L.A. CITY COUNCIL PRESIDENT RECONSTRUCTING HAITI: ERIC GARCETTI ’92, ’93 SIPA YOUNG ALUMNI, STUDENT BRIDGES CITY’S DIVIDES VIEW RAVAGED NATION page 20 page 4 Columbia College March/April 2010 TODAY How To Survive Your Own Financial Crisis Jonathan Dahl ’80, ’81J, editor of SmartMoney magazine and author of 1,001 Things They Won’t Tell You, helps readers by making business writing personal PLUS Columbia Forum: 1959: The Year Everything Changed, by Fred Kaplan Alumni Reunion Weekend 9ebkcX_W9ebb[][ Come Celebrate Alumni Reunion Weekend 2010 — the reunion that everyone is looking forward to! In addition to class-specific events throughout the weekend, you can join all Columbians celebrating their reunions on Friday at the “Back on Campus” sessions, including Core 1945 Curriculum mini-courses, engineering lectures, tours of the Morningside campus and its libraries and more. There even will be unique opportunities to engage deeply with the 1950 city’s arts community with theater, ballet, music and gallery options. 1955 Columbians will be dispersed throughout the Heights and greater Gotham all weekend 1960 long, but Saturday is everyone’s day on campus. This year’s Saturday programming will invite all alumni back to celebrate and learn together from some of Columbia’s 1965 best-known faculty in a series of public lectures, at the Decades BBQs and affinity receptions. The night wraps up with the reunion classes’ tri-college wine tasting on 1970 Low Plaza, followed by our biggest line-up of class dinners ever and a final tri-college gathering for champagne, dancing and good times on Low Plaza. 1975 1980 Dates and Registration Information 1985 Thursday, June 3–Sunday, June 6, 2010 1990 REGISTER TODAY! For more information or to register online, 1995 please visit http://reunion.college.columbia.edu. 2000 If you register before Monday, May 3, you’ll receive a 10% discount on all events, excluding South Pacific, West Side Story, Next to Normal, American Ballet Theatre 2005 and New York Philharmonic tickets. 9ebkcX_W9ebb[][ CCT10_8.25x10_v2.indd 1 1/27/10 4:23:03 PM Columbia College Today Contents 20 4 10 16 64 17 COVER STORY ALUMNI NEWS DEPARTMENTS 31 B OOKSHEL F 2 LETTERS TO THE JONATHAN DAHL ’80, ’81J MAKES 17 Featured: Katherine Howe ’99 ED ITOR BUSINESS WRITING PERSONAL pulls from the stories of her real-life Salem, Mass., 3 WITHIN THE FA M ILY The SmartMoney editor helps readers weather ancestors to write The Physick 4 ROUN D THE UA D S Book of Deliverance Dane. A Q their own financial crises by providing practical, 4 Reconstructing Haiti accessible information in print and online. 33 O B ITUARIES 8 Medical Mission to 34 Connie Maniatty ’43 Haiti By Yelena Shuster ’09 10 5 Minutes with … 36 C LASS NOTES Stuart Firestein A LU M NI Upd ATES 11 Alumni in the News FEATURES 12 49 Joseph Goldstein ’65 Student Spotlight: Victor Suarez ’11 64 Maya Gupta ’99 ERIC GARCETTI ’92, ’93 SIPA IS 13 Campus News 20 69 Jake and Marty 14 MAKING TINSELTO W N GREEN In Memoriam: Harriss, LaSalle ’07 Kroeber, Yerulshalmi As Los Angeles City Council President, Garcetti 15 72 A LU M NI CORNER Update from Kabul: uses a soft-spoken style to help create a greener, After Core Curriculum Sarah Takesh ’95 more livable city. overload, a young alumnus 16 Claire Shipman ’86 By Justin Clark ’04J learns to stop whining and and Womenomics love reading again. 16 Affinity Groups To 24 COLU mb IA FORU M By Nick Kelly ’09 Gather at Reunion Allen Ginsberg ’48, Jack Kerouac ’44 and the Beats were one reason that Fred Kaplan titled his new Web Exclusives at www.college.columbia.edu/cct book 1959: The Year Everything Changed. This excerpt 5 MORE MINUTES shows how Columbia played a pivotal role in the Watch Stuart Firestein discuss his life and his work year’s culture shift. studying humans’ sense of smell. DON ’T SAY WE DI D N ’T WARN YOU Read an excerpt from Jonathan Dahl ’80, ’81J’s 1,001 Things They Won’t Tell You: An Insider’s Guide to Spending, Saving, and Living Wisely. CHIL D REN O F ALL AGES Watch juggling twins Jake and Marty LaSalle ’07 perform magnificent feats. MEET ERIC GARCETTI ’92 View a video biography of Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti ’92, ’93 SIPA. COVER ILLUSTRATION: JEAN-CLAUDE SUARÈS COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY Letters to the Editor The Road Less Traveled warm period: A thousand years ago, it was Volume 37 Number 4 I liked the January/February 2010 cover about three degrees warmer than now; March/April 2010 story, “The Road Less Traveled,” and en- Greenland grew crops; wine grapes were EDITOR AND PUBLISHER joyed reading about Columbia grads who raised in Scotland; and London was not Alex Sachare ’71 under water! MANAGING EDITOR followed unusual career paths. As an Ar- Lisa Palladino menian-American jazz pianist and com- 