure to point matically. On her last trip there, she This monument, to, but the center’s psychosocial work recalled, people teased her about being built for the tenth anniversary of the seemed invisible to him. from Chernobyl and acted afraid, as if accident, stands out- All five centers use art, physical she could pollute them. She struggled not side the fire station activity, and games to work through the to cry as she recounted this, but the tears in Chernobyl. The town’s firefighters lingering fear of Chernobyl’s effects. spilled over with the memory. designed and con- Everywhere our group went, walls were After the young people left, our trans- structed it them- covered with bright paintings and draw- lator and a member of the staff marveled selves to remember their colleagues who ings. We were treated to a martial arts at the freedom with which they had fought the fire after demonstration and introduced to people talked to me. Both women came of age in the explosion. who counsel teenagers on reproductive the Soviet era, when, they agreed, health, computer literacy, and drug-free teenagers would never have spoken so living. In all of these efforts, the goal candidly — and to a foreign journalist, no was for teens to take charge of their own less. They seemed to find it a bracing and lives — to envision a hopeful future for hopeful indicator for Ukraine’s future. themselves. Months later, I recalled that conver- It may seem like a self-evident mes- sation as college students flooded Kiev in sage. But according to surveys by sociol- the “Orange Revolution,” commanding ogist Yuri Schwalb, in the mid-1990s, a the world’s attention with their calls for

majority of Chernobyl-area adolescents fair new elections. As the pro- DONNA ULTEIG aged thirteen to fifteen said they didn’t testors camped out for expect to live to age thirty. As he democracy, catching cold explained to our group, these teenagers in their snowy tents, I refused to study, declined to prepare for a learned the centers sent profession or a family, and abused drugs them what medicine and and alcohol. “The whole system of values supplies they could spare. Chernobyl But if the Ukrainians were pragmatic community centers encourage children to Continued from page 45 about nuclear power, they were passion- come up with their own representations now standing outside the administration ate about the need to avoid another disas- of radiation, and then to empower them- building — once iconic, now ironic. ter. “If we take our mission globally,” selves about how to defeat it. Spreading As punishment for his theft, Pashinsky said, “we see our goal as telling information is one way the centers Prometheus was chained to a mountain- the whole world of the dangers inherent combat the mistrust that lingers over the side, where each day an eagle came to in using these nuclear plants. The people government’s attempt to cover up the tear out his liver, which regenerated working in this center probably know explosion. All publish newsletters and every night, only to be torn out again. It more about the humanitarian aftereffects lead sessions about such things as how to is a well-worn metaphor for the conse- of this catastrophe than even doctors, grow and prepare foods to decrease the quences of scientific hubris, and, in that because they only deal with the ones who risks of radiation in the soil. place, I couldn’t help comparing get sick, while we’re dealing with the con- As the staff told us about parents who Prometheus’s fate to years of ingesting sequences for the whole community.” constantly express worries about their low-level radiation: eating away at him We arrived at the plant on a calm and children’s health, or who mourn a world just a little every day, leaving him alive pale blue summer day. After two weeks their children can’t remember, I suddenly but dreading the days to come. of traveling, we had come finally to stand ended up closer to my family’s experience Throughout the weeks in Ukraine, I a few hundred feet from Reactor Num- than I ever intended. When they was surprised to meet very few people ber Four, a gray industrial hulk with a described counseling parents who are who said they were opposed to nuclear red-and-white-striped smokestack. Seen traumatized by the loss of a beloved home power, and plenty who disagreed with the up close, it’s streaked and scarred with and village, by the panic of the evacua- closing of the remaining reactors, which rust. The same “sarcophagus” that liq- tion and the alienation of starting over in cost many jobs in a region that was uidators bravely built to contain tons of a place where they feel they don’t belong, already struggling. With the modifica- lethal material nearly twenty years ago is I gained a flood of understanding. tions made to the plant and its procedures still in place. My grandparents weren’t always following the accident, they argued, they Now leaking from years of acid rain cartoonish worriers with Old World had operated safely for years and could and creaking from age, it’s supposed to accents; they were young parents who continue to do so. With no oil or gas be shored up and newly covered, and rushed to bomb shelters with their babies reserves in a country of 48 million, some of its deadly contents removed for in their arms. They didn’t just float into New York Harbor, ready to make a fresh “Ukraine has no choice. Whether we like safer disposal. International donors start, having had a brush with history. it or not, we’ll have to live with nuclear promised to chip in for that project as They were disaster survivors, running for technologies,” Igor Pashinsky, a staffer at part of the agreement for closing the final their lives. the community center in Korosten, told reactor four years ago. A design has been I’d been looking for their Ukraine in me. Although Chernobyl has closed, fif- selected, but no contractor yet, for work the landscape, in church icons that teen other reactors generate half the of a scale, a type, and a level of danger sported the family nose. I had thought of country’s electricity. that’s never been attempted. Chernobyl, happening far from my fam- Worldwide, more than 400 reactors This is the smoking gun, the Vesu- ily’s home and forty years after their supply commercial power, 104 of those vius, the mass murderer we’ve come to flight, as a public-health catastrophe, but in the United States — more than any see. And yet I find it a mute and empty not as having anything in particular to do other country, and more reactors per place, yielding no clue about the magni- with me. No moment on the trip would capita than Ukraine. Another 274 small tude of what happened here. bring me closer to them than this. reactors are used for research at univer- Well, except for when armed guards sities and laboratories (see related story, page 44). Of the dozens of nuclear In a child’s drawing, a gigantic scrutinized my passport at the entrance to power plants built since the explosion octopus hovers in the sky above a line of the power plant, where security has been at Chernobyl, most are in Asia; many are buildings, its tentacles stretching to every extra tight since 9/11. My last name raised in developing countries. There are reac- corner of the little city. Its forehead is a red flag, and I was challenged about it. tors in seismic zones, in countries with tattooed with a cluster of three triangles “Why can’t you speak Ukrainian?” I governments hostile to the environment — the radiation symbol that was once was asked, then advised: “Maybe you and to their citizens, and in metropolitan familiar on signs for fallout shelters. can get a Ukrainian husband on this trip, areas with tens of millions of inhabitants. Unlike with a flood, or a lava flow, and then you’ll finally learn.” Reactors of the same type as Cher- with radiation there’s no way of seeing nobyl’s, though modified since the acci- where the danger is, or when it’s passed. Mary Makarushka MAx’05 has written for The New York Times Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, and dent, still operate in Lithuania and Since you can’t fight an enemy you can’t Nepali Times, among others, and has edited for the Russia. even picture, psychologists at the journal Prehospital and Disaster Medicine.

