The two Reed vans idled in the light snow outside 28 West as 30 Reed students readied themselves for a day of service. It was Martin Luther King Day and schools, post offices, and banks across America were closed to celebrate the birth, life, and work of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Every year Students for Education, Empowerment, and Direct Service (SEEDS) offers a service trip so Reedies can make a difference. This year 43 Reed students, professors, and staff joined more than 800 other college students from across the Portland area to volunteer at Roosevelt High School, explore education as a civil right, and respond to what Dr. King called "the fierce urgency of now."

Every so often, a Reed biology senior is lured into the Canyon for an ecology thesis. Perhaps it is the desire to discover some secret Reed knowledge, or the appealing shimmer of stickleback fish in a minnow trap. Perhaps it is the convenient location. For me, it is the need to know where the frogs, salamanders, and snakes make their homes, how they get along, and how they feel about the restoration efforts. Reed Biology showed me the fascination of herpetology, community and restoration ecology. And after being told by many seniors last year to "study something you like -- you have to do it for a year!", I knew the Canyon would make an excellent laboratory playground.

If you're a foodie or a viewer of Bravo channel's Top Chef you're familiar with the culinary movement known as molecular gastronomy. This awkward combination of words describes an inventive way of cooking with the use of tools and food products you're not likely to find in the glossary of Irma Rombauer's cookbooks or by watching reruns of The French Chef.

These techniques and tools include mixing sodium alginate into, say, pureed peas and submersing the mixture in a bath of calcium chloride to create pea balls; using liquid nitrogen to freeze linguine into edible sculptures; and centrifuges that turn fruits into crystal clear yet still flavorful liquids.

The giants of this movement--Ferran Adrià, Heston Blumenthal, and Andoni Luis Aduriz--see these techniques as the evolution of the modern kitchen, or in the instance of the Paideia class, Don't Lick the Spoon: Adventures in Edible Chemistry, the modern dorm dining hall. Chemistry majors Galen Miley '13, Ilsa Kirby '13, and Kayla Sheridan '13 used their skills in this area to transport their class to the intersection of Science Drive and Yummy Street.

"I Want to Hold Your Hand" began climbing the U.S. pop charts in January 1964, heralding the arrival of both the Beatles and the British Music Invasion. Though "Surfin' U.S.A." was the number two hit of 1963, the list was chockablock with such easy listening fare as "The End of the World," "Sukiyaki," "Blue Velvet" and "Puff, the Magic Dragon." Six of the top 20 hits of 1964 were by the Beatles and the list now included songs by the Supremes, the Dave Clark Five and the Animals. It was a seismic shift (though Louis Armstrong did ring in with the number two hit of 1964, "Hello Dolly').

But of course the Fab Four didn't exist in a vacuum. In a Paideia talk entitled "Here, There and Everywhere," Dr. Demento (Barry Hansen) '63 presented a curriculum vitae of music influences that shaped the Beatles and rock n' roll.

Barry presented three talks at this year's Paideia and is an ethnomusicologist who has written extensively about the recording industry. His radio show was syndicated for years on the Westwood One Radio network and is still produced online.
By the time they met in 1957, 16-year-old John Lennon and 15-year-old Paul McCartney had been exposed to generations of American music. While U.S. radio exposure to alternative music was limited to small, local stations, the British Broadcasting Company regularly sampled the new and distinctive from across the ocean. British audiences could hear everything from the mainstream Perry Como singing "Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes," to "Rocket 88," a 12-bar blues song recorded in Memphis by Jackie Brenston.

Barry presented a musical progression illustrating how artists of one genre influenced another. Country artists, for example, began working black blues into their music just before World War II, when electric guitars became available.

In the late 1930s and early '40s, a black group called the Ink Spots had huge success turning simplified versions of Tin Pan Alley pop songs into sentimental ballads. This music inspired the doo-wop artists of the late '40s and early '50s, becoming a major part of framework for rock n' roll.

Cleveland deejay Alan Freed promoted a mix of blues, country and rhythm and blues, coining the phrase "rock and roll" and demonstrating that white kids loved this music as well. Small, independent record companies were excited about expanding their market.

