“We took what I would callgross liberties with history.”

— Ben Karlin ’93, executiveproducer of The Daily Show,speaking at the Wisconsin BookFestival in October about Amer-ica (The Book): A Citizen’s Guideto Democracy Inaction, which heco-authored with Daily Showhost Jon Stewart and DavidJaverbaum, a show writer.EPILOGUEEPILOGUE

DISPATCHES

Anthony Davis JDx’05 wasbuoyed by the moment, a sliceof history at the UW Law Schoolwhere the road to fairness foraspiring minority lawyers justbecame a bit smoother.

An African-American in histhird year at the Law School,Davis joined about seventy otherminority law students in Augustto welcome freshly sworn-inWisconsin Supreme Court Jus-tice Louis Butler JD’77, the firstAfrican-American to serve onthe state’s highest court.

“The UW has one of themajor law-school populationsof African-Americans,” Davissays. “To see that we finallyhave a supreme court judgemakes you think you canachieve some of the highestlevels in the legal system. We’remaking strides. It’s a great timeto be in law school.”

With minority studentsmaking up about 25 percent ofits enrollment, the Law Schoolis one of the brightest diversitysuccess stories on campus. Ithas graduated more than onethousand lawyers of color,prompting National Jurist mag-azine this year to feature theschool as one of those thathave supported students ofcolor and women.

Butler, a Milwaukee Countycircuit judge who was appointedby Governor Jim Doyle ’67 tofill a supreme court vacancy,lauded those efforts in his firstpublic appearance after hisinvestiture. The fifty-two-year-old judge grew up on Chicago’ssouth side, where his exposureto bias and his subsequentstruggle to succeed convincedhim that all people need to havean equal shot at opportunity.

“I’m standing on other peo-ple’s shoulders,” Butler told par-ticipants in the school’s Legal

Education Opportunities pro-gram (LEO), which is seen as anational model for recruiting,supporting, and retaining students from traditionallyunderrepresented communities.

“I did not get here by myself.I appreciate the LEO program andall that it does for all of the citi-zens of Wisconsin. These are thetypes of programs that pave theway for everyone else.”

Considered one of the rea-sons why the Law School hasmade strides in diversity, “the LEOprogram was started many years

JEFF MILLER

Justice Louis Butler, the first African-American to serve on the Wiscon-sin Supreme Court, recalls how high above the ground the judges satwhen he first appeared before the court. He hosted a luncheon withminority students at his alma mater, the UW Law School, shortly afterbeing sworn in.

With more than a million speak-ers, Yucatec Maya is the mostcommon of the twenty-eightdialects descended from thegreat Mayan empire. It is also thesixty-sixth language now taughtat UW-Madison — more than atany other U.S. university.

Offered for the first time thisfall, Yucatec Maya joins an exten-sive list of tongues that includesall the usual suspects — Spanish,French, Italian, et cetera — and

many unusual ones, such asOjibwe, Yoruba, Quechua, andUrdu. Why such a broad menu?Language classes aren’t justabout acquiring a new tongue,says Sally Magnan, director ofthe UW Language Institute; theyalso help students explore andexpand their opportunities.

“The ability to speak anotherlanguage opens all kinds ofdoors,” Magnan says. “We wantto give our students a variety of

options to enrich their under-standing of the world.”

Almost all undergraduatesarrive having taken at least oneforeign language in high school,but Magnan says surveys indicatethat most are sampling their sec-ond, or even third, language oncampus. Many are also adding alanguage as a second major toappeal to globally mindedemployers.

— M.P.

10 ON WISCONSIN

Speaking in (Many) Tongues

A Supreme SuccessJustice tells law students he had help getting to Wisconsin’s highest court.

DISPATCHES

WINTER 2004 11

633Number of Sellery Hall residentswho participated in a game of

telephone in September, settinga world record as the biggest

session of the traditional game,in which a phrase is whispered

(and usually distorted) from per-son to person in a line. After 633

whispers, “Go Big Red” cameout as “UW-Madison rocks.”

EPILOGUEEPILOGUE

One of the advantages of being aswing state is the chance to seethe candidates up close. Butwhen Democratic challenger JohnKerry announced that he wouldstage a major political rally in lateOctober in the heart of Madison,senior Sonya Larson was moreexcited about who he was bring-ing with him.

A volunteer for Kerry’s cam-paign for president, Larson is alsoan avid Bruce Springsteen fan. Sowhen the rock star said he wouldjoin Kerry at the rally, Larson lis-tened to all of her ten Spring-steen albums to get ready.

“I fall asleep to his musicevery night,” she says.

On the day of the rally, whileLarson ushered some of the esti-mated crowd of eighty thousandthrough metal detectors, herroommate, senior Danya Bader-Natal, was back at their WestWashington Avenue apartment,scribbling an invitation to Larson’sfavorite musician. She wrote,“Bruce, come up for a beer,” ona flattened cardboard box andhung it from their second-storyporch, which overlooked thestage where the rally took place.

Bader-Natal never expectedwhat happened next. After playingtwo songs and introducing Kerry,Springsteen saw the sign — and

accepted the invitation. After theBoss reached the top of the stairsto join the students on the porch,senior Erin Prendergast handedhim a bottle of Capital Amber.

“I had a feeling he wouldcome up,” Prendergast says.“Who wouldn’t want a beer?”

Springsteen and hisentourage posed for pictures and listened to Kerry’s speech for about twenty minutes. But he wasn’t the students’ onlycelebrity guest. As Springsteenmingled, NBC anchor TomBrokaw came scurrying up thestairs, nearly tripping over somecomputer cords in the hallway.

“We offered Tom Brokaw abeer, too,” Prendergast says.“But he didn’t take one. He wasn’t as much fun as Bruce.”

Meanwhile, a roommatecalled Larson to tell her that heridol was watching the rally fromher porch. She sprinted severalblocks through crowds and tightsecurity, but it was too late. Bythe time she ran up the stairs,Springsteen had left, her room-mates told her.

“It was tragic,” Larson says.“I cried all day.”

Larson says she is still upsetthat she missed an opportunityto meet the singer, but she ishappy he graced her home with

his presence. “At least now I can walk around the house andknow the man I worship washere,” she says.

The irony is that Larson’sroommates weren’t exactlySpringsteen’s biggest fans. Whenreporters flooded into the houseto interview the girls about theirbrush with fame, one askedthem to name their favoriteSpringsteen song. They all stared

blankly at one another. “None ofus could think of a song.” Pren-dergast says.

“I have ten of his albums,”says Larson. “I can’t believe theydidn’t even know one song!”

— Joanna Salmen x’06

A Season for Politics — and the Boss

ago by white students wholooked around and said, ‘We’remissing something by not havinga diverse student body.’ Not everylaw school has embraced thenotion of social change like thislaw school did,” says BethKransberger JD’93, assistantdean at the school.

Administrators and faculty atthe Law School have embracedlong-term diversity efforts and

have encouraged a strong, indi-vidualized approach to support-ing students of color as they worktoward becoming lawyers. Krans-berger says the school’s leadershave long realized that a legalcareer is a way to gain access topower and opportunity and thatpromoting diversity improves thefuture leadership of the nation.

And the Law School may seemore payoff for those efforts.

Administrators often talk of a criti-cal mass, where diversity buildsupon itself to attract and inspireeven more diverse classes. Successstories such as Butler’s can offersuch momentum. As NenyeUche, a first-year law studentfrom Nigeria, said after hearingButler, “I know I can do it, and mychildren can do it, and the peoplecoming up behind us can do it.”

— Dennis Chaptman ’80

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Invited by the hand-drawn sign on the left, Bruce Springsteen andspouse Patti Scialfa joined a group of students on their second-floor balcony during a rally for presidential candidate John Kerry.NBC anchor Tom Brokaw and several bodyguards stood alongside.

DISPATCHES

Q AND A

Jeff Kirsch

Talk about revenge. Thirty-nineyears after being eliminated inthe seventh round of theNational Spelling Bee, JeffKirsch MA’76, PhD’80, a lec-turer in Spanish and Portugueseand a faculty associate in theliberal arts and studies depart-ment, correctly spelled 116words to become the NationalSenior Spelling Bee champion.

Q: What word did you spell to win?A: Millefiori. M-I-L-L-E-F-I-O-R-I.It is spelled just like it sounds... if you know Italian.

Q: Do you remember theword you missed when youwere thirteen?A: Yes. I guarantee you no kidforgets. But I never reveal theword. It came from the French.

Q: How do you study for aspelling bee?A: Go to the source: the dictionary.

Q: Do you ever use spellcheck?A: No. I detest it. I think manypeople are worse spellersbecause of spell check. Badspellers annoy me, but I try notto be prejudiced against them.

Q: So are you a celebrity inthe spelling world now?A: No. I think only the eightkids featured in the film Spell-bound are spelling celebrities.

12 ON WISCONSIN

Climbing to the rafters of UW-Madison’s old dairy barn, JerryApps ’55, MS’57, PhD’67inhales deeply and smiles. “Imiss that smell,” he says.Indeed, the fragrant air createdby the barn’s newest inhabitants— two of the university’s quarterhorses — is good news. It is thesmell of permanence.

Once a target for possibledemolition, the 107-year-oldbarn is well on its way tobecoming a national historiclandmark. A National Park Service board is expected toapprove the barn’s designationlater this month, making it thefourth campus building (alongwith the Red Gym, North Hall,and Science Hall) to earn a placeamong the nation’s most reveredhistoric sites.

Built in 1897 on a then-ruralcampus, the barn’s grand archi-tectural style made it somethingof a showpiece for the univer-sity. Its round tower silo, the firstof its kind, introduced farmers toan improved method of storageand inspired imitators across the agricultural landscape. Evenmore impressive is the legacy ofinnovation that took place inside— most notably a series of cat-tle-feed experiments conductedby professor E.V. McCollumduring the early 1900s, whichled to the discovery of vitamin Aand revolutionized animal andhuman nutrition.

