MAGAZINE BowdoiVOL.84 NO.1 FALL 2012 n KLINGLE AND KOLSTER A RIVER LOST AND FOUND AN OLD TRADITION AND A NEW CURRICULUM FOR FILM NIGHT SHIFT BREWING: A COMMITMENT TO CRAFTMANSHIP FALL 2012 BowdoinMAGAZINE CONTENTS 14 A River Lost and Found BY EDGAR ALLEN BEEM PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRIAN WEDGE ’97 AND MIKE KOLSTER Ed Beem talks to Professors Klingle and Kolster about their collaborative multimedia project telling the story of the Androscoggin River through photographs, oral histories, archival research, video, and creative writing. 24 Speaking the Language of Film "9,)3!7%3%,s0(/4/'2!0(3"9-)#(%,%34!0,%4/. An old tradition and a new curriculum combine to create an environment for film studies to flourish at Bowdoin. 32 Working the Night Shift "9)!.!,$2)#(s0(/4/'2!0(3"90!40)!3%#+) After careful research, many a long night brewing batches of beer, and with a last leap of faith, Rob Burns ’07, Michael Oxton ’07, and their business partner Mike O’Mara, have themselves a brewery. DEPARTMENTS Bookshelf 3 Class News 41 Mailbox 6 Weddings 78 Bowdoinsider 10 Obituaries 91 Alumnotes 40 Whispering Pines 124 [email protected] 1 |letter| Bowdoin FROM THE EDITOR MAGAZINE Happy Accidents Volume 84, Number 1 I live in Topsham, on the bank of the Androscoggin River. Our property is a Fall 2012 long and narrow lot that stretches from the road down the hill to our house, MAGAZINE STAFF then further down the hill, through a low area that often floods when the tide is Editor high, all the way to the water. When we moved to the house 14 years ago, we Alison M. Bennie constructed a simple path over the muddy areas, so that we and our children – Associate Editor Matthew J. O’Donnell who were small enough then to need adult help getting out of the mud if they got Design their rubber boots stuck – could venture down to the water to boat, to play, and Charles Pollock just to look. Jim Lucas Pennisi & Lamare - Portland, Maine Contributors We knew about the river’s filthy and not-so-distant past, of course, and we were Douglas Cook cautious about swimming or doing anything that would create contact with the James Caton John R. Cross ’76 toxins that everyone assumed lurked there. But it was beautiful, without a doubt. Travis Dagenais ’08 Susan Danforth Cecelia Greenleaf Scott W. Hood Usually, when we talk about “unintended consequences,” we mean incidental Chelée Ross ’12 negatives that result from an action designed to do good. When the opposite Alix Roy ’07 occurs, we usually call that “serendipity.” I think about the unintended Photographs by Brian Beard, Dennis Griggs, Bob consequences of the environmental assault on the Androscoggin almost every Handelman, Pat Piasecki, Michele Stapleton, Brian Wedge ’97, and time we boat there. As Macauley Lord ’77 explains in the article in this issue Bowdoin College Archives. about professors Matt Klingle and Mike Kolster and their collaborative work, the Cover photo by Brian Wedge ’97. Androscoggin was actually protected in some ways by the horrors that it endured. BOWDOIN (ISSN, 0895-2604) By the time anyone wanted to live anywhere near it again, regulations were in is published three times a year by place that kept development to a minimum. The effect, as Lord says, is of a little Bowdoin College, 4104 College Station, Brunswick, Maine 04011. Printed by J.S. slice of wilderness that sits right next to downtown Brunswick. McCarthy, Augusta, Maine. Third-class postage paid at Augusta, Maine. Sent free of charge to all Bowdoin alumni/ae, parents of current and recent under- When I was a child, I spent a few years with my family living in Alaska. In graduates, faculty and staff, seniors, and the summer, we would take a floatplane to a cabin on Flathorn Lake, which selected members of the Association of Bowdoin Friends. was full of fish and practically empty of people. I don’t know what Flathorn is Opinions expressed in this magazine are like now but, amazingly, with its lack of houses and few boaters, being on the those of the authors. Androscoggin often reminds me of being there. Someday, I hope the fish will Send class news to classnews@bow- think so, too. doin.edu or mail to the address above. Advertising inquiries? Please e-mail [email protected] or fax 207- 725-3003. Please send address changes When you read of their work, you will want to see and learn more. To do that, to the mailing address above. Send visit http://research.bowdoin.edu/androscoggin-river-in-time-and-place/ ideas or letters to the editor to that address or by e-mail to bowdoinedi- [email protected]. AMB 2 BOWDOIN FALL 2012 FSSOWLIPJ&3;(3-2 All Kinds of People Good Bones, Great SRQ] Make Me Smile by Pieces: The Seven Jonathan Ross-Wiley Essential Pieces RMKLXWXERH ’95. JRW, 2012. That Will Cary You Through A Lifetime by Laruen A. McGrath ’07 and Suzanne McGrath P’07. Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2012. Cancer Slam by Ansley M. Growing Stories from Dauenhauer ’90. India: Religion and /IPP]2*E]EVH%WWMWXERX4VSJIWWSVSJ Three Towers Press, the Fate of Agriculture 7SGMSPSK]ERH%RXLVSTSPSK] 2012. by Whitney Sanford ’83. The University Press • The Absolutely True Diary of a of Kentucky, 2011. Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie • Drown by Junot Díaz The Charity by • Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Connie Johnson Hello Nature: • The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Hambley (spouse ’77), William Wegman Author Conan Doyle a novel featuring a Exhibition Catalogue. • The Devil’s Teardrop by Jeffrey Deaver Bowdoin alumna. Bowdoin College • Your Yorkshire Terrier’s Life by Elaine Charylar Press, 2012. Museum of Art, 2012. Waldorf Gewirtz • The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova 8SQ3OMI:MWMXMRK%WWMWXERX Detours: Book 1 by Jake Dellahunt: 4VSJIWWSV,MWXSV] Henry S. Maxfield Vineyard Lawyer by • The River Why by David James Duncan ’45. Southwick House, AJ Cushner ’57. Martin • When I Was a Child I Read Books by 2012. Sisters Publishing, LLC, Marilynne Robinson 2012. • Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes from and Why We Need to Get It Back by The Devil’s Whore, A Maine Prodigy: The Ann Vileisis edited by Jennifer Life & Adventures of • A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall Hockenbery Dragseth Elise Fellows White by of the Progressive Movement in America, ’93. Fortress Press, 2011 Houghton McLellan 1870-1920 by Michael McGerr White ’58. Maine • Rebirth of a Nation by Jackson Lears Historical Society, 2012. )PM^EFIXL7LIWOS%RHVI[;1IPPSR 4SWXHSGXSVEP*IPPS[,MWXSV] Early Wings Over Men Beware Women • The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed Maine by J.D. Davis by Gwen Thompson the Bishop? by Francisco Goldman ’52. Potts Point Books, ’92. Miami University • Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry 2011. Press, 2012. Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin • Histories of Race and Racism: The Andes and Mesoamerica from Colonial Ex-Boyfriend on Aisle Times to the Present edited by Laura One for the Road by 6: Stories by Susan Gotkowitz David J. Mather ’68. Jackson Rodgers ’82. • Reckoning: The Ends of War in Press 53, 2012. Peace Corp Writers, 2011. Guatemala by Diane M. Nelson • The Secret History of Costaguana by Juan Gabriel Vásquez • Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein '0%772);7$&3;(3-2)(9 FSSOWLIPJ&3;(3-2 `5 %` *338238)7 &IPMRHE/SRK%WWSGMEXI4VSJIWWSVSJ)RKPMWLERH%WMER7XYHMIW 8MERERQIR*MGXMSRW3YXWMHIXLI7UYEVI The massacre at Tiananmen Square has been Bowdoin: But of course, there is the fact written about extensively in terms of its global that, due to censorship, they must publish political ramifications, but Tiananmen Fictions their works from exile, where they then Outside the Square (Temple University Press, 2012) become diasporic writers. by Bowdoin Assistant Professor of Asian Studies and English Belinda Kong is the first book to BK: Well, the matter of censorship is not so look at its literary effects. Kong spotlights four cut and dried since some writers do write about key Chinese authors whose writings as “outsiders” Tiananmen and then return to China, while others inform their work and reveal how diaspora writers write about it only after continually reimagine Tiananmen’s relevance in a they’ve been abroad for post-1989 world, where China has emerged as a a while. It’s not that major global power. mainland writers can’t write about Tiananmen — Bowdoin: How do these fictionalized several do — but they have accounts bring us any closer to to disguise their references understanding the “real” story behind to the massacre with Tiananmen? various evasive strategies to circumvent the censors. Kong: The four Tiananmen fictions I look at Still, the main point do not function primarily as “correctives” to remains that the open critique of state violence can mythologies that cloak the actual massacre. Most only be published abroad. of these authors…do not write from a position of empirical information. Indeed, some of them Bowdoin: What is your hope for this book? deliberately stay away from this position of factual knowledge and focus instead on the partialness BK: When I started the project a decade ago of their knowledge. But that’s not to say these there were fewer than two dozen native Chinese works are therefore less valuable — on the authors writing Tiananmen fictions. Now there contrary, I see them as of primary importance for is a growing corpus. I hope this book will allow our understanding of what constitutes Chinese people who work on China to realize how crucial a diasporic literature in the last twenty years, how function diaspora writers can play in shaping global that literature has evolved, and how that literature understanding of Chinese history.