; THE UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND PEOPLE AND IDEAS FOR AUTUMN 2014 (A z rgj o cn 1 p* z a 0 3 rn ; Qu o 2 1C 0 O § 2 5' I=> n r* H. O Pi C3_ o . £ SrH I z * I m a s o o r» z GT ra T I r,.1 5 mxnsi C wu m - 's\v lusn. mm whose bookshelf is this, anyway? ;V * (try to figure it out, page 26) ■5-‘ PLUS: Things invented by Loggers • The service dog that changed my life from the president The pier that stands at the end of the street where President Thomas' mother still lives, in Ocean Grove, N.J. The boss tells us he used to fish off the pier with his patient grandfather and would often "shoot the pier" back in his surfing days. On the cover: No, we're not going to tell you which professor this shelf belongs to—the puule starts on page 26—but the creature sitting on the shelf was made by Jennifer Tillett '02 and was a gift to her teacher. Photo by Ross Mulhausen. Home berths Tomorrow is my mother’s birthday—the complicated relationship with his own home blocks from the constant rumble of the waves 92nd time this date has arrived with her and family, haunted as he was by the shame and the rhythm of the tides of the grand name on it. It’s a big day for her, of course, of traumatic encounters with his father at the Atlantic Ocean. I missed sitting on the porch but also for me and my sister. dreaded London debtors prison the family and listening to those sounds, inhaling the Exactly one week ago today, on Matricu­ called home for some time. Hurt, too, by the salt air, as I know my mother missed them all lation Day here on campus, I was standing in humiliation he suffered when as a child his summer. But in seeing her and being in her front of Collins Library before our incoming mother exiled him for years of hard labor in presence, even in the strange and eerie silence students (who had just completed Orienta­ a blacking factory to help pay their debts. of a hospital isolation ward, I did make it tion, many of them just back from their No wonder Dickens wrote so powerfully and home. Passages baptism in the great Northwest eloquently about orphans desperately seek­ “Let the pathways of your fingertips be wilderness). I was thinking about my mother, ing the safety and security of a real home and your maps,” said novelist and poet Ursula and about being born. Because that’s what family—Oliver Twist, the Artful Dodger, Pip Le Guin: “May your soul be at home where matriculation is all about. Well, that’s what in Great Expectations, Little Dorrit, or David there are no houses”: it’s like, at least. So my mothers upcoming Coppcrfield, whose story is often regarded as Walk carefully, well loved one, birthday was on my mind as I spoke. So was a fictional representation of Dickens’s own. Walk mindfully, well loved one, her mother, my indomitable grandmother, That endless quest for the place we call Walk fearlessly, well loved one. who also lived strong into her 90s. home is the subject of so much great litera­ Return with us, return to us, Once the students were all gathered on ture, from the ancient sacred texts of almost Be always coming home. Karlen Quad on that pristine Sunday morn­ any faith to the classical myths of Homer and That’s a pretty good message, particularly ing, the chapel chimes rang and I began to Virgil to the modern novels of James Joyce or for Matriculation Day, as students begin their talk with them about the meaning of their Toni Morrison. The meditation on “home” college education, commence an exciting matriculation at Puget Sound. “Matricula­ that comprises my welcome remarks to new new phase of their lives’ explorations, launch tion” is a word you don’t hear much anywhere students and their families on Convocation a journey that will take them to all kinds of except in the academy. In English it originates Day is a series of snapshots chronicling a unimagined places that will utterly transform from the same roots as the more familiar few of the compelling invocations of home them. Our job here is to provide the place for words “matrimony” and “maternity”—from expressed throughout human history and lit­ that to happen, a home that will be their port the Latin word for mother, “mater.” That’s erature. Together, they demonstrate so clearly of call and their point of departure. Huck why we sing the “Alma Mater” at the end of how our eternal quest for home is always Finn, that quintessential American orphan, the