“There is no other barn likeit anywhere,” says Apps, anemeritus professor and author of the book Barns of Wisconsin.“It’s an important symbol of thestate’s history and the develop-ment of the dairy industry here.”

Despite its rich past, thebarn has at times faced anuncertain future. As more mod-ern buildings popped up aroundit and many agricultural func-tions moved off campus, the

once-cutting-edge facilitybecame obso-lete, and inrecent years ithas served aslittle morethan a storageshed. Whencampus plan-ners looked fora spot to buildnew green-houses threeyears ago, theyeyed the barn’slocation, lead-ing preserva-tionists tocampaign forits protection.

“Whenyou think of allthe peoplewho camethrough it andthe contribu-tions theymade, this is really the barn thatpropelled Wisconsin to be thedairy state,” says Roger Spring-man, of Barns N.O.W., one ofseveral groups that helped getthe barn added to the NationalRegister of Historic Places in2002. But they didn’t stopthere: Springman and othersargued that the widespreadinfluence of the research con-ducted in the barn qualified it asa national landmark — a desig-nation never before bestowedon a barn that wasn’t part of alarger estate.

Becoming a landmarkwould virtually guarantee thebarn’s survival, but it also wouldallow the university to explorenew ways of showcasing its his-tory, says Frank Kooistra ’65,MS’74, an assistant dean forthe College of Agricultural andLife Sciences. “My view is thatlandmark status will make it a

real centerpiece of the west-cen-tral campus,” he says.

Some community groupshave suggested remodeling thebarn as a public gathering place,potentially including meetingspaces, cafeterias, or even amuseum. The university has yetto embrace any of those ideas,although planners say they willweigh several long-rangeoptions for the building.

But for now, the only newguests are horses. This summer,the barn was modified to accom-modate the UW horse program,which will conduct demonstra-tions and courses on the samefloor that hosted introductory agclasses for half a century.

“It’s a unique building, andit’s going to remain an importantpart of the college,” says Koois-tra. “We’re happy to have it.”

— Michael Penn

Barn AgainLandmark status may bring new life for historic dairy barn.

JEFF MILLER

UW-Madison’s dairy barn, built in 1897 to helpusher in dairying in Wisconsin, may become thefirst barn singled out as a national landmark.

Around Camp Randall Stadiumthis season, fans outfitted in cardi-nal and white are sporting a newmust-have acces-sory: theRolling Out theRed Carpetsticker. Thegiveawaydecals, whichfeature BuckyBadger on awelcoming redcarpet, areeverywhere. Onestudent was spottedat a recent game coveredhead to toe in them.

The brightly colored stickersappeared as part of a new effortto promote a friendlier atmos-phere at the stadium. Called“Rolling Out the Red Carpet,” theprogram is attempting to counter-act what some have said is anoverly rowdy, hostile environmenton Badger game days.

Chancellor John WileyMS’65, PhD’68 triggered thecampaign after receiving dozensof complaints from both UW andopponents’ fans following footballgames against Purdue and OhioState last season. One Ohio Statefan wrote of being “showeredwith profanities and harassed theentire time we were on campus,”adding that “for the first timeever, I was fearful for my safety.”

This is not a new problem foruniversities with big-time collegesports programs. Several otheruniversities and the Big Ten con-ference have attempted to tameoffensive behavior among fans inrecent years. Last season, footballcoach Barry Alvarez sent e-mailsto student ticket holders, askingthat they refrain from using vulgarlanguage in cheers or harassingopponents. But the cheers havecontinued, demonstrating the dif-ficult balance between wantingfans to be spirited, but not aggres-sive or destructive.

During the spring, a group ofstudents, athletes, staff, andadministrators developed RollingOut the Red Carpet as a way topromote better sportsmanship. As

part of the cam-paign, students cladin chartreuse vestsmingle among thecrowds before foot-ball games, passingout stickers andother giveawaysand trying to createa welcoming atmos-phere.

Visiting fans have so far beenreceptive to the hospitality ofthese “fan ambassadors,” saysAdam Kindschy x’05, who vol-unteered for the first home gameof the season. “They really appre-ciated it,” he says, adding thatmany Badger fans gave him posi-

tive feedback, as well. One alum-nus approached him to thank himfor helping make the Badger fansthe best in the world, he says.“That really meant a lot to meand made it all worth it.”

John Finkler, event coordina-tor for the athletic department,says fan ambassadors are only partof the answer to a larger issue.“This is not completely solving theproblem, but it’s getting us in thatright direction,” he says. “We aretrying to create a better imageand a friendly environment.”

Finkler says the university willevaluate the campaign after thefootball season and decidewhether to continue it or revise it.

“Our efforts right now areprobably incremental. But wehave to turn it around some-where,” he says.

— Joanna Salmen x’06

EPILOGUE

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EPILOGUE

The university commenced ayearlong process to create amaster plan for the campus’seast side. Aimed at creating amore functional and beautifulcampus, the plan will guide aten-year effort to redevelopLibrary Mall and other parts ofcampus. The Baltimore architec-tural firm Ayers Saint Gross,nationally known for its work on campus planning, will helpcreate the design, with inputfrom faculty, staff, students, andthe Madison community.

Cancer survivor, cyclist, and pro-fessor in the School of VeterinaryMedicine Sheila McGuirk wasone of twenty riders chosen tojoin six-time Tour de Francechampion Lance Armstrong inthe Tour of Hope, a weeklongcycle tour to raise awareness ofcancer and the need for clinicalresearch. McGuirk, who was cho-sen from 1,200 applicants tomake the journey from Los Ange-les to Washington, D.C., duringthe first week of October, loggedmore than 3,500 miles on herbike just preparing for the trek.

Charles Read, dean of theSchool of Education since 1995,announced this will be his lastyear leading the program. Theveteran professor and administra-tor is also a new grandfather, andhe’s looking forward to spendingmore time with his family.

The dance department mournedthe loss of longtime instructorJohn Gesinski ’70, MMusic’71,who was killed September 14 ina hit-and-run accident in Madi-son. Gesinski provided musicalaccompaniment for dancerehearsals and performances fortwenty-eight years. He had beenwalking home from the grocerystore when a car struck him.

WINTER 2004 13

DISPATCHES

The Red-Carpet TreatmentFans get a new dose of hospitality at Camp Randall.

Here’s one sign that freshmenare getting savvier: they’re show-ing up on campus equipped withtheir own long-distance plan.

Beginningnext fall, Univer-sity Housing willeliminate thelong-distancecalling plan pro-vided in residencehalls. The reason?Because of cellphones and call-ing cards, almostno one calls longdistance fromdorm phonesanymore.

Housing noticed the trendlast year, when only 7 percent ofdorm dwellers used the service.Students told staff that calling inthe residence halls was moreexpensive and less convenient

than using cell phones and callingcards. After a number of schoolson the East and West Coasts

stopped provid-ing long-distancecalling in thedorms, the uni-versity decided todo the same.

“It was a no-brainer,” saysSathish Gopal-rao, assistantdirector of infor-mation technol-ogy for Housing.“They all havecell phones!”

Local callingwill remain in the residence halls,at the students’ request.

“They wanted local calling sothey don’t waste their daytimeminutes and get charged,”Gopalrao says. “Smart kids.”

— J.S.

No Phone Home

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The best news in the fightagainst Alzheimer’s disease isthat Jeff Johnson didn’t try tobuild a better mouse.

For the past several years,Alzheimer’s researchers havebeen hung up on a single pur-suit — the development of agenetically engineered mousethat could serve as a model forthe disease and facilitate testingof potential therapies. Theproblem is that the mice don’tquite mimic humans with thedisease: while their brainsdevelop plaque formations thatare characteristic of Alzheimer’s,for instance, they don’t haveneurofibrillary tangles, one of

the indicators that neural cellsare dying.

But Johnson, an associateprofessor at the UW School ofPharmacy, believed researcherswere asking the wrong ques-tion.

“I said to myself, everybodyis trying to kill neurons in mice,”he explains. “So I flipped itaround. I said, let’s try to figureout why these mice aren’t get-ting Alzheimer’s disease.”

The surprising answer could completely alter the wayresearchers think about treatingthe condition, which affectsmore than 4.5 million Ameri-cans. Johnson and his graduate

student, Thor Stein ’98,PhD’04, discovered that theirlab mice had high levels of aprotein called transthyretin,which proved to interfere withneural-cell death. The scientiststhen verified that the proteinhas a similar effect in humanbrain tissue, suggesting that itmay fight the worst effects ofthe disease.

“This work shows that if we can intervene by giving molecules and drugs that getinto the brain and increasetransthyretin levels, we couldslow the progression ofAlzheimer’s disease,” says Johnson. “Even if patients haveplaque formation in the brain,they still could have normalfunction.”

The finding raises the possi-bility that family members witha genetic predisposition toAlzheimer’s disease might oneday take drugs that could pre-vent the disease from everdeveloping. Theoretically, such a drug could also halt the pro-gression of the disease in itsearly stages, preserving a higherlevel of cognitive function.

The next step — and it’s abig one — is for researchersand pharmaceutical companiesto find a reliable deliverymethod to get transthyretininto the brain or develop drugsthat increase transthyretinexpression in the brain. Butpotential new funding,sparked by the excitement sur-rounding Johnson’s discovery,may help speed the process.Wisconsin Governor JimDoyle ’67 has pledged to find more state money for theresearch, which is funded bythe National Institute of Envi-ronmental Health Sciences.

— Aaron R. Conklin MA’93

Of Mice and Alzheimer’sAnimals’ resistance points research down a new path.

RESEARCH

COOL TOOL

The Bone ReaderOne of the vexing matters of archaeology is under-standing who went where. Since the ancients didn’t write postcards, researchers usually haverelied on indirect evidence — such as distinctive bits of pottery and architecture — to stab at theirmigration patterns. But new technologies inarchaeological chemistry, which allow researchersto get an instant identification of their subjects’ origins, are revolutionizing the field.

