POMONA COLLEGE MAGAZINE WINTER 2010 3 / Pomonatoday
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PomonaINSIDE: NORTH-SOUTH DIVIDE / MY ROOM / HUNKS OF JUNK COLLEGE MAGAZINE Winter 2010 Faculty AT HOME PAGE21 SPECIAL ISSUE: SHELTER WINTER 2010 1 PomonaCollege /Shelter/ / FEATURES / North and South / BY ADAM ROGERS ’92 Even on a campus as small as Pomona’s, location is destiny 16 Faculty at Home A sneak peek inside the homes of six Pomona professors 21 My Room / BY ANNE SHULOCK ’08 Hanging on to your old bedroom as long as you can 29 Hunks of Junk / BY DAVID ROTH ’00 Helping overstocked Americans part with their stuff 31 Closer / BY ELLEN ALPERSTEIN Tighter quarters bring closer relationships 37 / DEPARTMENTS / Stray Thoughts 2 Bookshelf 44 Your Letters 3 Mind Games 48 Pomona Today 4 Pomona Blue 48 Pomona Tomorrow 12 Alumni Voices 50 Coming Soon 14 Travel Study 53 Picture This 34 Expert Advice 53 ViewPoints 41 Bulletin Board 54 Class Acts 42 / ON THE COVER Professor Shahriar Shahriari at home with his sons Kiavash, 12 and Neema, 9. —Photo by JOHN LUCAS 2 POMONA COLLEGE MAGAZINE / StrayThoughts / Pomona / LetterBox / COLLEGE MAGAZINE laude status and earning a Phi Beta Kappa his student. Or I should say I tried to get to know Winter 2010 • Volume 46, No. 2 accrued to only one of us. him. He was kind and remote, gentlemanly and Unforgettable Graduating in 1950, I obviously had no quizzical, and given to silence between sen- Hammering Home Visit PCM Online at www.pomona.edu/magazine. classes from him (although philosophy was one tences. I think I was a little afraid of him. It was great to see the article by Terril Jones of my favorite non-premed requirement subjects). Sometimes I was more curious about the man EXECUTIVE EDITOR/ART DIRECTOR/DESIGNER ’80 about the “Man vs. Tank” photo from Tianan - So my memory of Professor Sontag must be from than about what he was teaching. Here was Mark Wood ([email protected]) I lived my first six years in a tiny, thin-walled breadbox my father not only men Square. Although at first the name didn’t his days of being active in the Claremont United someone who was both deeply schooled and built, but also wired, plumbed and roofed. It had two bedrooms, a bath, and EDITOR seem familiar, the story of hiding his film and cam- Church of Christ after I started pediatric practice utterly informal and unpretentious, who could talk Mark Kendall ([email protected]) eras in the air vent in the bathroom ceiling remind- in Claremont. It was so encouraging to read how about Dante and Bukowski, Ornette Coleman, a wide front porch with a couple of wooden porch swings. Though we moved WEB EDITOR ed me that I had heard him give a brown-bag many lives were touched by this man, not just Spanish Renaissance songs and the Grateful away when I was six, we came back each summer, and after a couple of years, Laura Tiffany ([email protected]) presentation at Pomona some months after the through intellectual stimulation, but by his model- Dead, Native American vision quests, Lao Tzu’s in a fit of ambition, my father decided to use the old house as a staging ASSISTANT EDITORS Tiananmen event. His father was my Japanese ing the true Christian life. He had a “presence” philosophy, cheap whiskey or X-rated blues ground to build a bigger one next door. Mary Marvin professor. I had always been interested in interna- about him, and the article in the previous issue tunes, unconcerned with the false dichotomy So it must have been at the age of 9 or 10 that I made my first clumsy Pauline Amell Nash tional affairs, but his talk did a lot to make me has told me what it was. between low and high art, between mysticism attempt to wield a hammer, dig a trench, and shovel sand and cement into a CLASS NOTES EDITOR realize how much was out there that the casual —Ralph Campbell ’50 and daily bread. His poetry, then and now, is a cement mixer with the right amount of water from the garden hose. I Perdita Sheirich U.S. newspaper reader wasn’t necessarily aware Polson, Mont. beacon for me—each line stripped to essence, as remember the rumble of the cement mixer with particular clarity, the gray PUZZLE EDITOR of. It’s amazing to think now that as he was spare, open, sacred and lovely as the desert ter- dust that clung to clothes and coated nostrils, the grainy texture of the wet Lynne Willems Zold ’67 speaking that day, Mr. Jones had such an incredi- rain which he came from. cement as it rolled through the turning barrel, the frustration when I got the CONTRIBUTORS ble and moving photograph tucked quietly