FALL 2001 Freedom Riders Emotions and Health Jerome Dotson, Jr
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FALL 2001 Freedom Riders Emotions and Health Jerome Dotson, Jr. and Al Schwartz Live Elizabeth Keeney Electric Chair: No More? Here’s what Baron Kelly did today: ■ Studied lines for his role in “Master Harold and the Boys,” playing this fall in Madison’s Mitchell Theatre. ■ Shared tales with some fellow theater students about the days when he acted with Al Pacino on Broadway. ■ Offered tips on technique to a group of aspiring student actors, who are enrolled in a multicultural acting class that he helped design. ■ Filmed an episode of “Cultural Horizons in Wisconsin,” a PBS educational show that he hosts, which teaches children of all cultures about their heritage. ■ Ordered lefse from a local restaurant — in Norwegian, which he’s been learning in his spare time. ImagineImagine whatwhat www.wisc.edu he’ll do tomorrow. © 2001 UW-Madison Fall 2001 IN Volume 102, Number 3 WISCONSIN The Past Walks With Us 18 Calling themselves modern-day Freedom Riders, UW students journeyed into the American South to trace the path of civil-rights history. Along the way, they learned that events of the past aren’t always so distant — and that in many ways the past still shapes the present. By Michael Penn MA’97 Getting Emotional 28 When UW researchers Ned Kalin and Richard Davidson first began to suspect that emotions are important to our health and well-being, almost no one in the scientific community agreed with them. Now there’s a burgeoning effort to understand the biological 18 roots of feelings like happiness, anger, anxiety, and love — and Kalin and Davidson are leading the way. By Dian Land and Brian Mattmiller ‘86 Al Schwartz Live 34 What’s it like to serve as Dick Clark’s righthand man, marry one of the Doublemint Twins, and stand backstage with Michael Jackson? Al Schwartz ‘53, who got his start in the UW Haresfoot club, has helped to create shows ranging from the American Music Awards to “TV Bloopers” — and he’s still going strong. By Susan Lampert Smith ‘82 28 58 The Switch 38 There is a national trend toward lethal injection and away from that uniquely American institution, the electric chair. Though INSIDE it was the country’s most common form of execution for nearly a hundred years, the chair is now disappearing as one state after LETTERS 4 another discards electrocution as cruel and prone to failure. UW Emeritus Professor Theodore Bernstein, perhaps the only living SIFTING & WINNOWING 7 expert on legal electrocution, is working to pull the plug on the DISPATCHES 8 electric chair permanently. EXTRA CREDIT 16 By John Allen 34 ASSOCIATION NEWS 44 ALUMNI NEWS 47 Cover: Jerome Dotson, Jr., a graduate student in Afro-American PHILANTHROPY 52 studies, and Elizabeth Keeney, a senior in social work and theater, THE MAIN EVENTS 54 were among the thirty-four UW students who set off on a bus to learn about civil-rights history — and came back having learned BACKWORDS 58 even more about each other. Photo by Jeff Miller FALL 2001 3 LETTERS Who’s a Survivor? immigrant, working-class, and artists’ people who are too arrogant to admit As a UW business school graduate, community, was particularly hard hit. failure are doomed to “survive” again. I read with interest the “Dot-com According to the San Francisco Rent If you want to give equal exposure to Survivors” story (Summer 2001). I, too, Board, 1,000 Mission District house- other survivors, I suggest a visit to the exercised my entrepreneurial spirit when holds were evicted from 1990 to 2000. UW’s cancer treatment center, or a drive I opened a business combining specialty These evictions made possible a drastic to one of the century-old dairy farms coffee with on-site bagel production in increase in rents and have contributed to around Dane County. Here you’ll find Columbus, Ohio. However, my experi- a severe loss in affordable housing in the survivors in the truest sense of the word. ence differs in that I developed a com- neighborhood and the city. Communi- Darren Bush ’88 prehensive business plan, incorporating a ty-serving agencies were also affected. In Madison break-even analysis before proceeding a massive eviction in the heart of the with financing. I was stunned to read Mission District, Bigstep.com displaced A George, by Any Other Name ... that Anil