The key is strontium, a metallic element presentin most of the earth’s geology, which also turns outto be a kind of biological passport. Every place hasits own strontium signature — a unique ratio of itsisotopes — that gets imprinted in our bodies whenwe eat local foods. By comparing the ratios found insamples of bone, which regenerates throughout aperson’s lifetime, with those found in tooth enamel,which forms only in childhood, scientists can get apretty good idea of whether someone stayed closeto his or her birthplace or meandered to new lands.

“It gives us a much better idea of how peoplemoved around in the past,” says T. Douglas Price,director of UW-Madison’s archaeological chemistrylab, one of two facilities worldwide dedicated to this kind of analysis. “Before I got into this work, I didn’tbelieve ancient people were that mobile, but now we’re learning they moved around quite a lot.”

Archaeologists from around the world send samples to the UW lab, which employs two mass spectrom-eters to break down the chemical makeup of bones and teeth, as well as pottery and other artifacts.

— M.P.

14 ON WISCONSIN

Kelly Knudson and James Burton prepare a sampleof pottery for analysis in the Laboratory ofArchaeological Chemistry.

JEFF MILLER

RESEARCH

It was eleven years late, but theearthquake that rattled tinyParkfield, California, in late Sep-tember was just what UW-Madi-son geophysics professor CliffThurber needed.

Predicted to occur before1993 — based on an averagetwenty-two-year lull betweenmoderate earthquakes thathave rocked Parkfield since1857 — the quake and its hun-dreds of aftershocks providedclues that could help Thurberpinpoint a seismological sweetspot deep in the earth whereearthquakes originate.

Not far from Parkfield,which sits atop the San AndreasFault and bills itself as the“Earthquake Capitol of theWorld,” researchers have beendrilling a two-mile-deep portalto the famous fault, which theyhope will end up near that spot,known as a rupture patch,where grinding and bumpingtriggers the periodic quakes.With seismic instruments sprin-kled around the Parkfield land-scape, scientists were able touse the recent events to fine-tune their estimates of wherethe rupture patch lurks.

“We want to hit a needle ina haystack,” says Thurber, whohas been working on this deep-earth observatory for ten years.“Fortunately, we’ve sort of fig-ured out where the needle is.”

Once they have drilled theirportal, they will pack the holewith instruments that will takethe pulse of the fault. “There ispotential here to make measure-ments right at the fault zonethat might provide us with infor-mation about earthquakes andhow they start and stop,”Thurber says.

The recent quake probablystarted in a much bigger rupturepatch than the one Thurber and

his colleagues are seeking, but itsreverberations promise a clearerpicture of the fault and may helpthem zero in on interesting sub-terranean features.

Their observatory, known as SAFOD, or the San AndreasFault Observatory at Depth, isjust one component of theNational Science Foundation’senormous EarthScope project, a$219 million effort to evaluateand explain what is happeningdeep under the surface of theNorth American continent.

Another element of theresearch is to deploy a densearray of portable seismic sta-tions, which will leapfrog acrossthe continent from west to eastover the course of a decade andhelp scientists map the details of the deep earth. AdditionalEarthScope projects will measurethe bending and bowing of thecontinent that is caused by thegrinding of tectonic plates, andpotentially use satellite radar todetect surface movements assmall as one millimeter.

Together, the observatoriespromise geoscientists a flood ofdata to investigate the structureand evolution of the continent,as well as to explore the myster-

ies of seismic hazards such asearthquakes and volcanoes.

“It’s an unprecedented, far-reaching effort to understandthe North American continent,”Thurber explains. “We’re reallytrying to understand the earthas a whole, and EarthScope is abold undertaking that will takeus where no earth scientistshave gone before.”

— Terry Devitt ’78, MA’85

Finding FaultsA massive research effort seeks out the heart of earthquakes.

The San Andreas Fault looks menacing on top, but the activity thatmost interests scientists takes place beneath the surface.

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Old Flu, New CluesSomething to worry about asyou’re waiting in line for your flu shot: according to one UW-Madison researcher, today’sforms of influenza may be just asingle genetic tweak away frombecoming the kind of super-potent bug that caused the1918 flu pandemic.

Seeking to understand whythat flu turned so deadly, scien-tists rebuilt the virus that causedmore than 20 million deaths in1918 and 1919, using genestaken from preserved lung tissuesamples from some of the pan-demic’s victims. By splicing a single gene from the older straininto a relatively benign form of

flu present today, virologistYoshihiro Kawaoka was able to engineer a virus that behavedeerily like the 1918 bug, causingmany similar symptoms in mice.

While Kawaoka’s worksupports the theory that the1918 flu was a kind of super-bug — genetically gifted towreak havoc — it also revealshow thin the gap betweenmild and severe flus can be.“Only a few changes makenon-pathogenic viruses highlypathogenic,” he says. But ulti-mately that knowledge mayhelp scientists predict the dan-ger of emerging viruses.

— Staff

RESEARCH

From deep slumbers to fitfuldozes, summer siestas to longwinter’s naps, people spend athird of their lives asleep. And yet science is largely in the darkabout the behavior. Sleep andsleeplessness can affect learning,health, and safety — but no oneseems to know quite how.

Now Ruth Benca and otherresearchers at the Wisconsin Psy-chiatric Institute and Clinics isworking to shed a little light onthe sleeping mind and make the

world moreconscious ofwhat happenswhen sleeppatterns aredisrupted.What she andher colleagueshave found hasimplicationsthat stretch farbeyond thebedroom.

Studyingwhite-crownedsparrows,migratory birdsthat naturallygo throughdrastic changesin their sleeppatterns, Bencaand assistantscientist NielsRattenborgrecorded the birds’ sleep duringspring and fall, when they nor-mally travel thousands of milesbetween nesting grounds. Theyfound that the sparrows sleep aslittle as a third as much as they doduring the winter. Even when keptin the laboratory, the birds displaythe same seasonal patterns ofbehavior, and according to Benca,lack of sleep didn’t seem to do the birds any harm. In fact, duringtheir sleep-deprived seasons, thebirds appeared to show anincreased capacity to learn.

“We had them perform anoperant task, punching keys toget food,” she says. “When theywere in the migratory phase, theydid not show any impairment inmotivation and learning. In con-trast, birds deprived of sleep dur-ing the non-migratory season,like mammals, show decreasedresponding on these types oftasks, which suggests thatmigrating birds seem to be resist-ant to the effects of sleep loss.”

In addition to providingclues as to how humans mightbe able to get by on less sleep,Benca hopes the studies mayhave a more clinical application— they may give guidance in the treatment of mood disorders.

When the birds were in their migratory seasons, theirsleep patterns, as well as otheraspects of their behavior, resembled those of humans with bipolar disorder.

To make a closer examina-tion of the brain chemistrybehind sleep, Benca is workingwith fellow psyciatry departmentfaculty members Chiara Cirelliand Giulio Tononi, who havebeen looking at the genetics of sleep.

“If we can find the genesthat control migration,” Bencasays, “we may be able to deter-mine what to target to treatmood disorders.”

— John Allen

Snooze NewsUW psychiatrists try to uncover the secrets of sleep.

JEFF

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Crossing to SafetyAt this time of year, many driversare struck by the horns of a high-way dilemma — or rather, theantlers of one. Collisions withwhitetail deer, particularly aroundhunting season, are growingmore common, accounting forone of every six vehicle accidentsin woodsy states such as Wiscon-sin. And the consequences gowell beyond bent fenders. KeithKnapp ’88, a traffic engineerwho runs the UW’s Deer-VehicleCrash Information Clearing-house, says researchers have esti-mated that the national cost ofanimal crashes, including prop-erty damage, exceeds $1 billioneach year.

Funded by the WisconsinDepartment of Transportation,the clearinghouse tracks crashdata from five states, which com-bined tally 125,000 crashesannually. But what can be done?States are trying everything fromubiquitous deer-crossing signs towildlife bridges to infrared sen-sors to keep animals off high-ways, but information aboutwhat works is sketchy at best.

“For most countermeasures,we don’t really know yet if theyare effective in reducing theproblem,” Knapp says. That’swhy he is pushing for a multi-state research effort to evaluatethe options. — M.P.

16 ON WISCONSIN

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UW-Madison entomologists are atwork on a better way to controlthe population of Wisconsin’sunofficial state bird. Mosquitoabatement has long been at thecenter of efforts to rein in diseasessuch as malaria and yellow fever,but most commonly used pesti-cides damage other wildlife. Insectphysiologist Que Lan and col-leagues are testingchemical com-pounds that inhibitmosquitoes’ ability tometabolize cholesterol,which could act as“smart pesticides” thattarget only the pests.

The UW Hospital and Clinics isusing a new form of pace-maker, which regulates not theheart, but the bladder. Urologistsestimate that 15 percent of mid-dle-aged women and 30 percentof women in their seventies haveoveractive bladders, and not allrespond to exercise or medica-tion. The surgically implantedpacemaker sends small electricalimpulses to nerve endings to helpcontrol erratic bladder function.

UW-Madison scientists havedeveloped a pair of rapid-firetests for botulism, which willhelp protect the food supply frompotential bioterrorism. Botulism,the world’s most poisonous sub-stance, can cause paralysis ordeath if it binds to nerve cells.The new tests may one day bedeployed to detect its presence infood or in people who may havebeen exposed to unknown bio-logical agents.

The Wisconsin Alumni ResearchFoundation has created a newlicensing program for the eightvarieties of potato developedby UW research. New one-timefees to plant, harvest, and sell theUW-produced tubers streamlinethe process, making it easier toget new varieties to market.

For Michael Rothschild, anemeritus professor of business,selling anything boils down to apretty simple idea. Give people abetter alternative, he says, andthey’ll switch brands.

But can the same free-mar-ket logic that works for cereal beapplied to a public health issuelike drunken driving? That’s thebelief behind a new programthat offers low-cost limousinerides to tavern patrons whomight otherwise careen downthe highway in their own cars.

Rothschild led an effort todevelop the novel ride program,which now runs in two countiesin rural Wisconsin. Aimed at single men aged twenty-one tothirty-four, the limo service pro-vides rides to and from tavernsand allows riders to drink andsmoke in the car.