away. When I gave a recital at the end of my mix wrong, the pride when I got it just right. Ellen Alperstein (“Closer”) is an independent writer and editor —Carey McIntosh ’92 sophomore year, Barnes was the only profes- based in the Los Angeles area. Lusaka, Zambia sor in attendance. It wasn’t because he need- The other thing I remember with great clarity—painful clarity, in fact—is Adam Rogers ’92 (“North and South”) is a senior editor for ed to hear my music, God knows. He came, I Wired magazine. jumping off the foundation one day while the walls were still bare studs and think, because he liked me. He showed up to landing with one foot on a board with a particularly wicked nail in it. What I David Roth ’00 (“Hunks of Junk”) co-writes a sports blog for The Wall Street Journal, and his work has appeared in Slate and the post-concert party, over on Bonita Avenue, remember even more clearly is stamping my other foot down in order to res- The New Republic. where a group of us gathered around a beer cue the first and coming down on another nail that was just as wicked. I sup- Anne Shulock ’08 (“My Room”) is a reporter for Sactown Neurotransmitters keg in my living room, singing some, drinking a pose I was lucky there wasn’t a third nail when I plopped down and cried. Magazine in Sacramento, Calif. lot, up till 5 a.m. and Barnes was one of the and Connections last to leave. That was the spring my mother But in spite of that painful memory (I think home-duffers like me have the CONTRIBUTING STAFF same sort of selective amnesia about old construction injuries that mothers Ben Belletto died of cancer, not a week after the concert, and Travis Kaya ’10 The fall edition are said to have about the pain of past labors), those years of living among of PCM, for me, is a real though he never knew about my mother, or much Will Hummel ’12 keeper. Three reasons: Mark Wood’s remarks construction projects left me reluctant ever to hire someone else to do a job Lauri Valerio ’12 about my personal life, he showed me a kind of on work and play; the marvelous history of around the house. My first instinct is always to say, “I can do that.” companionship that semester that stayed with Pomona College Magazine is published three Professor Fred Sontag, and some comfort me. Whatever he had me reading, whatever we In that spirit, through the span of four houses, I have patched and times a year. Copyright 2010 by Pomona College. Send letters and submissions to: Pomona College Magazine, 550 North College derived from the obituary of my close friend talked about, whatever feelings I was able to refinished hardwood floors, put up drywall, tiled just about every surface Ave., Claremont, CA 91711 or [email protected]. For address who happened to be (an act of God) my vent in his writing classes, helped me veer from a except ceilings, installed bathroom fixtures, rewired electrical outlets, laid changes, class notes, scrapbook photos, or birth or death notices, brother-in-law, Cliff Schwarberg ’50. email: [email protected]; phone: 909-621-8635; or fax: deep kind of trouble that I was on the edge of— bricks, applied stucco, even sandblasted an old chimney that we had uncov- 909-621-8535. For other editorial matters, phone: 909-607-9660 Like Mark, I am fascinated by the interrela- raw, terrified and confused in a way I could not ered in our kitchen—a process that ended up with about a hundred pounds or email: [email protected]. Magazine policies are available at: tionships of neurotransmitters and stress hor- begin to articulate except through art. Is there www.pomona.edu/magazine/guidelines. of sand all over the kitchen floor and maybe another pound our two inside mones. Throw in prostaglandins, and it really any salve greater than the company of friends? my clothes. Pomona College is an independent liberal arts college gets interesting. But the uplifting thing of his Remembering Is there any question that art, in its infinite wel- established in 1887. Located in Claremont, Calif., it is the found- “homily” is his describing the benefits of enjoying come, its possibilities and forms, can literally I’m not alone in this insanity, I know—especially today, with financial pres- ing member of The Claremont Colleges. sures squeezing family budgets. Angie Hicks, the founder of Angie’s List, an one’s work. The flip side being that disliking Dick Barnes save our lives? PRESIDENT one’s work can chew up the body as well as organization that helps homeowners find reliable contractors, said recently It’s a small thing, huddling with a professor David W.