Rathi lost “more than $50,000” twenty-six nonprofit tenants in the Bay- I enjoyed “Listening to History’s Voices,” in his initial venture, India2U.com. A view Bank building. Michael Penn’s article on Susan Zaeske’s solid business plan should have identified Throughout San Francisco, develop- Great Speakers class. But just to get exactly how India2U.com would be ers, realtors, and cyber-businesses alike history’s voices right, the previous profitable, if at all, before proceeding. took advantage of lax zoning enforce- version of this course was taught by Start-ups and dot-com businesses ment and an inflated market, dodging Fredrick W. Haberman, not George must still adhere to basic business princi- city fees and taxes and drastically Haberman. ples. Although Rathi believes “an entre- altering the face of the city. William Sewell, Jr. ’62 preneur is a visionary,” I would be wary The real survival story is about the Chicago, Illinois of financing any deal until it is funda- communities that continue to struggle mentally sound, visionary or not. Inci- with the displacement of thousands of Garden of Eatin’ dentally, I sold Brian’s Bagel Café to a long-term residents, community-serving It was interesting to read the article chain at the apex of the bagel market and businesses, and community-based orga- “Homegrown Diversity” (Summer have returned to corporate America. nizations. The Mission community, for 2001). My wife and I moved to 406F in Brian Hale ’81, MBA’87 example, is currently organizing a plan- Eagle Heights in August 1959. The Boston, Massachusetts ning process to develop permanent and spring of 1960 we planted our first gar- enforceable zoning controls that respect den. I was a second-year medical student The other night I had this crazy dream. community needs as opposed to fickle without any money. We lived on my There was a roller coaster full of smartly “market forces.” wife’s teacher’s salary of $290 per month. dressed business types holding Scotches In my book, they are the real We had both grown up on farms, and and martinis, chatting and making busi- survivors and the heroes of this story. our parents always had gardens. ness plans. After a ride of about a minute If there is any stability and sustainability My wife was due with our first child or so, they would get off, hair windblown in our communities and our economy, we in late May. When the baby became two and clothes slightly sweaty and wrinkled. have them to thank. weeks overdue, my wife went to the The end of the ride swarmed with press Sarah Town ’96 garden and hoed the potatoes, hoping who patted everyone on the back and San Francisco, California that would induce labor. It did not help. handed out shiny trophies that read, (Editor’s note: The full text of Sarah Town’s We were happy to read about how “SURVIVOR.” letter is online at uwalumni.com/onwisconsin.) this gardening tradition at Eagle Heights According to the mainstream media, has continued since 1960. first came the boom, then came the bust, I beg you, in the name of all that’s John MD’62 and Arla Clemons and then came the “survivors,” rugged decent, to stop using the phrase “dot- La Crosse, Wisconsin entrepreneurs who created an industry, com survivor.” Funny how a person who then somehow managed to stay afloat starts a virtual business and fails is a Thank you for the soul-nourishing after its precipitous crash. survivor, while a person who starts a memories stirred by your article on the But there is another side to this story. bricks-and-mortar storefront and fails is, Eagle Heights gardens. Truly, some of The dot-com boom trashed San Fran- well, a failure. Perhaps what the dot-com my strongest memories of UW-Madison cisco. Throughout the city, long-term survivors are best at is marketing them- are rooted back in my two garden plots. residents, local businesses, cultural orga- selves as such. In the early eighties my husband, nizations, and schools were displaced by Not that there’s anything wrong Dennis, was on the Garden Committee, skyrocketing rents. San Francisco’s Mis- with failure — my failures have taught and at the time was one of the few folks sion District, long an important Latino, me a lot more about the world than my who knew how to take care of the water- successes. And there’s the problem — ing pipes. 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