Conventional campaigns tocurb drunken driving often fallflat because they tell peoplehow to behave, but don’t offeralternatives, Rothschild says. “Ifwe say, ‘Don’t drink and drive,’and they see no benefit or wayto change, they will continue todrink and drive,” he says. “Weneeded to offer them an alter-native, a better deal. They reallydo care and are scared of drink-ing and driving. They do itbecause drinking is a big part ofwhat small-town life is about,and because there generally isno other way to get home at theend of the evening.”

Meeting in the back roomsand banquet halls of rural tav-erns, Rothschild probed the atti-tudes of bar patrons in elevenfocus groups. One thing helearned is that people wouldn’tride in just any vehicle. “Thepatrons told us that their carswere very important to them.They said, ‘You need to give us aride in a vehicle as good as what

we have,’ ” says Rothschild, anexpert in “social marketing” —an approach that applies com-mercial marketing techniques tochanging undesirable behaviors.

With that in mind, organiz-ers in two Wisconsin countiesbought used limousines and

found volunteer drivers, and theservice took off. Patrons payfrom five to fifteen dollars to be picked up in Cadillacs andLincoln Town Cars, which ferry them between bars. InDodgeville, southwest of Madi-son, the self-sustaining programgave more than eight thousandrides in its first two years.

Though some critics questionthe wisdom of enabling drinking,Rothschild says he has compileddata showing that people drinkno more alcohol when they takethe rides. What’s changed is theeffect on the roads. Crashes dueto drunken driving are down anestimated 17 percent in the com-munities where the programoperates, which has earned itpraise from the WisconsinDepartment of Transportation.

Dennis Marklein, one of theDodgeville organizers and anoccasional chauffeur, says theriders are socially responsiblepeople who know the socialcosts of drinking and driving.

“They’re not all soused,”says Marklein, who, ironically,

owns a body shop. “You see thedrunk driving stats and you can’tturn your back on it.”

Now, about those cerealmarketers and the sugary stuffthey peddle — Rothschild’s nextchallenge is to use social mar-keting to reverse the trendtoward obesity. He is workingwith the National Cancer Insti-tute to wean people away fromjunk food and toward morehealthy lifestyles.

“We’re looking at makingchanges in the workplace tomake sure it’s easier to get betterfood and to bring more activityinto the routine,” he says. “Ifyou want people to behave, youhave to create a supportive envi-ronment and reduce the barriersto behaving.”

— Dennis Chaptman ’80

Your Limo’s WaitingA business prof goes after drunken driving — with style.

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RESEARCH

Business professor Michael Rothschild says the key to curbingdrunken driving may be alternative transportation — provided thatthe alternative is a good one. That’s why some Wisconsin towns areoffering limousine rides to tavern patrons.

JEFF MILLER

ARTS & CULTURE

Dean Bakopoulos MFA’04says his first novel started with a mood: aimless sadness. Hisgrandfather had just died, andhe was walking his dog in thewoods outside Madison whenthe first line popped into hishead: “When I was sixteen, myfather went to the moon.”

That line inspired the title of his first novel, Please Don’tCome Back from the Moon,the story of growing up in ablue-collar Detroit neighbor-hood in which, one by one,all the men abandon theirfamilies. While a graduate

student in the UW’s new masterof fine arts (MFA) program in creative writing, Bakopouloswrote the novel, due to hit book-stores in January, and secured acontract with Harcourt.

Bakopoulos attributes hissuccess in part to support hereceived from professors andpeers. “I’m lucky enough tohave sold my first novel at apretty early age — I was twenty-

eight when I signed the con-tract. That’s really young for thewriting world,” he says. “There’sno way that would have hap-pened without this program. Itwould have taken eight years offlailing around.”

As part of a fine arts ratherthan a research program, stu-dents earn credits by writingrather than studying literary theory. Each semester, they sharechapters of their novels or shortstories for the class to critiqueduring workshops. The creativewriting program provides morethan just practical advice. It alsooffers emotional support.

“The faculty really want youto succeed and try to keep yourspirits up,” says Bakopoulos. “It

might sound silly that writingcan be this hard and this emo-tional, but it really can be a con-stant series of ego bruises. Theprofessors, at least the oneshere, really understand that.They’ve been there.”

Three of the UW facultyBakopoulos worked with arealso accomplished writers intheir own right — Lorrie Mooreis a best-selling fiction writer,

and memoirist Jesse LeeKercheval and novelist JudithClaire Mitchell have receivedwidespread critical acclaim forrecent books.

Bakopoulos is currently writ-ing his second novel, thoughthis time, he doesn’t have theadvice of his former professors.

“They’re really part instruc-tor and part therapist. Writersusually work in complete seclu-sion, with very little chance ofpublication or commercial suc-cess,” he says. “For the twoyears I was in the MFA program,I was being treated as if writingwas very important and as if Ihad a real chance of actuallymaking it.”

— Erin Hueffner ‘00

Between the LinesHow the UW–Madison creative writing master’s program aided an author.

Dean Bakopoulos now walks along the road to the book-lover’sheaven. He led the Wisconsin Humanities Council through thisyear’s Wisconsin Book Festival, and his first novel, Please Don’tCome Back from the Moon, will be published in January.

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The Book BeautifulIt’s said that you shouldn’t judge abook by its cover. And the Kohler ArtLibrary’s Artists’ Books Collectiontakes this maxim to heart — it judgesbooks by their binding, pages, print-ing — and, somewhere down theline, by the words they contain, if any.

Housed at the Elvehjem Museum ofArt, the Artists’ Books Collection high-lights books that are themselves artworks.It contains some seven hundred volumes,most of which are hand-made, limited edi-tions. Former Kohler Art Library directorWilliam Bunce ‘58, MA’59, MA’65began collecting them as a sort of hands-on laboratory to show the many waysbooks can be put together. “The strength of this collection,” saysLyn Korenic ‘77, MA’78, MFA’79, MA’81, MA’84, the Kohler ArtLibrary’s current director, “is the way that it explores the definition ofwhat a book is.”

The collection includes a wide variety of creations, from JulieChen’s Bon Bon Mots, a book shaped like a box of candies, withpoetic bonbons, to Caryl Herfort MFA’93’s Why Are You AlwaysSticking Leaves in My Face?, which has no text or images whatsoever.

Though the books themselves are non-circulating, the collectionis open to the public and may be viewed by appointment. “Many ofthe books have been loved nearly to death,” says Korenic. But that,she says, illustrates the true importance of the collection. “Peopleshould know that these books are here to be used, to be held andhandled.” To make a donation to support the collection, call theKohler Art Library at (608) 263-2256 or visit giving.library.wisc.edu.

— John Allen

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EPILOGUEEPILOGUE

Professor of art history HenryDrewal received a GuggenheimFellowship for his work on under-standing the role of the senses inAfrican art. The fellowship willenable him to spend a year turn-ing three decades of notes onYoruba art into a book.

Judy Pfaff, an artist at UW-Madison’s Tandem Press, alsopicked up a prestigious honor. Asculptor, artist, and print-maker,Pfaff received a five-year,$500,000 John D. and CatherineT. MacArthur Foundation fellow-ship for 2004.

Truman Lowe MFA’73 has had abusy fall. The art professor servedas curator of contemporary art at the Smithsonian Institution’sNational Museum of the Ameri-can Indian during its opening thisfall. He also designed the firstblanket that the museum pro-duced. Lowe dedicated the blanket in honor of his mother,Sauninga, a member of the Ho-Chunk’s Bear Clan.

Creative writing professor LorrieMoore is the recipient of the2004 Rea Award for the ShortStory, given annually to a writerwho has made “a significant con-tribution to the short story form.”Her story collections include LikeLife and Birds of America, andone of her stories, “You’re UglyToo,” was chosen for The BestAmerican Short Stories of theCentury, edited by John Updike.

Peter Helmberger, a former pro-fessor of agricultural economics,has produced another novel: IfIt’s Not One Thing, It’s AnotherMurder. Since his retirement,Helmberger has turned to writingcomic mysteries because, he says,the “royalties run in the tens ofdollars annually.”

There’s nothing new about a clas-sical musician performing educa-tional outreach when on tour. Butworld-renowned violinist Midori is taking the term “artist in resi-dence” to a new level. Before herNovember 12 recital at the UnionTheater, she held campus-wideforums and workshops on topicsas diverse as arts administrationand psychology, all whileimmersed in day-to-day life inChadbourne Hall.

It’s all part ofMidori’s effort toexplore kizuma,a Japanese termmeaning“human inter-connectedness.”Last year, thefamed musicianlaunched whatshe calls her Uni-versity Residen-cies Program tostrengthen tiesamong artists,students, andfaculty — andamong the artsand other aca-demic fields. Thisfall, Midoribrought the newresidency pro-gram to UW-Madison.

Born MidoriGoto in Osaka,Japan, in 1971, the violinist hasbecome one of the best knownand loved classical musicians,earning the kind of single-namenotoriety usually reserved forrock stars. She debuted with theNew York Philharmonic at ageeleven and has performed at awide variety of venues, from theworld’s greatest concert halls tothe 1992 Winter Olympics, andfrom The Tonight Show to

Sesame Street. Now on the fac-ulty at New York’s ManhattanSchool of Music, Midori hasdeveloped a series of innovativeeducational programs, of whichUniversity Residencies is the lat-est. As the second schoolselected to participate in the program, UW-Madison experi-enced not only days of attentionfrom a gifted performer, but theinterdisciplinary spirit of kizuna,as well.

Midori has made her ownlife a study of kizuna. Currentlya master’s candidate in psychol-ogy, she has a commitment toeducation that includes as manystudents in as many disciplinesas possible. She is not onlybuilding audiences for classicalmusic, but guiding others in discovering and strengtheningrelationships in completely unrelated fields.