46 ON WISCONSIN SPORTS

Leading the Chase Simon Bairu takes the long road to becoming an NCAA champion.

As he neared the UW SPORTS INFORMATION SPORTS (4) UW TEAM PLAYER finish line at the Pete Talafous NCAA cross-country championship race Five things to know about in November, Pete Talafous, a center on Simon Bairu x’06 the Badger hockey team: stole a quick look • He’s one of only three sen- over his shoulder to iors skating for the Bad- see his competition gers, who enter the fading behind him. postseason with realistic It was just a glance, hopes of competing for and then he the national title. returned his eyes to • Pete’s father, Dean, where they are usu- played for the UW from ally focused — 1971 to 1974, winning a straight ahead. national championship in On that day, 1973. Pete spent his fresh- there was no one in man year at the University Bairu’s sights. He of Alaska-Anchorage, crossed the line where his dad coached, with a pump of his before transferring back fist to become the to his home state. first Wisconsin run- • When he’s not skating, ner to win the indi- Winning the NCAA cross-country championship race hasn’t changed Simon Bairu’s he’s probably strumming. vidual crown since focus on his competition. “There is always someone else,” he says. He started playing acoustic Kathy Butler did it guitar eight years ago and in 1995. But for the got good enough that he junior track and team. Bairu accepted, and at the cross country, Bairu is often his had to choose between cross-country star, there is first race, he placed second. own best competitor. At the playing hockey and pursu- always something else to chase. “Well, you can’t stop now,” starting line of every race, he ing a career in The son of African Bairu’s father said to him. tells himself there is no runner music. immigrants, Bairu didn’t “Someone just beat you.” racing better than he is. “I am • Although he start running competi- “I was hooked,” Bairu says. sure everyone says that,” he ultimately tively until he was a “I couldn’t stop until I beat that laughs. But for Bairu, it is true. chose high-school student kid.” He won his next race, but Just two weeks after win- hockey, in Regina, by then, his goals had changed. ning the NCAA individual he still Saskatchewan. Rec- “There is always someone crown, Bairu traveled to his plays gui- ognizing his competi- else,” he says. native Canada to compete in tar every tive spirit and knack for In the past few years, Bairu the Canadian national cross- day and has outrunning his peers, his has outpaced most of those country championships. When written eight father offered him five dollars someones. With three All-Amer- he is asked how that race went, songs, which he plays to try out for the cross-country ican honors in track and two in he quietly admits he did well. “I while hanging around with teammates. • “I actually get more ner- vous playing hockey in A Red-Letter Day for Women Athletes front of people than I do While this year marks the athletes followed, unofficial came as they were introduced playing guitar,” Pete says. thirtieth season of “official” only because they competed at halftime of a UW women’s “Hockey is a big part of my women’s athletics at UW-Madi- before Title IX came along to basketball game in the Kohl life, but music has really son, the real story begins much level the playing field. Center — the kind of modern helped me become the earlier. Back in 1895, Andrew In January, the athletic facility that may have never person I am. I can’t imag- O’Dea led the “ladies boating department welcomed thirty- existed for today’s women ath- ine not doing either one.” crew” — the first female ath- five of those pioneers back to letes, had Wisconsin’s newest letes to compete for the univer- campus to get two things due letter-winners not laid the first sity. Generations of basketball to them long ago: a varsity let- stone years before. players, swimmers, and track ter and a big hand. The latter — Staff