ceremony, a song of praise to our “dear simultaneously about where we came from claimed there’s “no home like a raft, after all mother,” the University of Puget Sound. It’s and where we are going. In our end is our ... You feel mighty free and easy and com­ our birthday, so to speak, when we are offi­ beginning. fortable on a raft.” cially born into this community of scholars. I went home to the Jersey Shore this past This university, by the waters of Com­ Big day. June to visit my mother. Between the time mencement Bay in the great Puget Sound, is A week earlier, on another big day, “Con­ Mary and I planned the trip back East and our students’ raft on the sea of life. Upon it vocation Day,” when these same students the time we arrived, my mother had been they will navigate the journeys that will take “convened” on this campus for the first hospitalized, and she ended up spending them to places strange and familiar. All Hail time with their families from many differ­ most of the summer confined to a bed. Like to Alma Mater. And a very happy birthday, ent places, I welcomed them to their new many people her age, my mother has been in Mom. I’m thinking about you and home, home—the University of Puget Sound. and out of the hospital quite a bit in recent and I can hear the waves crashing. It can be tricky, this whole idea of home. years. But she’s made of pretty gritty stuff, “Home is a name, a word, a strong one; my mother. Pretty brave and resilient. She 3 stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit recovered beautifully (again) and is ready to I 5 ever answered to.” Those are the sentiments celebrate The Big Nine-Two tomorrow. \ n expressed about home by my favorite novelist, I never made it to our old house on that § jC Charles Dickens, a man who endured such a visit, the house in which I grew up, just a few Ronald R.Thomas autumn 2014 arches 1 photojournal ONE FOR THE HOME CROWD, AT LAST On Sept. 6, a perfect Northwest autumn day with Rainier levitating on the southeast horizon like a nearby planet or a second moon, the football team won its first home game since Sept. 4, 2010.To say the crowd went wild couldn't possibly describe the euphoria.To the heights, indeed. photojournal * FALLING... Here's Chanel Chawalit '18 during this year's new-student orientation, trying her hand(s) and feet at "crate stacking," ^ a popular exercise for beginning climbers. One starts with a modest pile of plastic milk crates and keeps adding and Jj^imbing until balance can no longer be maintained, at which point the fall is caught by a belayer. Looks like fun, and, we're told, it's ROCKETS' RED GLARE Logjam, the yearly first-Friday- of-classes celebration, was again capped off by fireworks onTodd Field It wasn't the biggest pyrotechnic display compared to other years, but the finale, well, here it is. autumn 2014 arches 5 photojournal GETTINGTO KNOW THE PLACE In the Prelude section of this fall's Orientation, politics and government prof Alisa Kessel and philosophy prof ArielaTubert led a day-long session that encouraged students to think about freedom, space, behavior, and personal choice. Among other activities>'students read a selection from B.F. Skinner's WaldenTwo and watched a clip from A Clockwork Orange, and they explored locations on campus and researched theirhistories. Here, Lydia Alter '18 is in the college archives, learning about the significance of the Color Post. m the quad Four pages of thoughts, news, trends, and phenomena l TRUSTEES Who's running this place? (You are.) 94% of Puget Sound trustees are alumni, parents, or both. NEWLY APPOINTED TO THE BOARD Laura Inveen '76 Judge. King County Superior Court ARCHES UPDATE THE CAMPAIGN A victory for rivers The $125 million One THE CAMPAIGN [of a Kind] campaign 01E FOR UNIVERSITY For the summer 2008 issue of this magazine, Jonathan [OFAKIND] OF PUGET SOUND winds up on June 30, Blum '06 wrote an article about kayaking the last free- 2015. How're we doing? As of Aug. 31, alumni, flowing rivers in Patagonia. The adventure, by an interna­ parents, faculty, staff, students, and friends had tional team of river runners, Jonathan among them, was set a record for participation: 26,560 Logger assembled to call attention to plans for five hydropower lovers, and counting. But we still have a way to go dams there. In June we received a note from Jonathan to meet a few very important goals ..