Reedies Volunteer!

In Greek, “Xenia” embodies hospitality between a host and a guest, centering generosity and reciprocity. In this spirit, we celebrate the volunteer and community work done by Reedies throughout this past year through the Alumni Board’s Xenia Initiative. We’d like to share a few of our favorite photos and comments from this year! Comments have been edited for length and format. 

Tina Le ’08 writes:

“Over the past 12 months, I led Nasdaq’s Green Team, a supportive employee group for people with environmentalist values. We invited speakers from nonprofits like The Nature Conservancy, Environmental Voter Project, Climate Voice, etc. and carried out local volunteer activities around the world. We also held an Environmental Justice series in collaboration with another support group called GLOBE (Global Link of Black Employees), because minority groups are almost always victims of environmental destruction.”

Tina Le, class of 2008, picture second from the left, poses with fellow volunteers for Nasdaq's Green Team during a local volunteer cleanup event.
Tina Le ’08 leads Nasdaq’s Green Team.

Lawrence Sherman ’86 (BA); ’87 (MALS) writes:

“I have been a volunteer manager and coach for Southwest Portland Little League or other Little Leagues since 2005 when my kids played baseball/softball, and after they moved on continued coaching softball every year. I also have been a volunteer coach and manager for a travel softball team for the past six years (the players are now seniors in high school), and even managed to get the players through the pandemic, providing them with an opportunity to get outdoors and play the sport they love.”

Lawrence Sherman, class of 1986, pictured center, poses with his Southwest Portland Little League team. Lawrence has been a volunteer coach for Little League since 2005.
Lawrence Sherman ’86 (BA); ’87 (MALS) has coached for Southwest Portland Little League since 2005.

Duncan Parks ’92 writes: 

“[I am the] Team Director and level 3 coach for youth mountain bike team (Portland Metro Composite), part of the Oregon Interscholastic Cycling League and National Interscholastic Cycling Association.”

Duncan Parks, class of 1992 pictured center, fist bumps a member of the Portland Metro Composite youth mountain bike team. Duncan volunteers as a team director and level 3 coach.
Duncan Parks ’92 coaches the Portland Metro Composite Youth Mountain Bike Team.

Sharon Toji ’58 writes:

“I represent the Hearing Loss Association of America as a voting delegate and Co-Chair of the Communications Task Group on the American National Standards Association (ANSI) A117.1 Committee on Accessible and Usable Buildings and Sites.”

Sharon Toji, class of 1958, works to represent the Hearing Loss Association of America and the Communications Task Group on the American National Standards Association (ANSI) A117.1 Committee on Accessible and Usable Buildings and Sites.
Sharon Toji ’58 is a leader on Hearing Loss representation and Accessible and Usable Buildings and Sites.

Barbara Bates ’67 writes: 

“JourneySongs Hospice Choir where I run the Google Workspace for the group and also sing at the bedsides of folx in hospice; Newton Conservators (a land trust preserving open space in Newton) where I maintain the website (Newtonconservators.org) and their Google Workspace, as well as lead nature walks in Newton, give nature talks, and tech host webinars on nature.”

Barbara Bates, class of 1967, pictured on the left, leads a nature walk for Newton Conservators. Barbara also spends time volunteering for a hospice choir.
Barbara Bates ’67 leads a nature walk for Newton Conservators.

The world needs more Reedies!

Love Reed,

The Prexy Ghost

Reed’s Annual Festival Of Learning

If there’s one thing that unites Reedies, it’s our love for learning, and that’s what Paideia is all about. This year, Paideia will take place from Saturday, January 18, to Sunday, January 26, and will include an array of classes taught by students, professors, and alumni. With some returning courses such as “Building Reed College in Minecraft”, “Reed College Survivor,” and “The Art of Pokemon Battling” along with some new ones like “World Domination 110: the Reed Alumni Agenda”, there’s classes for everyone!

As we move towards post-pandemic life, Paideia is once again open for all Reed community members, which includes alumni, so we hope to see you there!