48 ON WISCONSIN SPORTS

won,” he says, not mentioning “Everyone knows he would But the weather won’t keep Women’s hockey coach Mark he captured the title last year, give up his medal if it meant a him here forever. After his sen- Johnson ’94 received the too. “Did that sound bad? I team championship,” says ior season, Bairu will begin NCAA’s Silver Anniversary Award, don’t know what to say when teammate Bobby Lockhart competing professionally, and which recog- people ask me that.” x’06. “That’s just how he is.” he has his sights set on the 2008 nizes student- Nor do people know quite “I couldn’t have accom- Olympics in Beijing. “He takes athletes who what to make of Bairu, a hum- plished what I have without my his accomplishments in perspec- graduated ble, and perhaps unlikely, team,” Bairu says. “I want to tive,” says Lockhart. “He knows twenty-five NCAA champion. His Ethiopian look back and say, ‘Look what what he has done is admirable, years ago and mother and Eritrean father we did,’ not, ‘Look what I did.’ but he knows he has a long way have gone on escaped a war between their I want to share this feeling.” to go to reach what he wants.” to distin- countries to marry and raise a Team unity comes naturally And that’s why people Mark Johnson guished family, moving first to Saudi when you run one hundred around Madison regularly see careers. After competing for the Arabia, where Simon was born, miles a week together. After Bairu running past them. Often Badgers and the “Miracle on Ice” and later to Greece, where he training on his own in frosty on cold, rainy days, he’ll dash U.S. Olympic hockey team, John- spent the first years of his life. Canada, Bairu welcomes the by wearing only shorts, a son has been recognized for his Eventually, they settled in company. Before he came to sweatshirt, and a backpack. contributions on and off the ice, Regina, in the heart of the Wisconsin, he spent much of the They may not recognize him as most recently by the Vince Lom- Canadian prairie. year running alone on a tread- the NCAA cross-country cham- bardi Charitable Funds, which By the time he was in high mill, since the temperatures in pion, but they can’t help but honored him for his leadership school, Bairu dreamed of play- Regina often prevented him watch him. His determination is and service to the community. ing baseball for the Toronto from training outdoors. compelling — the way he stares Blue Jays, but his baseball “I think I am the only per- straight ahead, as if he’s chas- The men’s basketball team coach and teammates kept son who came to Wisconsin for ing something. completed a streak of thirty- eight consecutive victories at the wondering why they had not better weather,” he says with Which he is. Kohl Center in January. Only a yet lost him to the track team. a laugh. — Joanna Salmen x’06 ten-point loss to Illinois, unde- Each day before practice, Bairu feated and ranked number one effortlessly sprinted past his in the nation at the time, ended teammates in their warm-up the home-court winning streak, runs around the bases. IN SEASON the longest in school history. Once he took his father’s Men’s Golf bribe and turned to running, After winning two Football player Jim Leonhard Bairu caught the attention of tournaments during x’05 became Wisconsin’s first the UW cross-country coaches, the fall season, UW’s academic who were building a program linksmen pick up on a All-Ameri- that competes consistently for high note. Their last can since national championships. tournament of the fall Don Davey Twenty-one times, the Badgers was their best, notch- ’90, MS’95 have finished in the top five at ing the third-lowest earned the NCAA championship meets, score in team history distinction including placing second the for fifty-four holes. in 1990. past two seasons. Garrett Jones swings for a school record. Now they’re teeing up Leonhard, And that history is why for a strong showing a former Bairu’s individual victory was a in the Big Ten conference tournament, which this year takes place walk-on bittersweet moment for him at the UW’s University Ridge course. who and his teammates. Although became a Jim Leonhard they were favored to win the Circle the dates: March 4–6, St. Croix Classic, in the U.S. Virgin three-time team title this year, Wisconsin Islands; May 7–8, Big Ten championships, Madison; May 19, NCAA All-Big Ten safety, is a kinesiology ended up second, losing by a tournament play begins. major. He completed his Badger slim margin to Colorado. football career January 1 at the Keep an eye on: Sophomore Garrett Jones, who tied a school At a press conference for Outback Bowl, which Wisconsin record with a round of sixty-five during the Xavier Invitational this the individual champion, Bairu lost to Georgia, 24–21. fall, is the team’s number one player. didn’t want to talk about him- self. He instead credited his Think about this: It might be worth watching the twelfth hole at teammates. U-Ridge in May. Jones hit a hole-in-one there in September.

SPRING 2005 49 ALUMNI NEWS

Compiled by Paula Wagner firm of Williams Schifino “journey from immigrant Apfelbach ’83 Mangione & Steady. poverty to enduring glory What’s New to You... Richard Taber MS’49 and as the kings of the circus Neil Payne ’61 are two gents world,” author Jerry Apps early years who know a lot about nature, ’55, MS’57, PhD’67 includes ...is news to us! and they’ve teamed up to oral histories, circus ephemera, Please update us on your recent “After ‘testing the waters’ in produce Wildlife, Conservation, never-published-before photos, the 1950s with six graduate and Human Welfare: A United personal correspondence, and achievements, transitions, and credits in education at the States and Canadian Perspec- much more in this first account other significant life happenings. UW,” began Spencer Scott tive (Krieger Publishing). Taber of the Ringlings in more than ’35, MPh’39, he acquired is an emeritus professor of half a century. Apps, who has You may e-mail your thirty-four graduate credits wildlife at the University of written extensively about Bad- (brief, please!) news to in education at the University Montana and was one of the ger State and U.S. history, splits of Southern California in Los few graduate students of Aldo his time between Madison and [email protected]; Angeles, then “departed the Leopold. Payne is an emeritus Wild Rose, Wisconsin. area short one course and a professor of wildlife at UW- As both a memoir and a fax it to (608) 265-8771; or dissertation” for a doctorate. Stevens Point and was an tribute, Kenneth Lange ’56 mail it to Alumni News, On September 9, 2004, Scott advisee of UW limnology Pro- has written A Naturalist’s completed the requirements fessor Arthur Hasler PhD’37. Journey (New Past Press). In the Wisconsin Alumni Association, for a PhD in education through Taber spends his retirement in book, which chronicles his work 650 North Lake Street, Hamilton University! The Scotts, Missoula, Montana, while as a Wisconsin Department of of Pharr, Texas, planned to cele- Payne splits his among Plover, Natural Resources naturalist at Madison, WI 53706-1476. brate with a trip to Australia in Wisconsin; Sanibel Island, Devil’s Lake State Park for three Space limitations prevent us February 2005. Florida; and Campbellton, New- decades, Lange’s love for the foundland, with his spouse, Baraboo Hills and Sauk Prairie from printing all of the good Janis Barberie Payne ’64. region is evident. He also news that we hear, but 40s–50s “After a mere twelve years, applauds other naturalists, as Bush Pilot in Diamond Country well as the “bachelor farmers, please know that we do enjoy “Eighty-two years old and still (Main Street Rag) is finished farm hands, the singing bowler, hearing from you. playing golf, tennis, and bicy- and published,” writes Donald and other free spirits” whom cling,” writes Norris Yonker Haack 52, referring to his he’s met along the way. ’45, who majored in metallur- autobiography. As the “Indiana The Kehls, whose name Please e-mail death notices and gical engineering at the UW Jones of the diamond industry” is practically synonymous with and retired in 1987 as the and “one of the few surviving dance instruction in Madison, all address, name, phone, and president of Kawin Engineering bush pilots to fly the uncharted have the oldest, continuously e-mail changes to Associates. He adds, “Would jungles of British Guiana,” family-run studio in the nation love to hear from classmates” Haack operated an air-charter — founded when F. W. (Freder- [email protected]; at 21 South Sleight Street, service to remote diamond- ick) “Daddy” Kehl began teach- fax them to (608) 262-3332; Naperville, Illinois 60540. mining areas of South America, ing in 1880. In 1922, he passed There are über lawyers created and operated ocean- the school to his son Leo Kehl, mail them to Alumni Changes, in our midst! Among those going excursion boats in the who attended the UW and cho- Wisconsin Alumni Association, selected by their peers for West Indies, and maintained an reographed its Haresfoot Follies inclusion in The Best Lawyers international gem brokerage for nineteen years. Of Leo’s 650 North Lake Street, in America for 2005–06 are in Europe. Now settled with his three daughters — Virginia Madison, WI 53706-1476; or Howard Pollack ’68, JD’73 spouse, Janet Mills Haack ’54, Lee Kehl Mackesey ’56 of and Arthur Harrington ’72, in Huntersville, North Carolina, Dunwoody, Georgia; Jo Ann call them in to (608) 262-9648 JD’75 of Godfrey & Kahn’s Donald Haack has been a Kehl McDermott ’58 of Milwaukee office, plus Kevin president of the World Trade Cincinnati; and Jo Ann’s twin, or toll-free to (888) 947-2586. O’Connor ’72, MS’78, PhD’86 Association and lectures on Jo Jean Kehl Janus ’58 of Most obituary listings of WAA of the firm’s Madison office, world trade and gems. Middleton, Wisconsin — it was LaFollette Godfrey & Kahn. If you love the roar of the Jo Jean who eventually became members and friends appear in Irwin Feldman ’61, LLB’64, lions and the roar of the crowd, the school’s sole director. And the Insider, WAA’s member of Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan go behind the circus scenes now Jenny Janus Hiltbrand & Aronoff in Cleveland, was with Ringlingville USA: The ’82 is the fourth-generation publication, now published selected as a 2004 Ohio Super Stupendous Story of Seven director, with her sister Jeanne thrice annually and inserted into Lawyer, while Robert Maxim Siblings and Their Stunning Janus Keeler ’85, MBA’89 Stoler ’85 was named one of Circus Success (Wisconsin taking part on the staff. The On Wisconsin. the top 1.6 percent of attorneys Historical Society Press). To Kehl School of Dance will in Florida. He’s with the Tampa chronicle the Ringling Brothers’ celebrate its 125th anniversary