Each day for a week, Midorispent much of her time withindividual students and variouschamber ensembles, openingsome master classes to the pub-lic. She also compared Japaneseand American teaching toolswith education majors, dis-cussed children’s musical litera-ture with librarians, addressedmarketing concerns with busi-ness students, and explored theprocessing and appreciation of

sensory input with future scien-tists and psychologists.

Midori speaks of the “valu-able experiences to be bornthrough our united efforts,” andshe plans to expand her work to an even wider variety of stu-dents, teachers, performers, andthe public when she returns forthe second half of her residencyin the spring of 2006.

— Lori Skelton

Finding KizunaViolinist Midori comes to Madison to teach interconnectedness.

WINTER 2004 19

At 33, Midori has more than two decades of performing experience. Her currentpassion is kizuma, or human interconnectedness — a concept that resonates withthe interdisciplinary UW-Madison.

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Walking into the writing lab inUW-Madison’s Helen C. WhiteHall, you can tell this is a spacethat nurtures creativity. Quotesfrom Albert Einstein, TomSawyer, Jack Kerouac, and Dr.Seuss are scrawled on the walls in red paint. The face ofMahatma Gandhi looms in thebackground, giving you the feel-ing that he’s listening in on thediscussion. It’s really not whatyou’d expect to find in a collegelibrary.

But then again, the studentswho fill this classroom are noordinary undergraduates —they’re Writing Fellows, tutorsassigned to writing-intensive

courses to help their peersimprove their papers. They’ve allpassed a competitive applicationprocess: this year, more thanone hundred students applied to the program, and just thirtywere selected.

English 316 is the coursethat gives them the tools theyneed to be effective in their role.At the beginning of class, EmilyHall MA’92, PhD’00, associatedirector of the Writing Fellowsprogram and professor for thecourse, emphasizes that writingis a process, and that everywriter can benefit from peerfeedback. But many of the newFellows worry about how theirpeers will take suggestions froma tutor who’s younger than theyare. They talk about the classesthey’re working with — becausethey are Fellows upon accept-ance to the program, their workhas already begun.

Jessica Marinelli x’07, anoutspoken sophomore from LosAngeles, is a Writing Fellow forEnglish 236, American Literatureand Democracy. She loves achallenge, enjoys writing, andwants to apply to the School ofJournalism and Mass Communi-cation. One of her students is anaccomplished writer. “There’s apublished novelist in this class.What favors will I be able to dothis man?” she asks.

She’s not alone in her wor-ries — it’s the first week of class,and everyone is getting used tothe new role of Writing Fellow.After the rest of the studentsshare their experiences, theygather in small groups to prac-tice writing comments on a draftpaper. This exercise will preparethem for when they’ll beginreviewing student essays later inthe semester. They talk aboutferreting out the “higher order

concerns” in writing — whetherthe paper fulfills the assignment,has a clear thesis, and flows log-ically. It’s an animated class fullof questions, most of which Hallredirects to be answered by thestudents themselves.

“It’s important for the stu-dents to teach themselves andto take some responsibility fortheir education,” says Hall. “It’snot just a vocational class; it’s arigorous, academic class. Theyare such talented students with a wide array of academicstrengths — they have a lot tolearn from one another.”

Hall’s belief in studentsteaching each other is apparentin this class. Rather than lectur-ing at a room full of studentsfuriously writing notes, she usesclass time for discussion — prac-ticing tutoring skills and talkingabout theories of writing andeducation. Today, the Fellowsengage in lofty discussion aboutthe relationship between socialdiscourse and writing. The stu-dents volley philosophical ideasacross the room. Can you havethoughts without words? Is writ-ing an external expression ofinner thought? Although someFellows are shier than others,everyone participates. In a classof just fifteen, there’s nowhereto hide. But that’s one of thethings Marinelli loves aboutthese discussions.

“It’s awesome to be in aclass where everyone reallywants to be there,” she says.“It’s just a real mixture of peo-ple. It’s a very cool class. And itkind of blows my mind that[Hall] hand-picked each of us.”

The Writing Fellows pro-gram was established in 1997 togive undergraduate students achance to experience the teach-ing aspect of the university and

CLASSROOM

CLASS NOTE

Half TimeShowCommunication Arts699: Directed Studyin Film and TelevisionProduction

Don’t go running fora snack during halftime of Badger bas-ketball games thiswinter. You mightmiss the chance to see some communication arts homework. InErik Gunneson ’89’s independent study course, four Comm Artsseniors are putting their television and film production skills to avery public test. They’re creating the half-time features — the two-minute-long commercials for the UW that are shown during broad-casts of men’s basketball and hockey games. And the students’ proj-ects don’t just need the teacher’s approval — they have to gainacceptance from University Communications, which is responsiblefor the UW’s public relations. According to Gunneson, this providesthe students with important lessons about the restrictions they’llfind when working with a client. “Student films tend to be prettyindependent,” he says. “Now they’re learning what it’s like to workwith a producer.”

The half-time features won’t be the students’ only widely seencreations, however. They’ve also shot footage of campus for use inthe PBS program American Experience, which is airing a documen-tary based on the David Maraniss book They Marched into Sunlight.

— John Allen

Tutors in TrainingWriting Fellows learn skills on the job and in the classroom.

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A group of nine students traveledto the eastern Mediterraneanisland of Cyprus over the sum-mer as part of a three-week inter-national seminar on social justice— Mapping a Diverse Cyprus:Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Reli-gion. The group, led by Mary Layoun, professor of comparativeliterature, studied the issues ofdiversity and community inCyprus by meeting with residentsand citizens as they traveled.Since a 1974 civil war, the islandhas been divided between ethnicGreek and Turkish sections. Thestudents recently held a presenta-tion at the Chadbourne Residen-tial College to share inspiringstories and lessons learned duringtheir trip to the Mediterranean.

Wei Dong, a professor of environ-ment, textiles, and design, set hissummer course in a whole newenvironment. To study the Chi-nese principles of feng shui, hetook his class to his native China.Students from a variety of fields,

including medicine, interiordesign, and business, took Chinese Feng Shui and WesternEnvironmental Design to learnabout this Eastern philosophy ofharmony and balance.

Maps get a high-tech upgrade in Geography 575, Animatedand Web-Based Mapping. Thecourse covers new cartographicchallenges, such as animationand on-demand mapping sys-tems. Take a peek at the courseat www.geography.wisc.edu/~harrower/Geog575/.

CLASSROOM

to support students and facultyin writing-intensive courses.Funded by the College of Lettersand Science and co-sponsoredby the Writing Center and Path-ways to Excellence Project, theprogram is based on the theorythat peer tutoring is a powerfulway to encourage learning. Butit also helps the Fellows learn tobe better writers themselves,something Marinelli wants togain from the course.

“I hope to become a betterwriter. I didn’t realize howextensively we’d be learninghow to tutor. I didn’t reallyknow what to expect goinginto it,” she says. “And we’relearning so many interestingtheories about ethics and

becoming an authoritative edu-cational figure like a tutor or ateaching assistant.”

Though the Fellows hail fromnumerous academic back-grounds, all of them are excellentwriters and have a genuine desireto help students improve theirwriting skills. They review papersin undergraduate classes rangingfrom Stellar Astrophysics toWomen and Health in AmericanHistory, so they need to knowhow to communicate to studentsfrom varying academic back-grounds, even when they aren’texperts in the subject matter.

Though the ultimate goal of the course is to make greattutors, students aren’t gradedon their work as Writing

Fellows. They keep a journal of their experiences and writethree papers — two shortassignments and one majorresearch paper about writing ortutoring. Hall says that her stu-dents are graded on the qualityand ambitiousness of their writ-ing, and their meaningful contri-butions to class discussions.

“I find that the students areso smart that they’ll often havean insight about an article that Ihaven’t had,” Hall says. “It’sreally hard to be a Writing Fel-low while you’re being trained.But at the same time, it’s reallyvaluable, because Fellows in theclass serve as such wonderfulresources for one another.”

— Erin Hueffner ’00

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Undergraduate students Jessica Marinelli and Joe Steele participate in a class discussion during English 316,a prep class for students aspiring to become Writing Fellows at the Writing Center in Helen C. White Hall. In the background is a student-painted mural, called “The Writer’s Influence,” featuring numerous literaryquotes. Professor Emily Hall prefers that the course develop from participation so that the students teachthemselves.

WINTER 2004 21

JEFF MILLER

The worst day in Dianne McFarland Bady ’72’slife was the day she lost Laura Forman.

It was December 10, 2001, and the Ohio Valley Envi-ronmental Coalition (OVEC) had prepared a little Christ-mas pageant for the Army Corps of Engineers office inHuntington, West Virginia. Bady founded OVEC in 1987and was its co-director. Forman was the lead organizer. It was her job to keep the heat on the Corps for writingpermits for mountaintop removal coal mining, a processdeplored by opponents for its devastating and irreversibleeffects on the environment.

Dianne McFarlandBady ’72 blows thelid off mountaintop

removal mining.

By Erik Ness

22 ON WISCONSIN

Mountaintop removal miningoperations, such as the oneabove in southern West Virginia,involve dismantling the tops ofmountains and dumping the fillinto the surrounding valleys.This can result in flooding anddestruction of streams andhomes below, and can convert ascenic vista like the one at leftinto something resembling amoonscape.

WINTER 2004 23

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OVEC always tries to spice up thesign-waving and speech-making with abit of street theater, and the plan was tohave Santa Claus deliver a lump of coaland a package of sludge fudge to theCorps. Then Santa caught the flu, andForman had to scramble to find areplacement. Finally, after a little friendlyarm-twisting, a reluctant volunteerdonned the costume and stepped for-ward with Forman before a crowd ofabout one hundred people. She took themike and cued the protest with a fewintroductory remarks, and then intro-duced Santa.

“Then she took a step backward, andshe just collapsed,” remembers Bady.OVEC members started CPR and calledfor a rescue crew, but Forman soonturned blue. When the paramedicsarrived, they ripped off her blouse andapplied the paddles as television camerasrolled. Forman did not survive the car-diac arrhythmia, leaving a five-year-oldboy, a husband, and a hole in OVEC.