Excited to take classes with no exams,

Taliah Churchill ’25

Ft: some pictures from years past:

Paideia 2016, The Folly of Frack
Paideia 1018, class unknown

Paideia 2023, class unknown
Paideia 2023, fencing

Mary Barnard ’32: found in translation

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Sweep the mind

clean

like a field of dry stubble

when the constellations

of daisies have been mown


–Mary Barnard

Mary Barnard ’32 is arguably Reed’s most prominent creative artist. Her original poetry and translations of classic poetry influenced generations, including the Beat poets who followed her by one generation. Her 100th birthday was celebrated in 2009, so it is appropriate that the Reed Centennial honor her with a full day of lectures about her life, her work, and her influence (see “Alumni College: Letters 100: Experiencing Mary Barnard ’32” on Thursday, June 9).

It is also fitting that pre-eminent Barnard scholar, our own Sarah Barnsley ’95, should return to lead this seminar. Sarah was an exchange student from University of East Anglia for one year, and she now teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her other research interests include American literature, poetry and poetics, modernism, gender and queer theory. Following her tenure as H.D. Fellow in American Literature at the Beinecke Library, Yale University, Sarah has completed a book manuscript, “‘A bright, particular excellence’: Mary Barnard, American Imagist.” She is also a poet in her own right.

Mary Barnard ’32 was born in Vancouver, Washington, and attended Reed College, where she discovered modernist poetry and Ezra Pound; she later initiated a long-distance correspondence with Pound that was to last nearly 40 years.

As noted by the Beinecke Library, “With Pound’s encouragement, Barnard began translating Sappho’s poetry from the Greek. Her translation, published in 1958, has never been out of print. Barnard’s own poems won her Poetry magazine’s Levinson Award when she was only 26 years old. Her shorter fiction was published in Harper’s Bazaar, The Yale Review, and The Kenyon Review. She later composed a book-length essay in verse entitled Time and the White Tigress and researched and published her own genealogy and various essays on mythology.”

The delightful and spirited memoir of her school days, Erato agonistes: Writing a creative thesis at Reed College in “The Golden Age”, is available in the bookstore.

Other speakers in the seminar will include Professor Anita Helle, Oregon State University, on Mary Barnard’s original poetry, and Professor Ellen K. Stauder, dean of the faculty and David Eddings Professor of English & Humanities, on Mary Barnard’s Sappho, in the morning sessions.  Afternoon conference leaders will include, in addition, Elizabeth J. Bell ’87 MALS, Mary Barnard’s literary executor; and Anita Bigelow ’67, illustrator of Mary Barnard’s work.

Ladd and Reed legacy tour

THE LADD AND REED LEGACY: Building Portland 1851-2011

Tuesday, June 7, from 8 a.m. through 12:45 p.m.

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The Ladd and Reed Legacy talk and tour during Centennial Reunions, organized by Richard Ross ’69 MAT, explores and celebrates the lasting impacts of two remarkable Oregon pioneer families on Portland’s development over a century and a half. William S. Ladd was Portland’s most prominent 19th-century business and civic leader, and Simeon Reed was Ladd’s foremost business partner and friend. Ladd and Reed shaped Portland and the Northwest by joint ventures over four decades, in public service, steamboats, telegraphs, macadam roads, model farms, railroads, and iron. Ladd and Reed both arrived in Portland in the 1850s, starting as pioneer liquor dealers, and served on the city council  in the crude frontier village known as “Stumptown.” Their sturdy spouses, Amanda Wood Reed and Carolyn Elliott Ladd emigrated together by sea from Boston in 1854 and  became lifelong friends. 

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As they prospered together, the Ladds and Reeds pursued a common vision of building a thriving Renaissance city out of soggy Stumptown. In turn, they were driving forces in the formation of Oregon’s educational, cultural, economic infrastructure, and model communities. Amanda Reed’s 1904 will set in motion the final Ladd and Reed partnership, the creation of Reed College (1911), with help from Ladd son and college trustee William M. Ladd.  This program shows how the Ladd and Reed family vision built Portland’s strong neighborhoods, its civic, educational, and economic institutions, and the vibrant downtown of today. 

Tour visits five Ladd and Reed living legacies:

1. Oregon Iron Company, Oregon Iron and Steel (1865-1894) Lake Oswego  

Guides: Marylou Colver, Susanna Kuo, Lake Oswego historians

Dominant Northwest iron producer for the “Pittsburgh of the West.” Company town supplied construction of Northwest railroads, pipelines, bridges, and Portland’s ironfront buildings. Iron lands around Lake Oswego (Sucker Lake) became the basis of the 20th-century suburb.