SPRING 2005 53 ALUMNI NEWS

on June 11 with a gala recital scientist at Earth Satellite Niguel, California, Frank pre- may say) food created by chef at the Wisconsin Union Theater. Corporation in Rockville, sented a live seminar during Kevin Tubb at Madison’s Eldo- “Woman seeking old Maryland, where he specializes the ninety-minute program and rado Grill. Itchy Cat’s owners, friend” might sum up the in geospatial methodologies was interviewed about her new Caroline Beckett ’73, MA’77, request we received from related to counter-terrorism books, Safeguard Your Identity: MFA’78 and Frank Sandner III Shirley Prom Loebel ’57. and narcotics. Protect Yourself with a Personal ’74, plan to publish several She’s searching for Cataldo The University of Chicago’s Privacy Audit and From Victim “colorful, appealing, informa- “Cal” Tanzella, with whom Graduate School of Business to Victor: A Guide to Ending tive, and inviting” books a year. she sang folk and other music has chosen Rick Steiner ’68 — the Nightmare of Identity For the past twenty-five years, as a UW student. Automaker a theatrical producer in Cincin- Theft, Second Edition with CD they’ve also been designers and Fiat sent Tanzella to the UW nati — as its distinguished (both from Porpoise Press). partners in Flying Fish Graphics, to study engineering, and he entrepreneurial alumnus for Blending a coming-of-age a company that specializes in returned to Italy in 1957. If 2004. Steiner’s first Broadway theme, a morality tale, and a educational graphics, exhibits, anyone knows his where- play, Big River, garnered seven probe of life’s big issues into a print pieces, and books. abouts, please alert us here Tony Awards, and he’s gone on legal-suspense story, first-time April 2004 was the month at Alumni News HQ — Loebel to co-produce more Tony win- novelist Jody Weiner ’70 when Peter Fox ’73, MA’82 made a CD of their music and ners, including The Producers, has written Prisoners of Truth began his work as the Wiscon- would like to send it to him. Into the Woods, and The Secret (Council Oak Books). His sin Newspaper Association Kenneth Goetz ’58, Garden. experiences as an attorney in (WNA)’s new executive director PhD’63 reports that his book, San Francisco allowed him to and retired from a thirty-four- Bending the Twig: a Memoir incorporate real-life courtroom year active-duty and reserve (AuthorHouse), “while not a 70s drama — and plenty of laughs military career as a colonel in best seller, continues to sell — into the book. A significant the Wisconsin Army National steadily, and reviews and Congratulations to our nation’s portion of it takes place on Guard. Prior to his new WNA reader feedback have been new ambassador to Nigeria: the UW campus during the position, Fox spent twenty- gratifying.” Goetz came out John Campbell PhD’70. He 1967–68 academic year as well, three years in daily newspaper of retirement for a few weeks was sworn in in May and capturing the turbulence and work, and served as the direc- this past summer to teach presented his credentials to transformation of that era. tor of public information for cardiovascular physiology at Nigerian President Olesgun Policing Needham: A Story the UW System and as secretary the University of Kansas Obasanjo in June. A career of Suburban Cops (Rivercross of the Wisconsin Department Medical Center. He lives in foreign-service officer since Publishing) is a historical of Employment Relations. He Shawnee Mission. 1975, Campbell has served in portrait of the crimes that have lives in New Glarus. President Bush has nomi- Lyon and Paris, France; Geneva, been committed in Needham, New Yorker Warren Kozak nated Jon Strauss ’59 to the Switzerland; Lagos, Nigeria; Massachusetts, as well as a look ’73 presented his new book, National Science Board, the and Pretoria/Cape Town, at the myriad responsibilities The Rabbi of 84th Street: The governing body of the National South Africa. of suburban police officers. Extraordinary Life of Haskel Science Foundation. Following Calling all fans of the The book is the work of Lisa Besser (HarperCollins), and Senate approval, he will serve Whad’Ya Know? public-radio Brems (Brayton) MA’71, spoke at the UW’s Hillel in a six-year term. Strauss is the program! Its host since 1985, a former police-beat reporter November about his friendship president of Harvey Mudd Col- Michael Feldman ’70, has who lives in nearby Dedham. with the legendary Hassidic lege in Claremont, California. added another book title to Real-estate developer rabbi. Kozak previously worked his credits: Something I Said? Carolyn Kau ’72 is a busy in broadcast journalism for Innuendo and Out the Other woman. She and her brother twenty-five years. 60s (University of Wisconsin Press). are the managing partners of (Whad’ya know?!) Other works Kau Investments, a company “I’ll be brief,” began Among the new inductees of by this witty Madisonian that their mother started from Joanne Goldberg Yatvin the Oklahoma State University include Whad’Ya Knowledge?, almost nothing when she PhD’74 of Portland, Oregon, College of Education Hall of Wisconsin Curiosities, and found herself widowed, with but she packed a lot of accom- Fame is Audrey Oaks MS’62 Thanks for the Memos. You young children to support. plishments into a small space. of Stillwater, a retired associate can learn even more at The firm holds several hundred Yatvin was recently elected professor of art education. www.notmuch.com. units of housing stock, mostly vice president of the National The National Art Education Are you worried about in Kau’s home community of Council of Teachers of English; Association also named her its identity theft? Then we hope Monona, Wisconsin. she will become president-elect 2003 Art Educator of the Year. you didn’t miss the December Itchy Cat Press is rolling! in 2005 and president the next Even though he’s retired airing of the PBS special “Iden- The new Blue Mounds, year. In August, she published from teaching at Ohio State tity Theft: Protecting Yourself Wisconsin, publishing house A Room with a Differentiated University, Douglas Way ’67 in the Information Age,” has produced its first book, View: How to Serve All Children won’t be spending many hosted by Mari (Marion) Bear Eldorado Grill Cookbook — as Individual Learners (Heine- leisurely days on the golf Frank ’70. An attorney and Southwestern Cuisine, to mann), targeted to K–8 course just yet. He’s now chief privacy consultant in Laguna showcase the (excellent, if we language-arts teachers.