Just that morning, Bady had talkedto Forman about cutting back on herwork. In the uphill fight against moun-taintop removal, which literally refers toblasting the tops off mountains to get atthe coal, there was always somethingmore that could be done. And they faceda constant background of anger: lettersto the editor, threats, and personalattacks. Not that it stopped them. A few months earlier, Bady, Forman, andOVEC co-director Janet Fout had goneto New York City to accept one of theinaugural Ford Foundation Leadershipfor a Changing World awards. Twentygroups or individuals were recognized,out of three thousand nominations. The$130,000 prize rewards those who tacklethe “complex social realities of contem-porary communities.”

It was a hard fall from that pinnacleto Forman’s death, but OVEC fights on.After all, what the women were recog-nized for was their ability to adapt, theirgrace under fire. So often, their well-laidplans were scuttled: they’d lose keymembers to intimidation, or a state orcorporate maneuver would change the

entire strategic landscape. OVECresponds with what they call radicaltrust. “We noticed that so often when wedidn’t know what to do, somethingwould happen,” explains Bady. “We’dget new people; we’d get a source ofmoney that we hadn’t counted on; we’dmake a crucial contact with people insideof state or federal agencies who couldpoint us in the right direction and feed usall kinds of information under the table.”

You can’t argue with the results.Bady founded the Ohio Valley Environ-mental Coalition to oppose a bid byBASF (billed as “the world’s leadingchemical company”) to build a toxic-waste incinerator in Ironton, Ohio.BASF abandoned the plan. Ashland Oil,which operates a large refinery on theOhio River, wound up paying big finesand was forced into a $30 million renova-tion. Parsons and Whittemore, a NewYork-based wood-products company,wanted to open the nation’s largest pulp

mill in West Virginia; permit denied.Those are the big ones.

“She’s faced off against powerfulindustries that nobody else wouldtackle,” says Fout, who calls Bady a spir-itual companion and OVEC’s visionary.“It’s like going into the lion’s den, andshe’s done it over and over.”

In April the Appalachian springis in full tilt, but sitting in her yard,Dianne Bady is subdued, as if she werestill in the midst of winter. Major surgerywill do that. A month prior, her doctors,in search of a rotten spleen, located a tinyspot of lung cancer. Along with thespleen, they removed a chunk of lung.

It’s a good time to reflect on life, aconversation continually joined by herdogs and the chattering of birds thatcavort in the canopy of Bady Hollow.There is a sunny, open space behind herhouse, but the trees close gradually in,

24 ON WISCONSIN

Dianne McFarland Bady, right, works with intern Scott Straight in the Ohio Valley Environmen-tal Coalition (OVEC) offices. Bady, who founded OVEC in 1987, credits her years at UW-Madisonwith schooling her in public activism.

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lining the banks of a small brook andclimbing the hills. Several paths lead upinto the woods.

Her upbringing was pure Wisconsinfarm girl: a cow named Daisy, a half-dozen siblings, a Welsh pony namedSatin. The pony provides perhaps thefirst clue of what was to come. A horsekilled her great-grandfather, so herfather was firmly against them. “I justwanted a pony so bad, so I started ridinghis cows,” Bady recalls. “That was mybig thrill. The cow pasture was right onthe road, and so people would go by andsee me sitting on a cow, and I think even-tually it got kind of embarrassing.”

In 1968, when it came time for col-lege, she was intimidated by Madison:too big and too much going on. But byher sophomore year, the fear turned toluster, and she transferred from UW-La Crosse. She earned a double degreein social work and psychology, but that’snot the education she talks about. On herfirst protest, she joined a march of wel-fare mothers to the capitol. A lot of peo-ple were angry, but instead of listening,the legislature cancelled the day’s delib-erations. “That was pretty much of ashock to me,” she says. “Up until that

point, I really thought that the legislatorsand politicians were much more con-cerned.” She risked arrest, wrote her firstletter to the editor, and was disillusionedwith government for the first time.

“In terms of lessons that have reallycarried through to my life, it’s theactivism that I learned,” says Bady of herUW years. “I listened to what other peo-ple had to say and went to lots of meet-ings and protests. I soaked up infor-mation. I watched the leaders and howthey worked.”

After graduating, Bady went to Rut-gers to pursue an advanced degree in

psychology. There she met her husband,Rick, and fell out of love with academia.When Rick graduated, they both foundteaching positions back in Wisconsin atMount Scenario College in Ladysmith.

For Bady, escaping the megalopolisof New Jersey for northern Wisconsinwas “sort of like coming to heaven.” She quickly got involved in a contro-versy over a proposed (later completed)

copper and zinc mine, and spent fiveyears as president of the Rusk CountyCitizen Action Group. She made stateheadlines when she called state publicintervener Peter Pescak Wisconsin’s veryown James Watt.

Despite the tumult, Bady was con-tent and connected. “I really came to feelthe land and I were all part of the samelarger process,” she remembers. ButMount Scenario College was failing, andwhen Rick went on the job market, hewas offered a tenure-track position inphysics at Marshall University in Hunt-ington. They felt they had to take it. “In

the moving van, it took me an hourbefore I could stop crying,” recalls Bady.Among her fears was one triggered bythe experience of a colleague who hadspent a year in Kentucky: activism washard in Wisconsin, but Appalachian coalmining activists were regularly shot at.

In West Virginia, her life stalled. Shebadly missed northern Wisconsin. “I justfelt as if I’d been cut off from a part of

WINTER 2004 25

The nation's worst-ever black-water spill happened in October2000 near Inez, Kentucky. Some308 million gallons of coalsludge leaked from a coal slurryimpoundment at a mountaintopremoval site, fouling 100 milesof waterways along the WestVirginia-Kentucky border. Fivemonths later, OVEC staffreturned to the site, where apump was sucking the muck outof Coldwater Creek. Here, Inezresident Monroe Cassadywatches the sludge pour out theother end, into a temporaryholding pond on the ColdwaterCreek floodplain.

She earned a double degree in social work and psychology, butthat’s not the education she talks about.

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myself,” she says of the move, placing ahand on her chest. “It was physicallypainful, right here.” She found some sol-ace in nature, and spent a lot of timewriting and walking, exploring the hillsand back roads near her new home.

One day in December, on one ofthose roads, a stranger appeared, walk-ing toward her. Tall and thin, he had along beard and old-fashioned clothes. Asthey grew closer, Bady lost her nerve,turned around, and walked quicklyaway. “This is too strange,” she thought,and turned again to look. The man hadvanished. The road here dipped betweentwo hayfields, and she saw no place hecould have gone so quickly, but he wasdefinitely gone. The encounter left herdeeply unsettled.

A few weeks later, she talked it outwith her husband, and she suddenlyunderstood. The man had looked like Ripvan Winkle, who went to sleep and stayedthe same while everything around himchanged. “I’d been there since August. I’mstill crying because I want to be back inWisconsin, and everything around me —my son is changing, my husband is chang-ing, but I’m staying the same. At thatpoint, I realized it was time to put Wis-consin behind me and see how I fit here.”

Maria Gunnoe’s polished Coltrevolver, like her house, once belonged toher grandfather. Martin Luther Gunnoe,a full-blooded Cherokee, worked thirty-two years in the coal mines. “When hefirst started, they used breast drills andmattocks and hoes and shovels,” saysMaria. “That’s how he paid for this prop-erty, making eighteen dollars a week.”

But what coal has made, coal candestroy. Up the hollow and out of sight is a large strip mine run by the IO minecompany, a subsidiary of Brook TroutCoal Company, LLC. Strip mining has

never been gentle, but this operation is amountaintop removal site that Gunnoesays is destroying her property, and she’spacking the Colt for another walk to themine. We’ll be trespassing, she says,because she likes to remind them thatshe’s still there. Every day, when possi-ble. Offhandedly, she says the gun is incase of bear, but there was also the daywhen she ran into a few mine employeeswho made vague threats about a womanalone in the woods. She went back thenext day with a shotgun, too. “Who’sfirst?” she dared.

Gunnoe disappears inside to gathermore gear, and OVEC organizer VivianStockman hands over a binder of docu-ments that track Gunnoe’s losing battleagainst the mine, including pictures of

the property before a flood took awaymuch of her yard, correspondence, andmaps of the mine.

The family land extends forty acresupstream, and the hollow was her play-ground and larder as she grew up.Roaming far and wide, they all learned tohunt the steep sides of the valley. “Thisplace has been the same my whole life,”she says as we head upward. “We’vealways had our own little paradise here.We were taught to live off the land.We’re mountain people. We like it thatway. And that’s disappearing.”

We cross the creek where a fallentree has jammed the channel, backing upa dozen truckloads of gravel and rockand sand. Anyone who knows mountainstreams has seen this kind of rough-and-tumble mayhem. But as we climb up theopposite side, it becomes clear that thismay be more than gravity’s subtle domin-ion. Violent forces are at work. The for-est floor, while solid for now, is shotthrough with slips and cracks that looklike miniature earthquakes. One slipexposes three feet of vertical. Downhill,a house-sized quantity of earth and rock

held together by tree roots slumpstoward the water below. It takes no spe-cial training to see how, soaked by aheavy rain, the whole hillside will plungeinto the creek. “Spring scares the crapout of me,” says Gunnoe, looking down.“I used to love it. I still do, but....”

The mine comes into view, and witheach upward stride, the scale of the oper-ation becomes more intimidating. Thevalley is now shorn of trees, its graceful,water-worn lines buried under massivesteps of crushed rock: the mountaintophas been mutilated. Above the last stepclimbs an exposed cliff. As we watch, alarge vehicle crests the horizon, erects aderrick, and begins to drill blast holes.

Examining the cliff closely, there is athin, dark seam dozens of feet below theprecipice. This is the coal. If the cliffwere a layer cake, the coal would be thefrosting. To get at the frosting, the cake— called overburden — is blasted away,then hauled to the valley below. A mas-sive vehicle called a dragline does theheavy lifting. The machinery is so expen-sive that the mines must run 24/7 to cleara profit: last year, Christmas dinner atthe Gunnoe house was interrupted by ablast rolling down the valley.

