The Riffin' Griffin – Page 2 – A blog by and for Reed College alumni. Find posts by category listed below!

Reed’s Rose Festival Float

With Reed students’ propensity for recombinant construction and conveyance, it is no surprise that the college entered a float in Portland’s Rose Festival Parade as early as 1936. While the details are murky, we have this one photo, as well as this plaque commemorating Reed’s third-place “prize” position.

Fast forward to 2012, the close of our centennial year, and a merry band of intrepid engineers is hard at work on an automated griffin for the new century! Rob Mack ’93 and Mike Teskey, director of alumni relations, have led the effort to craft a unique float to roll in Portland’s 100th Grand Floral Parade on Saturday, June 9.

Assisted by Zac Perry, canyon restoration specialist, Ben Lund ’93 from mail services, Dan Schafer ’92, Martha Richards ’92, Lars Fjelstad ’92, and other alumni, this group of volunteers has been hammering out the creation over the past several weeks. See Dan’s photos, as well as this artist’s rendering that serves as inspiration and imagine a griffin that can flap its wings (and possibly more!).

An early model got a test run at Renn Fayre, delivering the Reed Meat Smoke victuals to the feast! There is yet more work to be done, and we welcome help from all members of the Reed community. Stay tuned for a decorating sign-up sheet to be available soon; we’ll begin the beautification process at Reunions ’12: Reedfayre, so sign up today!

Pop-Up Oyster Bar!

Jon Rowley ’69 rousted ten dozen Totten Inlet oysters out of bed in Olympia to bring to Reed’s “Working Weekend,” February 3-5. This “pop-up oyster bar” appeared in the library lobby late afternoon on Saturday and was met with much enthusiasm.

Jon is a marketing consultant for Taylor Shellfish Farms, and while on campus he met Lillian Kuehl ’09, lab manager at Taylor Shellfish, for the first time. “I had heard about this Reed student that worked at the Taylor hatchery but had never met her, so it was fun to work our pop-up oyster bar with her.” Soon enough, David Autrey ’89 and Amy Wesselman ’91 happened along with some of their Westrey wine to serve as a perfect complement for the marine feast.

Pleased that the impromptu oyster tasting was well received, Jon later commented that it “turned out to be a perfect little adjunct to Working Weekend, an example of how there is always room, with a little entrepenurial spirit, for a good idea.” Also, he was tickled that a good number of students had their first oyster that day. His old friend Hannah Fishman ’14 lent a hand, learning the art of shucking for the first time.

See photos of the lovely Totten Inlet Virginicas and Shigoku oysters, and their fans, on his Flickr page.

Reed Alumni Holiday Party 2011

More rapid than owls, his coursers they came.?

And he whistled and shouted, and called them by name;?

Now Diver! Now Doyle! Now Chittick and Ladd!?

On Foster! On Scholz! On Quincy in plaid!?

So up to the holiday party they flew

for dinner with friends and dancing too.

(with apologies to Clement Clarke Moore)

Alumni, faculty, staff, parents, and friends reveled at the annual Reed Alumni Holiday Party on Saturday, December 17, 2011. View photos of the general festivities as well as individual glamour shots for download (password: reed).

Continue reading Reed Alumni Holiday Party 2011

Call for Paideia ’12 classes led by alumni

A word from Reed’s Paideia czars:

We are students coordinating Paideia, and we are interested in offering a greater variety of classes this year. We would like to invite alumni to apply to teach a Paideia class on any subject you think students, faculty, and staff alike would find informative, interesting, or fun. It would be a great way to engage and connect with students.

Applications are due by Thursday, December 8. Please let us know if you have any questions.

Best,

Erin Appleby and Alison Chavez

Paideia Czars

paideiaczars2012@gmail.com

The evolution will be mapped

“Mateo Burtch ’82 has mapped out Reed’s dominance of a corner in Eastmoreland since 1950.” (John Sheehy ’82)

Enjoy viewing this history of the Reed College campus 1950-present, as told through maps. The maps from 1950 to 1996 were collected and combined by Mateo from the college catalogues sent out to prospective students during that period.

(It has come to our attention that there exists an aerial history of campus as well!)

Continue reading The evolution will be mapped

Here’s to the misfits…

“Here’s to… the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently…”

Enjoy an unaired version of Apple’s 1997 “Think Different” commercial that was narrated by Steve Jobs (via laughingsquid.com).