54 ON WISCONSIN ALUMNI NEWS

It’s easy to see why evaluated about 125,000 in December.” Pedrana is an the Council for the Spanish children’s books — to create adjunct with the University of Bookmark Speaking gave its Lifelong her own book of selections this St. Thomas and a lecturer at Accomplishment Award this spring: 100 Best Books for Chil- her newest alma mater, the fall to Rafael Fernandez dren (Houghton Mifflin). But University of Houston. MS’75, a bilingual school social this work is more than just a Fairfax, Virginia, resident worker for the Milwaukee list — organized by age group, Mark Prahl ’81 is the new Public Schools. As a college it offers plot lines for all of the associate director for opera- student, he co-established a books and tells the fascinating, tions for Voice of America Latin American Project to assist behind-the-scenes stories that (VOA) — the U.S. government’s migrant workers in the Dane went into their creation. international, multimedia County area. Later, Fernandez Silvey’s ten-month book tour broadcasting service. Prahl will founded the Guadalupe Arts took her to twelve states and oversee six radio and television Program; El Universal, a com- the Today show. She lives in divisions and serve as a senior munity newspaper; Education: Westwood, Massachusetts. adviser to the VOA director. A Family Affair, a program to In September, Fulbright The service offers one thou- recognize parental and com- scholar Pamela Brouillard ’79 sand hours of programs each munity leadership; and Cantos headed to Zagreb, Croatia, to week, in forty-four languages, de las Americas, a celebration lecture at the University of to an audience of some 96 Mark Ehrlich PhD’92, of Milwaukee’s many cultures. Zagreb’s medical school. When million people worldwide. PhD’00 has written The The state’s Association of in the U.S., she’s an associate The 2004 Pharmacist of Guy’s Illustrated Guide to School Social Workers also hon- professor of psychology at the Year, as selected by the Marriage (Goblin Fern ored him with its Excellence in Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. Pharmacy Society of Wisconsin, Press) — a book that takes Education Award in 1999. is Lynnae Swentik Kiedinger a humorous look at the The Hato Rey, Puerto Rico, Mahaney ’82. This fall, she wedded condition. In the office of the National Labor 80s was also elected to the board chapter titled “The Man Relations Board (NLRB) has a of the American Society of Traps,” for instance, the new deputy regional attorney: ”I’ve been caring for and Health-System Pharmacists. author proffers rules for Luis Padilla JD’75. He’s working with bats for the past Mahaney serves as the chief household and personal been serving as a supervisory ten years,” writes Barbara of pharmacy for Madison’s cleanliness, ways to show attorney there since 2002, and Schmidt French ’80, “and William S. Middleton Memorial you care (hints: jewelry! has also worked in the NLRB’s believe that they may be using V.A. Hospital. chocolate! flowers!), and Chicago office and in private syntax in their communications Real-Life Financial Planning communication styles practice. with one another.” A conserva- (Aspatore Books) is a new (women want to talk; guys For two weeks in October, tion information specialist with creation of Todd Bramson don’t). In “A Few Helpful twenty Madison-area volun- Bat Conservation International ’83, a certified financial Hints,” stick figures remind teers cared for children and in Austin, Texas, French is planner who’s the president readers about the Mars- completed construction deciphering the language of of Bramson & Associates in Venus differences regarding projects in Lima, Peru, at the Mexican free-tailed bat. Verona, Wisconsin. He’s been the perception of dirt, the Puericultorio Perez Aranibar — She’s also the co-author of recognized as one of the 150 positioning of toilet seats the largest orphanage in South Captive Care and Medical best financial advisers for doc- in the dark of night, and America, housing six hundred Reference for the Rehabilita- tors nationwide — twice — by the proper uses of clothes vulnerable youths. Among the tion of Insectivorous Bats. Medical Economics magazine, hampers. In the end, Ehrlich workers were Nancy Schultz “I am sending you [news] and has frequently provided concludes that “women are MS’76, Hannah Pinkerton that I have been looking financial-expert segments for really, truly different from MS’82, and her spouse, retired forward to sending my dearest newscasts on Madison’s WMTV. men,” and “marriage is UW Professor Tad Pinkerton. alma mater for years,” began What if your dad started work!” Goblin Fern Press’s Global Volunteers (www. (Maria) Angela López (de building a basic tree house in managing editor, Robin globalvolunteers.org), a non- Castillo) Pedrana ’81 in her the back yard, but then had a Willard MA’91, notes that profit organization that offers October note to us. After flash of inspiration — or more women are buying the short-term volunteer programs graduating from the UW, she twelve? He adds sky-high tire book than men, and adds, around the world, coordinated eventually moved to Houston, swings, sixty-foot-high loops, “I’ve heard stories of women the trip. where she earned a BA from real jungle creatures, and mon- following their husbands Of the myriad children’s the University of St. Thomas in strous blimps until his creation around the house, reading books that have been written, 1989 and a master’s in educa- goes from being every kid’s the book to them, and say- which would you choose as tion in 1994. “Ten years later,” dream to one kid’s nightmare. ing, ‘See? I told you so.’ ” the top one hundred? Anita she says, “I finally completed Such is the stuff of Jungle Gym Mark Ehrlich carries out his Silvey MA’76 drew on her my doctoral work and success- Jitters (Walker & Company), own marriage in Madison. thirty-five years of publishing fully defended today! I plan to the first children’s book by experience — during which she do the whole thing and ‘walk’ Chuck Richards MFA’83.