Still, mountaintop removal mining isfavored by the industry as the most cost-effective way to get at the thin seams ofcoal, the dregs of the black bounty ofAppalachia. Walking back down themountain, the order of destruction fallsinto place. The devastation of a mountainshorn is compounded by the filling of thevalleys below. Across this region, morethan four hundred thousand acres havebeen leveled, more than seven hundredmiles of stream buried alive. The combi-nation of repeated destabilizing blastsand the removal of the absorbent forestcollapses the valley below with cata-strophic flooding.

On June 16, 2003, it started rainingabout four o’clock in the afternoon.“Within forty-five minutes after it startedraining, there was a wall of mud andtrees and rocks and water come downout of there that hid the barn,” she says.The rain stopped by seven o’clock, but

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Across this region, more than four hundred thousand acres have been leveled, more than seven hundred miles

of stream buried alive.

“all through the night you could hearparts from my barn and trees and stuffrushing through the water.”

The next morning her front lawn wasa chasm. The bridge over Big Branchwas gone; the bridge over the Pond Forkof the Little Kanawha River was weak-ened enough that her truck cannot cross.Her septic field was destroyed and herwell contaminated. The garden wasburied under mining sludge. FEMA gaveher $5,000, but the estimate for munici-pal water alone came to $31,546.

And the mine? Gunnoe says thatthey helped with cleanup, but the man-ager denied responsibility. “He stood outhere in my yard and said this was an actof God,” she says. “That infuriated me.I’ve lived here my whole life, and there’snever been anything like that happen.”

She was stranded, but not silenced— her phone was still connected. Whenshe got nowhere with the local politi-cians, she moved on to the media, and as soon as OVEC learned of her plight,they called to offer her support andexpertise in getting her story out.

“The best thing I can do for myfuture and my kids’ future is to try to

stop mountaintop removal,” she says.She grew up with the freedom of thehills, but Gunnoe no longer allows hertwo children to wander. “We’re at a pointnow where we might be able to salvagesomething if we stop it. But if we don’tstop it within the next five years, wemight as well quit. There ain’t going tobe nothing left to fight for.”

From on high, the sumptuousfolds of Appalachia look like a greenbrain. Soaring ridges tumble into low,moist valleys and back up again, the airpunctuated by azaleas and cucumbermagnolia. The wrinkles of the brain fosterintellect, but these terrestrial folds areengines of diversity and life. Indeed, the dimples, whorls, and tucks of theAppalachian ridge lines in southern Ohio,West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, Ten-nessee, and Virginia are home to the mostdiverse temperate forest on the planet.

In 1997, with its challenge to the Par-sons and Whittemore pulp mill windingtoward victory, OVEC decided to makeprotecting this forest its next fight. At ameeting of the Lucy Braun Association

for the Mixed Mesophytic Forest, theymet a few men from the Coal RiverMountain Watch, a new organizationfighting a new generation of strip-mining— mountaintop removal. It didn’t takelong for OVEC to realize it had found thegroup’s next cause. It wasn’t exactly forestspecific, but then mountaintop removalwas like a stroke in the green brain. Clear-cutting was gentle by comparison.

King Coal was a big target, but notan easy one. Since the late 1800s, coalhas had a stranglehold on southern WestVirginia. “We believe there has been avery conscious strategy on the part of thecoal industry to do whatever possible toprevent economic diversification in thecoal fields,” says Bady. For example,McDowell County has been called thebillion-dollar coalfields. For years thehighest producing coal county in thecountry, it helped to fuel the IndustrialRevolution and stoked many fortunes.Yet, until very recently, no community inMcDowell County even had a sewage-treatment system. “You look around, andyou see horrendous poverty. The schoolbuildings are horrible. The water is hor-rible,” says Bady. “Is any business in

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In May 2004, southern West Virginia experienced devastat-ing flooding, affecting houseslike this one in Logan County.Mountaintop removal miningexacerbates the effects offloods, since it removes forestvegetation that helps to keepflood waters in check. Theescalating emphasis on domestic energy productionafter September 11 has complicated OVEC’s work. “The Bush administrationwould emphasize how muchwe need more coal productionin the United States, at thesame time refusing to put any pressure on automakers,” says Bady.

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their right mind that isn’t coal relatedgoing to show any interest?”

With a long history and few otheroptions, coal is a difficult and emotionalissue, a classic jobs-versus-environmenttangle. The impacts go beyond the miningzone. The headwaters of the GuyandotteRiver rise in coal country, and it drainscoal waste to the Ohio River, a source of

drinking water for millions. The Hunt-ington area has more respiratory healthimpacts from coal-fired generation thananywhere else in the country. “Whoknows why I got lung cancer?” asksBady. “I’ve never smoked in my life.”

“The regulations are being violateddaily, and there is no enforcement efforton a federal or state level,” says JackSpadaro, former superintendent of theU.S. Mine Safety and Health Adminis-tration. As reported by Sixty Minutes,when Spadaro refused to cooperate inthe whitewashing of an investigation intoa 300 million gallon spill of coal slurry,he was relieved of duty and locked out of

his office. When he appealed his demo-tion to the inspector general of theDepartment of Labor, the final reportruled against him, but contained largesections of blacked-out text. “All of theoperations in Appalachia right now arein violation of the law,” says Spadaro.“What OVEC has done is let it be knownthat that’s the case.”

“Thousands of people show up atthese operations every day — that aredone in complete compliance with all thelaws and regulations, federal, state, localin many cases,” counters Bill Raney, pres-ident of the West Virginia Coal Associa-tion. He says there is no direct correlationbetween any mining operations andflooding. “We have had some dramaticrainfall events in the areas where coal ismined over the last five years.”

To his mind, OVEC and othergroups are playing with emotional cards,“trying to get people whipped up intosome frenzy,” overstating the impact ofcoal mining. “It’s not nearly as dramatic

as those that oppose the industry wouldlike you to believe it is.” Just look at theminers, says Raney. “They’re workingthere because they’re able to earn a goodliving and raise their family in the vicin-ity of where their families grew up. Theywant to stay there. They hunt on thesemountains. They fish in the streams thatare below the operations. So the peoplethat are working on these sites, they’renot going to do anything that will dispar-age the environment. They’re going topreserve it because they want to use it.

“People enjoy low-cost, reliable elec-tricity throughout this nation,” he argues.“A big part of that is because the coal-mining industry is able to do it in a veryprofessional manner.”

Indeed, more than half of the nation’selectricity comes from coal, and Appa-lachian coal has a very high energyvalue. But Bady is adamant that the coalcompanies are profitable only becauseothers bear the costs: the victims of floodsand respiratory disease, and the earthitself. “They make money at it because itis relatively cheap to just blow up themountain, turn it into overburden, anddump it over the side.” Bady would liketo see a national energy policy that paysmore attention to renewable sources. “We

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Above: The southernAppalachian area is knownto have the highestregional concentration ofaquatic biodiversity in thenation, but the impact ofthese massive mining oper-ations is threatening thatgenetic diversity. Right: Asediment pond lies below a sludge impoundment.Although the coal compa-nies employ cranes to tryto remove sediment sothat it doesn’t move down-stream, it’s practicallyimpossible to remove it all.

“The regulations are being violated daily, and there is no enforce-ment effort on a federal or state level.”

—Jack Spadaro

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can’t go into the coalfields and starttelling people that we’ve got to get rid ofcoal right away. But we can talk about atransition. Personally, and to a lot of ourmembers, it’s obvious that the easy coal inAppalachia has already been mined.”

And the price of hard coal is tragic.In August, a three-year-old boy wascrushed to death in his bed in Inman,Virginia, when a boulder the size of asmall refrigerator rolled off a mine road.“This is the kind of fear that they livewith, when babies aren’t safe in theirbeds anymore,” says Fout. “We all crywhen we see people’s possessions in aheap in their front yards. It’s just totaldestruction of their lives.”

“She’s back!”Janet Fout knew that Bady was

recuperated and ready to raise hell againby looking at her flower garden. “Hergarden is back,” she says. “It’s just a pro-fusion of color. Beauty is what inspiresher to keep doing the work.

“She has always been the visionary forOVEC,” says Fout. “She spends a lot oftime in quiet, in silence. For me person-ally, she’s the one person on this planet

who’s made the biggest difference in mylife. She’s a remarkable woman.”

Challenging coal in West Virginiatook OVEC into new terrain. Recogniz-ing that they would go nowhere withoutaddressing the industry’s legislative clout,OVEC helped form the People’s ElectionReform Coalition, raising money for in-depth research on the campaign contribu-tions in West Virginia. “It’s really changedthe terms of political debate in this state,”says Bady. Now, when legislators pushcoal-friendly laws, it’s reported how muchthey got from the industry. The growingawareness has led to new laws limitingcontributions to the governor’s inauguralball and restricting special-interest loansto candidates. Momentum is rising forpublic financing of elections.

National politics are also in play.During the Clinton administration, theindustry lobbied for a relaxation of therules governing mountaintop removal.OVEC and some major national environ-mental groups mounted a stiff campaign,and the administration backed off. Therules changed — literally — under theBush administration. With careful edit-ing, federal officials redefined mine offalfrom “waste” to “fill” and made other

refinements to streamline mountaintopremoval. “When Bush came in, it didn’ttake long for a whole flurry of new per-mits,” says Bady. And enforcement iseven worse than under the Clintonadministration. If things don’t change,she believes, in another four years, “thesouthern coal fields in West Virginia willbasically become uninhabitable.”

Despite this serious local concern,OVEC is even thinking about goinginternational. In China’s huge coal indus-try, seventeen miners die every day. WestVirginia’s biggest coal producer, MasseyEnergy, already has investments there, sowhy shouldn’t OVEC challenge them inChina as well? “As a responsible environ-mental organization, we can’t look at ourwork just in this context of West Virginiaand what’s going on here,” says Fout.“We need to put it in that larger context.”