3. The earth’s average temperature does ASSOCIATE EDITOR poser (see 1972 Class Notes, same issue), not correlate with CO2, but is correlated Ethan Rouen ’04J my career path also has been unusual with solar activity. When Pennsylvania’s ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, ADVERTISING as well as enlightening, and perhaps the coal fields were being formed, the tem- Taren Cowan best post-graduate education I could have perature was similar to now, and the CO2 FORUM EDITOR Rose Kernochan ’82 Barnard hoped for. was 14 times the current CONTRIBUTING WRITER Armen Donelian ’72 concentration. If you liked Shira Boss-Bicak ’93, ’97J, ’98 SIPA HUDSON , N.Y. Gore’s erroneous film [An EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Inconvenient Truth], watch Grace Laidlaw ’11 McAleer/McElhinney’s Julie Poole ’11 GS Thank you for the focus on Jesse Thiessen ’11 Arts the “road less traveled.” Not Evil, Just Wrong. Since DESIGN CONSULTANT It was a choice a lot of us 2007, the Arctic ice has Jean-Claude Suarès made many years ago. It’s grown by 20 percent. ART DIRECTOR interesting how the same 4. CO2 is beneficial to Gates Sisters Studio alma mater could have plant life and therefore WEBMASTER Thomas MacLean such divergent offspring. beneficial to animals and CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS I think that’s the sign of humans. Eileen Barroso good parenting. 5. Subsidizing uneco- Char Smullyan Daniella Zalcman ’09 Tim Krupa ’63 nomical forms of energy to CANNON BEA ch , ORE . minimize warming from Published six times a year by the CO2 is fruitless. The physics show limita- Columbia College Office of Molly Ivins ’67J tions on “greenhouse” energy storage as Alumni Affairs and Development. DEAN OF ALUMNI AFFAIRS The mention of Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life by CO2 concentrations rise, anyhow. AND DEVELOPMENT Bill Minutaglio ’76 and W. Michael Smith This writer is unsubsidized by oil, coal Derek A. Wittner ’65 in the January/February “Bookshelf” fail- or utility companies! For alumni, students, faculty, parents and friends of Columbia College, founded in 1754, ed to mention that Molly, a former Texas Fred DeVries ’49, ’50E ’51E the undergraduate liberal arts college of Observer editor and nationally syndicated CH ADDS FORD , PA. Columbia University in the City of New York. columnist, also was a Columbia graduate. Address all correspondence to: The Rule of Law Columbia College Today Molly, who is remembered by her beloved Columbia Alumni Center Texas Observer with “The MOLLY Nation- In his letter to the editor (January/Feb- 622 W. 113th St., MC 4530 New York, NY 10025 al Journalism Prize” awarded each June, ruary), James E. O’Brien ’66 asserts that 212-851-7852 was in the Graduate School of Journalism CCT’s article on Attorney General Eric H. E-mail (editorial): [email protected]; (advertising): [email protected] Class of 1967. We miss her. Holder Jr. ’73, ’76L “is rather biased in that www.college.columbia.edu/cct Carlton Carl ’67, ’68J it suggests repeatedly that some terrorists ISSN 0572-7820 AUSTIN , TEXAS were too harshly treated during the Bush Opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect official years.” Mr. O’Brien then attempts to make positions of Columbia College [The writer is CEO/publisher of The Texas a case for what he calls “enhanced inter- or Columbia University. Observer.] rogation” — i.e., waterboarding and other © 2010 Columbia College Today All rights reserved. forms of torture. It has been repeatedly Going Green? demonstrated that torture doesn’t yield Pleased for your euphoria in using recy- anything in the way of useful intelligence, cled paper. Totally distressed, however, but what might be called the “pragmatic” as are tens of thousands of technically case against torture pales by compari- trained people, that there is no open re- son with the legal and moral arguments view of the “managed perception” that against it. Torture is a crime against hu- carbon dioxide causes global warming. manity. When the United States tortures, CCT welcomes letters from readers about We consider this the scam of the millen- it violates international treaties and estab- articles in the magazine, but cannot print or personally respond to all letters nium! In a nutshell: lished American law. Torture won’t make received. Letters express the views of 1. Alternate warm and cool periods us safer, but it will most assuredly corrupt the writers and not CCT, the College or the University. Please keep letters to 250 have occurred every 1,500 years for a mil- its advocates and practitioners. words or fewer. All letters are subject to lion years. Alan Wallach ’63, ’65 GSAS, ’73 GSAS editing for space and clarity. Please direct 2. Previous Roman and Medieval warm WAS H INGTON , D.C.