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He’s also completed drawings Why would you run 135 our journey was blessed with Bookmark for a second, Author Day for miles in temperatures averag- unimaginable, inexplicable Room 3T (Clarion Books), due ing 120 degrees? If you’re events that ... compelled us for release this year. Richards Carolyn Smith ’87, the team to write this book. [They] is an associate professor in the physician at Marquette Univer- moved us from our previously College of Design at Iowa State sity and the medical director of conceived notions about University in Ames. its Student Health Service, your existence and forced us to look If you’re based in or bound answer is, “Simply put, I run beyond what we had formally for Frankfurt, Germany, con- because I can, and I enjoy it.” come to know as ‘truth.’ ” The sider getting in touch with In July, Smith was the first and authors live in Minneapolis, Jim Kunick ’86 at jkunick@ only Wisconsinite to run in the where Tankenoff is a licensed mayerbrownrowe.com — 2004 Badwater Ultramarathon psychologist, and Bergér is a Madisonian Bradley Taylor especially if you’ve “found a — an invitational of eighty- holistic healer. ’68 has chosen the perfect way to watch Badger sports in eight runners from fourteen Laura Baxter ’88, JD’91 time to launch his new book, Germany,” he says. Kunick has countries who compete in a took her oath of office in Wisconsin Where They Row: transferred to Deutschland 135-mile, 13,000-foot vertical Arlington, Virginia, in October A History of Varsity Rowing at with the law firm of Mayer, ascent from Death Valley to as an immigration judge, join- the University of Wisconsin, Brown, Rowe & Maw to assist Mount Whitney that’s billed ing the ranks of more than two 1892–2002 (UW Press). clients with IT and outsourcing as “the most demanding and hundred others in fifty-three It will debut the weekend transactions, and he spoke on extreme running race offered courts throughout the country. of April 21–22, when the those topics at the Drug Infor- anywhere on the planet.” Baxter previously served as sen- Badger rowers will unveil mation Association’s European What’s more, Smith raised ior counsel to the deputy attor- the new UW boathouse and Clinical Data Management Con- funds for Special Olympics Wis- ney general at the Department host the Midwest Crew ference this fall in Amsterdam. consin while finishing sixteenth of Justice in Washington, D.C. Classic. Taylor’s book chron- It’s nice to know that you overall. Wow. (For more on Congratulations to Edward icles rowing’s infancy as the can go back to school and still ultramarathoners, read “Going Nawrocki ’88, who’s the new UW’s first intramural sport do so well — Julie Thompson the Distance” in the Fall 2004 president of St. Luke’s Quaker- in 1874; its long and rich Liston ’86, ’92 has proven it. issue of On Wisconsin.) town [Pennsylvania] Hospital. history as a men’s sport; the Not only has she earned her MS Working with cartoons all Do you have too much to introduction of women’s in nursing through the Univer- day seems like the kind of job do and not enough time to do crew in 1972; and the firm sity of Phoenix, but she did so you could fantasize about, but it? Of course you do, but that’s entrenchment of Wisconsin with a 4.0 GPA and member- could never actually do for a where Joan Tenhagen Craig rowers on every U.S. men’s ship in Sigma Theta Tau, the living. But take it from James ’89 of Stoughton, Wisconsin, and women’s Olympic crew international nursing honor Sturm ’87: it’s possible. He’s comes in. She’s the president from 1968 through 2000. society. Liston works in the the director of the Center for of Errand Ease, a new company Arthur Hove ’56, MA’67, Helena [Montana] Cardiology Cartoon Studies, which is slated that lightens her clients’ loads a former freshman Badger Clinic, was one of the first fifty to open in the fall of 2005 in by offering errand and shop- rower and the author of non-physicians to be admitted White River Junction, Vermont. ping services, service bidding, The University of Wisconsin: as an associate of the American As the country’s only full-time, house and pet sitting, and A Pictorial History, called the College of Cardiology, and lives two-year cartooning school, other customized services. book “a compulsively read- in a geodesic dome that she it will offer instruction by the Portland, Maine, song- able historical account that is and her spouse built. nation’s leading cartoonists, writer Paul Mollomo II ’89 thoroughly and richly docu- Quick! Name one of the graphic novelists, and comic- (http://pavsongs.com) would mented” — documentation country’s fastest-growing, book writers. Sturm himself is like to spread the word that that came about through single-species conservation a leader in the field: he’s a he’s released a new CD called four years of research, groups. Did you list the founder of the National Associ- Winter. Says William Reisman interviews with prominent National Wild Turkey Federa- ation of Comics Art Educators; of Face magazine, “[Paul rowing figures, visits to tion? Tammy Sjoman Litzer his work has won every major Mollomo’s] sincere lyrics and race venues, and collecting Sapp ’86 of Aiken, South industry award; and his book soft acoustic sound make him some two thousand images Carolina, would. As the federa- The Golem’s Mighty Swing was much more worthy than what depicting crew history that tion’s VP of communications, named the Best Graphic Novel mainstream music has to offer.” Taylor will donate to the she oversees its Web sites and of 2001 by TIME. UW archives and the new five magazines — Turkey Call, “This book is for every boathouse. Taylor is a The Caller, Women in the seeker,” say Mari Tankenoff 90s retired investment banker, a Outdoors, JAKES Magazine, ’87 and Scott Bergér MS’99 photographer, the author of and Wheelin’ Sportsmen — about their new work, Todd Babbitz ’91 will be able The Family Joke Book (Sun- and she helped to launch three Transcendental Illuminations: to “make frequent trips to see stone Press), and the father national TV shows: Turkey Call, Autobiographies of a Seeker the Badger football team and of a Wisconsin rower. Turkey Country, and Get in and a Saint (Beaver’s Pond his favorite Union Terrace the Game. Press). “As seekers ourselves, chair” now that he’s received