"They quickly met stiff competition from established record companies," Barry said, "which made cover records of some of those catchy R and B songs with well-scrubbed, mainstream, white artists."

I've been asked to announce this again, since the deadline for submitting abstracts is coming up in a couple weeks...

The 4th annual meeting of the Illinois Language and Linguistics Society will be held April 13-15, 2012 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  ILLS is a general linguistics conference open to all subfields. This year's meeting will include a special session Saturday, April 14th on the topic 'Discourse and Pragmatics' [An opportunity for Discourse students to submit their term paper projects, maybe?--MP].

ILLS is currently accepting abstracts for topics in general linguistics although special consideration will be given to papers that fit the theme for the special session.  Deadline for submission is February 12th.

The top 4 submitted student abstracts will be awarded $200 to cover conference travel costs.

All talks will be given 20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for questions. Abstract submission guidelines and instructions can be found here.

Please contact lso.illinois@gmail.com with any questions you may have.

Invited Speakers:

Betty J. Birner (Northern Illinois University)
Paul Kiparsky (Stanford University)
Jonathan MacDonald (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Marina Terkourafi (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Robert E. Vann (Western Michigan University)

Well, according to this piece I wrote for the New York Post, sort of... (?) Your thoughts?

The summer issue of the Reed magazine illustrated once again why reading about Reedies is a never-ending source of fascination and entertainment. Featured articles described the (then) upcoming centennial and investigations of the paranormal alongside the traditional nod to ancient Greek philosophers. And on top of all that one learned some of the surprising ways in which chemistry has percolated into the lives of students, alumni, faculty, and friends of the College.

"Nuclear Scrounge" (p. 8) described what is "easily the most significant event in the history of [Reed's nuclear] reactor," namely, its refueling with 91 uranium fuel rods obtained from the University of Arizona. The fuel had originally been destined for a federal storage depository, but will now live a new half-life powering the Reed reactor for decades to come. "Force Majeure" (p. 27) a profile of Prof. Darius Rejali [political science, 1989-present], revealed that Darius' father spent 11 years studying chemistry in the United States and earned a doctorate in chemistry from Temple University.

The Class Notes section mentioned at least four Reed chemists ... The Oregonian featured Luke Kanies '96 (Puppet Labs) in an article about Portland's open software industry ... The Union-Bulletin of Walla Walla, Washington described the homecoming of Alison Madsen '00 and her new medical practice at the Family Medical Center in Walla Walla ... and a whole slew of Reed science alums, including Becky Phillips '10 and Megan Brophy '10, squeezed together for a photo from the wedding of biologist Molly Schumer '09 and mathematician Josh O-Rourke '09.

In Memoriam also notified us of the passing of several Reed chemists and friends of the college. Alan Loren Dean '41, emeritus trustee, came to Reed "fascinated with inorganic chemistry" and had hoped to become a chemical engineer some day, but graduated in political science instead. As he told an interviewer in 2004, "After taking a year of chemistry at Reed, and getting into a fair amount of organic chemistry, I said, 'I'm not going to spend my life brooding over these complicated carbon rings." Well said. Classmate Louis George Stang '41 apparently found "carbon rings" to his liking because, even though a devotee of the Eliot chapel's pipe organ, he stayed on course to graduate Phi Beta Kappa in chemistry. From Reed he migrated to Caltech for additional studies before joining the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Robert Oppenheimer, the Project's director, assigned Louis the job of producing 50 curies of "barium-lanthanum-140" and Oppenheimer's team then had the hubris to bet "one nickel" that Louis would not succeed. Undeterred, Stang and his team constructed a special laboratory and invented new equipment for preparing and handling the radioactive isotopes. Not surprisingly, the nickel became the Stang family's most prized possession. The Reed college career of David Petri Pearson '49 was interrupted by military service in World War II, but he returned to Reed to complete his BA in chemistry and marry his classmate, Patricia M. Cowan '49. After earning a PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Southern California, Dave had a multifaceted career that included stints as a research chemist at Phillips Petroleum, the Oregon Graduate Center, and Portland General Electric, as well as teaching chemistry at Portland State University and Southern Oregon College.