2. The Ladd Carriage House (1883) SW Broadway

Guide: Jim Heuer, Friends of the Ladd Carriage House 

Last remnant of the Ladd family’s former downtown estate and an elegant, rare survivor of prestigious 19th-century South Portland, where the Ladds and Reeds both lived. 

3. The Reed Building (1890) SW 1st and Ankeny

Guide: Amy Kohnstamm, Mercy Corps

Simeon Reed’s solid four-story brick and stone warehouse, once in Portland’s business core at Skidmore Fountain, houses Mercy Corps world headquarters today.  

4. Ladd’s Addition (1891) 

Designed by William S. Ladd himself, thrives today as a national and regional icon for green and walkable neighborhoods and “New Urbanism.” First of many notable Portland neighborhoods created by the Ladd Estate Company under William M. Ladd out of Ladd farms and holdings: Laurelhurst (1909), Eastmoreland (1910), Dunthorpe, and Lake Oswego, all landmark communities of the 20th century.  

5. Reed College (1911) 

Celebrates its centennial in 2011-12, was endowed by Amanda Reed, on part of William S. Ladd’s Crystal Springs Farm donated by trustee William M. Ladd. 

Schedule: 

8 a.m.  PowerPoint Talk at Vollum Lounge, Reed campus 

8:30 a.m.  Board a Raz bus at Eliot Circle for Lake Oswego

11:15 a.m. Ladd’s Addition, coffee break and restrooms at Palio (the Elm Room), Ladd Circle 

12:45 p.m. Tour concludes with wrap-up comments on the founding of Reed College 

The cost for this half-day tour is $20.  Sign up by sending email to alumni@reed.edu.


Presenter and guide (except where noted):

Richard N Ross ’69, American Institute of Certified Planners         

H: 503/235-8194  C: 503/807-0612   richardnross@earthlink.net

Urban and regional planner in Oregon 1977-2011, teacher of Oregon and US history 1970-79

BA in History Middlebury College, MAT Reed College, MUP Portland State University

Led regional coalition to restore the Historic Columbia River Hwy (1986-92)

Ladd’s Addition community leader and resident 1976-2011 

Atheism, Communism & Tee Love: Reed T-Shirts Unite!

I recently caught up with Travis Greenwood ’01, kitschy shirt connoisseur, to get the scoop on his efforts to collect and document Olde Reed t-shirts.

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Please give us your vision for this project? 

This project mixes personal and professional interests. I’ve always had collector tendencies, progressing from comic books to records and then, later, bicycles. These days, it’s all of the above, plus t-shirts, which is convenient because I write and edit a blog, “It Goes to 11,” for my employer. It’s focused (somewhat loosely) on t-shirts, t-shirts from the reel world, t-shirt trends, movie memes, the overlap there between and whatever else I stumble across on the web. Combine all of that with extremely fond memories of my Reed experience (I majored in history and managed KRRC) and here you have it, my contribution to the college’s collective history. Don’t say I never gave anything back to the community!

Seriously though, it dawned on me that the typical Reed experience was accompanied by several t-shirt traditions (experiential mile markers if you will), namely O-Week, Renn Fayre, and Beer Nation, but also encompassing several smaller events and tropes. Following from that, it seemed that someone–namely, me–should consolidate and archive material of this type online. If the Internet has room for LOL Cats, defamatory weekly newspapers (zinger!), and second-tier social networking sites, then certainly we can carve out a niche for our humble t-shirts, which when taken collectively, constitute an enormous and revealing trove of Reed minutia.

Does it have a catchy name?

I haven’t given much thought to the moniker, but a simple bit of brainstorming yields this bastardized gem:

“Atheism, Communism & Tee Love: A Pictorial History of Reed T-Shirts”

(groan…)

Continue reading Atheism, Communism & Tee Love: Reed T-Shirts Unite!

Boar lore

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Have you heard the Reed myth about a group of people dressed in black druidic robes, marching in a hallowed procession that includes a cappella singing, torches, and a boar’s head on a pallet? Or perhaps you’ve witnessed it yourself on a frosty winter’s night? This curious scene isn’t just lore; it remains a beloved feature of the annual alumni holiday party. This yuletide celebration dates to the college’s early years, with the boar’s head procession appearing in the 1920s and becoming quite the beloved tradition. 

Continue reading Boar lore