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his MBA from the University of How cool is this?! Jason Atlanta, a media company Environmental Learning Center Chicago and has settled into a Hoch ’93 recently rode on involved in space, science, and near Tomahawk since 1985, and strategic consulting role at the one of the nation’s first com- technological innovation. is a UW-SP associate professor Windy City office of McKinsey mercially available zero-gravity The Association of Nature of human dimensions of & Company. (That’s the word, flights — and he’s “pleased to Center Administrators has natural resources. McReynolds courtesy of his father, Allen note that his breakfast stayed honored Charles “Corky” teaches the nation’s only Babbitz ’65, MD’68 of Fox right where it belonged during McReynolds PhD’93 with undergrad course on nature- Point, Wisconsin.) Todd Babbitz his amazing experience.” Hoch its 2004 Leadership Award. center management, and his backpacked through Japan, is the vice president of Internet He’s been the director of expertise has been tapped by China, and Thailand after operations for Imaginova in UW-Stevens Point’s Treehaven groups throughout the world. graduating from the UW, and was previously a partner in the Chicago law firm of A Translator with TVNT MURRAY STEVEN T. McDermott, Will and Emery. a Golden Touch Today’s diesel engines feature “old technology made Once upon a time, there was a writer new,” according to Osama whose name was Hans Christian Ibrahim PhD’91, the vice Andersen. He wrote children’s president of the Medway, stories that were loved by all. Yet in Massachusetts-based Rypos, former decades, his work had been Incorporated. As part of the badly translated into English, and diesel avant-garde, he’s devel- what people thought were the true oped a patented filter that stories were really ugly ducklings — not the graceful swans of his own allows onboard computers to writer’s voice. control emissions, cutting soot Then one day, along came Tiina by up to 90 percent. Nunnally ’76, who was commis- Rodney Kopish ’91, ’96 Tiina Nunnally has retranslated the works of Hans Christian sioned to retranslate Andersen’s went from passively watching Andersen. She believes that translators can be compared to works from the original Danish in actors performing a script written by another, or musicians the 2002 Winter Olympics to honor of the bicentennial of his birth playing the notes of someone else’s symphony. earning a spot on the speed- on April 2, 2005. The resulting Fairy skating team that’s preparing Tales, a volume of thirty classic tales published by Viking Penguin, is due out this spring. for the December 2005 Olympic Readers may easily forget that authors from Tolstoy to Marquez to Andersen are accessible to a trials — during which the U.S. worldwide audience only by way of translators. They also may be unaware that translation theory national team will be chosen and practice have changed over time. for the 2006 Winter Games According to Caroline White, senior editor for Viking Penguin, modern translators are much in Torino, Italy. An El Cerito, more conscientious about retaining the author’s real style. “The best new translations can give California, high school science readers a whole new experience of a book they thought they knew,” she says, “and this is especially teacher on weekdays, Kopish important when it comes to writers whose work has not been well translated,” such as Andersen. had been pursuing his dream Nunnally, who is one of the world’s foremost translators of Scandinavian literature, has claimed by training in Salt Lake City on many awards. She notes that “no two translations of the same text will ever be alike. To be a good the weekends. Now he’s taken translator, you also have to be a good writer,” she says, because translations are essentially a rewrite a leave of absence from teach- — they can never be word-for-word conversions. ing to train there full time. A translator’s goal, she continues, “should always be to get as close as possible to the tone and You can keep up with Kopish intent of the author,” yet a translator “is like an alchemist who uses a mysterious distilling process at www.olympicquest.com. to transform one substance into another.” John-Leonard Berg Nunnally’s alchemy previously extracted gold by rendering Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg MA’92, the coordinator into English. She is also responsible for The Royal Physician’s Visit, which became an international of public services at UW- bestseller for Swedish writer Per Olov Enquist when his 1999 novel came out in English in 2002. Platteville’s Karrmann Library, Another triumph for Nunnally was her translation of the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy by has earned the institution’s Nobel Prize-winning Norwegian novelist Sigrid Undset (1882–1949). The new translation put 2004 Academic Staff Award a significant work from the 1920s back in the hands of contemporary readers and earned Nunnally for Excellence. In his drive for a glowing mention in the New York Times Book Review. The previous Lavransdatter translation from the “information literacy,” Berg has 1920s was “execrable,” the Times proclaimed, filled with “hoary medievalisms ... that have no basis developed resource orientation in the original.” By contrast, Nunnally’s version illuminates the original text in “lucid, scrupulous sessions for freshmen and area English.” high school students, among Nunnally, a Wisconsin native now living in Albuquerque, has two additional translations due many other accomplishments out this spring: a second novel by Per Olov Enquist and a six-hundred-page Andersen biography in optimizing the library’s by Jens Andersen. — Brenda Pittsley digital and online services.