Continue reading Here’s to the misfits…

Feel Different.

As noted on our sister blog, Sallyportal (‘Think Different”), the death of Steve Jobs (an “almost” alumnus) has occasioned many tributes to his “archetypal Reedie” persona. He was unconventional, driven, and a bit subversive. Reed coursework influenced him deeply, whether or not he was officially enrolled, especially his study of calligraphy at the hand of Robert Palladino. An article on Smithsonian.com has gone so far as to suggest that mastering the lettered hand led Jobs to think like an artist.

Steve Jobs’ sense of design and artistry set him apart from other engineers, to be sure, but I like to think that his intuition and personal taste are what made the first Macintosh, and consequent inventions, so distinctive. He is quoted as observing that “Taste is trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then trying to bring those things into what you are doing.” This concept of applying human qualities to technological devices may be at the heart of the appeal. While the Smithsonian article talks about typography triggering emotion, an essay by Adam Penenberg ’85 takes this idea further by arguing that the design of Apple products moves people to “ascribe human values” to them.

Continue reading Feel Different.

Voices of Reed in Oregon Historical Quarterly

by John Sheehy ’82

This fall, Oregon State University Press will publish a book drawn from the Reed Oral History Project entitled Comrades of the Quest: An Oral History of Reed College. The following excerpt from the book features the voices of students and academics who found their way to Reed in the 1920s and 1930s. It offers a sense of the socio-economic and cultural diversity of students at the time–many of them first-generation college students from small towns and farms–and also highlights some of the qualities of Reed College that attracted them.

You may order the full article in the summer issue of Oregon Historical Quarterly online.

Excerpt:

REED COLLEGE’S character–and its aspiration to be among the most intellectually demanding schools in the country–was already well established by its launch in 1911. William Trufant Foster, Reed’s first president, sought to make critical thinking the holy grail of the educational experience. He believed that if Reed was to be relevant in an educational landscape dominated by specialized research universities, it would be essential to impart to students the most rigorous possible set of intellectual skills and attitudes for informing every area of inquiry. In doing so, he worked to establish a new kind of college, one that would give renewed vitality to the liberal arts while preparing its graduates for the ever-widening dimensions of the modern world.

To insure the highest standards of intellectual rigor, Foster imposed a number of curricular hurdles, including a senior thesis and orals exam. To instill self-discipline and discourage students from working for grades instead of for learning, after 1915, professors gave no grades except on request after graduation. To stress democracy and inclusiveness, Foster banned fraternities and sororities as well as the sideshow amusements of intercollegiate sports. To ensure small, intimate classes, he adopted a ten-to-one student-to-faculty ratio and directed professors to focus on teaching, not research. Finally, to promote intellectual freedom and better capture students’ enthusiasm, Foster established a free electives curriculum.

Continue reading Voices of Reed in Oregon Historical Quarterly

Dr. Demento deconstructs Zappa

By Travis Greenwood ’01

Sated by the luxe, campuswide feast on the Friday night of Centennial Reunions, an overflow audience settled into Vollum Lounge at 9 p.m. to hear Barry Hansen ’63, aka Dr. Demento, speak about the musical and cultural legacy of the late Frank Zappa and his prolific troupe of art-rock jesters, The Mothers of Invention. The Doctor opened his remarks with high praise for his subject, explaining that Zappa was one of the “half dozen most important artists” of his lifetime, a suggestion that visibly resonated with many in the audience, including the other elder statesmen in the room. In particular, Hansen cited Zappa’s adventurous blend of superb musicianship and subversive style, suggesting that both were original and enduring influences on the radio program he has hosted for more than 30 years now.

Alternating between archival video, excerpted recordings and most interestingly, snippets of interviews he had conducted with Zappa himself over a three-decade period, Hansen traced a biographical sketch that was informed by the deeper minutia that only a true musicologist would seek out. That said, Demento’s lecture was also richly personal: listening to his exchange with Zappa about the importance of music as an agent of change in society (and its apparent exclusion from political discourse!), one gets the feeling that the duo shared a genuine and conspiratorial connection. Ever the entertainer (and DJ knob twiddler), Hansen closed with one last Zappa track, “Stevie’s Spanking,” a rich mess of psychedelic guitar and (highly) satirical asides.

Mary Barnard ’32: found in translation

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.