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If you’re looking for tickets that they’ve been married for to an athletic event at Wash- three years and now have a ington State University in Pull- son, Max, born in October. man, talk to Dan Meyer ’94 — R&D magazine has he’s the new director of ticket bestowed one of its 2004 R&D sales there. He was previously 100 Awards — for a quality- an assistant athletic director for control system — upon Jodi marketing at Portland State, as Reeves MS’98, PhD’01, who well as an athletic department helped to develop a table-top intern here at Wisconsin. x-ray diffraction system. She Were you a fan of Fox TV’s works for the Schenectady, adventure series The Rebel New York-based SuperPower, Billionaire? This fall and winter, which is the energy-technology in the company of Sir Richard subsidiary of Intermagnetics Branson, the founder and chair General Corporation. of the Virgin Group, sixteen Hennssy Auriantal ’99 contestants vied for a chance is the force behind Wisconsin to become Virgin Global’s new Force, an organization that president and earn $1 million helps young people to improve — and Timothy Hudson ’96 their athletic, academic, leader- was among them! The group ship, and community-service performed daring feats at skills through basketball. It’s locations around the globe, based at the new MAC Sport including Hudson’s rope-ladder Center in Verona, Wisconsin. climb to the top of a hot-air Auriantal played for the Bad- balloon at ten thousand feet to gers from 1995 until 1999, was have a spot of tea. Sadly, our named to the Academic All-Big Badger contestant — a civil Ten team in 1997 and 1999, litigator for the Chicago law and played for the Canadian firm of Jenner & Block — was national Olympic team in 1999. the first to leave the show. When she wrote to us in William Lugo ’96, MS’99, July, U.S. Army Captain Ann PhD’03, a University of Sioux Dunscombe ’99 had arrived in Falls [South Dakota] assistant Germany, where she’s now the professor of sociology and commander of a combat mili- criminal justice, will soon teach tary police company. “I am lov- a course called Sociology of ing my time here,” she wrote, Video Games. He notes that adding that she’s been “having “the military genre of video a blast enjoying Europe” with games has exploded over the four other Badger alumni. Pre- last five years — in particular, viously, Dunscombe had spent an [urban-warfare] game called a year in Iraq, where she coor- Full Spectrum Warrior,” which dinated support for the Iraqi his students will be playing in Police Service, renovated class. Lugo chose it because “it “blown-up/looted police sta- is designed by the U.S. military. tions,” and helped to rebuild I think it is a controversial their police academy. “It was move, as we are currently in a great experience,” she says, a state of war.” “and I would do it all over Greg Takoudes ’96, a again in a heartbeat — and writer and freelancer in the probably will this fall.” film industry, and his spouse, As part of an investigative Emily Salkin Takoudes ’98, team, Rebecca Tait-Sleeter an editor at Simon & Schuster, ’99 recently received the have come a long way since Attorney General’s Award for they “met at the garbage cans Exceptional Service — the outside their Gilman Street highest commendation given apartment in 1995.” These New by the Department of Justice — Yorkers are pleased to report for her contributions as an

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intelligence analyst in the Now here’s an undertaking: FBI’s counter-terrorism division. Madisonian Beth (Elizabeth) She’s now an analyst for the Halley ’04 and four other U.S. Department of the Army adventurous women are in Europe. planning a ninety-day canoe excursion called the Borealis Paddling Expedition (www. 2000s borealispaddlingexpedition. com). They’ll begin in June in A work titled “Flow and Habi- Saskatchewan, paddling and tat Dynamics Associated with portaging over about 1,200 Entrenched Channels” is what miles of remote Canadian Michelle Luebke ’00 is pro- waters to reach the Arctic ducing with her STAR (Science Ocean by late August. Why? to Achieve Results) research Because the five women fellowship. She was one of 124 learned to love paddling as fellows chosen for 2004 by the girls at Camp Manito-Wish near U.S. Environmental Protection Boulder Junction, Wisconsin, Agency out of a pool of nearly their goal is to raise $50,000 to 1,700 applicants. Luebke is pur- endow a scholarship to send suing an MS at the University underprivileged kids to the of Georgia in Athens. camp. Post expedition, Halley According to MIT’s Technol- plans to join the Peace Corps ogy Review magazine, which and later go to medical school. UW grad made the 2004 list of the world’s one hundred Top Young Innovators? It was obituary Bell Labs researcher Aref Chowdhury PhD’01, who In recognition of the many specializes in nonlinear optics important contributions that and biochemical detection Erik Bye MA’53 made to research, and was also recog- Norwegian culture throughout nized for his work on nonlinear his lifetime, Norway’s best- photonic crystals. The tech- known broadcaster, poet, and niques that Chowdhury is balladeer received a state developing could one day be funeral in November in Oslo. used to help protect against He died on October 13. King airborne pollutants and to Harald and members of Parlia- monitor other environmental ment attended the service, conditions. during which Bye was lauded One of the new stars in as a “cultural giant for a whole the Culver [Indiana] Academies’ generation of Norwegians” Athletic Hall of Fame is Barry and the most award-winning (Barron) Richter ’01, a Culver Norwegian radio and television varsity-letter winner in both personality ever. He worked for hockey and golf. He also played the Associated Press, the BBC in award-winning hockey for four London, and public broadcaster years at the UW, where his NRK in Oslo, leaving behind a father, Pat Richter ’64, JD’71, wealth of radio and TV pro- was the longtime athletic grams, poems, and ballads. director. Barry Richter com- WAA presented Bye with one peted with Team USA in the of its Distinguished Interna- 1994 Olympics; has played in tional Alumni Awards in 1999. the NHL for the New York Rangers, Boston Bruins, and Montréal Canadiens; and is Compiled by Paula Wagner Apfelbach currently playing professional ’83, who does not drink things whose hockey in Switzerland. names end in -te or -cino.

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