For Bady, the extreme degradation ofmountaintop removal is symptomatic oflarger problems. “There are very, veryfew ordinary, regular people involved inour democracy,” she says, meaning themessy, chaotic process of local peoplecoming together and working things out.“We help to facilitate local democracy,people getting involved in the issues thataffect their lives. It is happening. It’s gotto happen a whole lot more.

“Many of the fundamental changeswe need in this country are not going tocome from federal politicians suddenlyseeing the injustice and changing thelaws or the policies or the tax structure.They come from people in communitiesand neighborhoods working together toget things better. Then the change willfilter upward.”

For Bady, Fout, and other membersof OVEC, this hard work is cushionedby their radical trust. “We don’t believein miracles,” says Fout. “We rely onthem. Who in the world, in their rightmind, would take on the most powerfulentity in this state, the coal industry, andtry to tame them?”

Erik Ness writes about science and the environment fromhis home in Madison. He wrote about water for theWinter 2003 issue of On Wisconsin.

WINTER 2004 29

Maria Gunnoe, at podium, spoke at hearings in Washington, D.C., last March to protest elimina-tion of a rule that prohibits mining activity within 100 feet of waterways. OVEC believes thatremoving the stream buffer zone would allow coal companies practicing mountaintop removalmining to legally bury streams under millions of tons of former mountaintops.

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It was in this vast city of souls that several hun-dred members of Moktada al-Sadr’s militiapoured during the first week of August. Stakingpositions in crypts and behind headstones, theyengaged U.S. soldiers in an eerie tomb-to-tomb

battle that became one of the largest, most dis-tressing conflicts of post war Iraq. Lasting nearlythree weeks, the skirmishes left the cemeterypocked with shell fragments and the rubble ofpulverized graves. But they also tore at the imageof Najaf itself, one of the holiest cities in Iraq,and, in the opinion of Rachel Roe JD’01, one ofits most hopeful.

“I just can’t imagine violence there,” Roe toldme a few weeks before the August uprising. She

had just returned to Wisconsin after eighteenmonths in Iraq, four of them stationed in Najaf asa sergeant in the U.S. Army’s 432nd Civil Affairsbattalion. “It is literally the most peaceful, safestplace I have ever been,” she said.

Roe’s Najaf was a very different place— a bazaar of bearded scholars andfruit vendors, where calls to prayer

mixed with the sounds of children at play. Shearrived on May 8 of last year, after the front-line troops had swept through on their north-ward push toward Baghdad. Roe, then thirty,came as a soldier, with an M-16 rifle acrossher chest. She spoke Arabic fluently and hada degree from the UW Law School. She wasthere to build, not bomb.

The city had been mostly spared fromcombat. Coalition forces secured it withinfour days, and to everyone’s great relief, thearmies had avoided the dominating shrine tothe Imam Ali, a cousin of Mohammad whosefinal resting place makes Najaf one of the

most revered sites in the Shiite world. A thirty-foot statue of Saddam Hussein didn’t fare as well,blown up by jubilant locals after the retreat ofHussein’s army.

Gone, too, were most of the Baathist loyalistswho ran the city’s infrastructure, and who hadleft a tatter of pillaged offices and records as theyfled. No telephones worked, and looters hadpicked over public buildings. At the main court-house, there wasn’t a desk in sight.

By Michael Penn MA’97

S TRETCHING FOR FIVE SQUARE MILES INTO THE SANDY DESERTWEST OF NAJAF IS ONE OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST GRAVEYARDS,a wide arc of brick and concrete tombstones that angles toward the golden-domed

mosque at the heart of the city. For centuries, Shiite Muslims from around the world havebrought their dead to this city in southern Iraq, to be buried in the valley that locals call Wadi-us-Salaam, the valley of peace.

IN THE LAND OF HAMMURABI

The vast cemetery out-side Najaf is one ofthe world’s largest,containing the tombsof several million Shi-ite Muslims, whosefamilies often travellong distances to burythem there.

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Into this breach stepped members of the432nd, an Army Reserve unit based near GreenBay that had been called into active duty thatspring. One of twenty-six civil-affairs battalionsin the army, the 432nd was no typical collectionof foot soldiers: its ranks include a veterinarian,a chemist, a police officer, and a bunch of engi-neers. Though trained for battle, the mainweapon they brought to Iraq was their expertise.

Regarded as a friendlier, more culturally sensi-tive face of the U.S. military, civil-affairs units dealin the messy business of reconstruction, workingwith local authorities to restore order and returnnormality to the places scarred by war. Virtuallyinvisible before the end of the Cold War, battal-ions like the 432nd have been exceedinglybusy since, active in the first Gulf War, theconflict in Kosovo, and relief efforts inSomalia and Haiti. As the only soldierswith an explicit mission to reach out andform relationships with civilians, they’reintegral to what’s often called the “heartsand minds” campaign — the all-importantbattle to win trust in the communities inwhich the military operates.

When Roe joined the unit during hersecond year of law school, she was asconcerned about books and bills as heartsand minds. After growing up in a seriesof Milwaukee suburbs, she had paid herway through Harvard night school enroute to a degree in psychology, thenadded a master’s in criminal justice atNortheastern University. Along the way, she hadgrown interested in prison reform, and by com-ing to the UW, she sought the academic expertiseof law school. At the same time, she was noivory-tower theorist and desired some kind ofexperience that would give her the credibility ofhaving walked the walk. “As a little blond girlfrom Wisconsin, you’re not automaticallythought of as tough,” she says.

Like most civil-affairs units, the 432nd ismade up of reservists who spend most of theirtime in professional jobs. Until graduating fromlaw school in 2001, Roe put in her one weekenda month and never seriously considered the pos-sibility of war. But after she scored well on a lan-guage aptitude test, the army offered her a spotat its intensive foreign-language school in Mon-terey, California. She was given a list of lan-guages the government was willing to spend thenext eighteen months teaching her.

With the events of September 11 still threemonths in the future, she chose Arabic. “TheMiddle East just seemed like a powder keg,” she

says. “Something was going to happen, and noone was paying attention.”

Not quite two years later, Roe found her-self staring at a bulletin board inside aMarine base on the outskirts of Najaf.

Next to each of the tasks listed — everythingfrom “develop city budget” to “control roamingdogs” — was a red or green dot, symbolizing

Rachel Roe JD’01 went to Najaf to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. Now, they havehers.

Najaf’s golden-domedImam Ali shrine is aholy site among Shiites,who make up a majorityof Iraq’s population.

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the coalition forces’ progress in rebuilding thecity. The dot beside “re-establish courts” wasred. She was told to turn it green.

As with many things in post war Iraq, Najaf’slegal processes had been stalled not merely bywar, but by its ensuing dysfunction. Vandals hadburned thousands of pages of criminal records,and a dozen of the city’s judges had fled. Roebegan talking with the remaining judges andlawyers about how to revive — or, when war-ranted, reinvent — the system.

“It was an amazing opportunity, because wewere starting from scratch,” she says. “Anythingthey knew that didn’t work, we could fix.”

At the same time, she recognized the audac-ity of the task. “This was the home of Ham-murabi. These people invented law,” she says.(The Babylonian kingdom of Hammurabi, whosome four thousand years ago devised the mostcomplete legal code in the ancient world, sitsjust a Humvee ride away from present-dayNajaf.) “Why should an American lawyer comein and tell them that they have to change theirlegal system?”

Roe had no intention of doing that. But herease with the language gave her access that fewAmericans had. She set up an office in the court-house, and people began appearing in her door-way: townspeople who needed help with wills,farmers seeking aid for lands damaged by troops,lawyers eager to return to work. She set up alegal aid clinic and green-lighted construction ofa new jail, operating with remarkable freedom,partly because her commanding officers trustedher, and partly because they didn’t know enoughArabic to check in on her dealings.

But reconstruction is far from a hitchlessprocess. And in a certain respect, Najaf becamethe most symbolic of Iraq’s crucibles. Becausethe civil-affairs officers found Najaf in relativelygood shape, they were able to push well downthe path of progress, and that also meant theywere the first to trip into some of its snares.

In July of last year, for example, Roe trig-gered a small commotion when she tried toappoint a woman to fill one of the vacant judgepositions. Although women served as lawyersand town council members — and as judges inother Iraqi cities — none were on the bench inNajaf, owing to the conservative cut of its manyclerics. A few of the town’s more influential reli-gious leaders had issued vague fatwas that leftquestions about whether Islam permitted womenin such roles, but the overlap between Iraq’s reli-gious codes and civil laws isn’t always clear.

Roe saw no legal reason the woman couldn’tbe appointed. She had all the right qualifica-tions and had been Najaf’s first female lawyertwo decades before. She scheduled an appoint-ment ceremony, hoping for a quiet momentattended by cake and the congratulations of fellow judges.

Of course, it didn’t happen that way. Whenword of the event leaked, several dozen protest-ers crowded at the courthouse door, chanting,“No, no women!” and, “Out, out, Roe!” Theirdemonstration may have been as much theatrics

After joining theArmy Reserve as alaw student, RachelRoe received promo-tion to the rank ofsergeant in Bagh-dad’s RepublicanPalace.

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as theocracy — Roe says it was orchestrated bylawyers with gripes about money and Americanauthority — but it worked. Roe’s commandingofficer, a Marine lieutenant colonel in charge ofthe city’s security, feared triggering an uprisingand put the swearing-in on hold indefinitely.

“I think I almost cried,” Roe says. “But Idon’t regret any of it.” Even as she listened to theangry men shout her name, she heard whispersof change. The lawyers kept using the wordkhadiya — a feminine form of the traditional Arabic word for judge, khadi — which Roe hadnever heard before. Although she had not put awoman judge on the bench that day, she maywell have put one into the language.

It wasn’t the only plan gone awry. The cityofficial whom the Marines had appointedgovernor — a man who had aided coalition

forces in their fight against Baathists — turnedout to have been extorting money and, moreshockingly, holding three children of politicalopponents hostage in his office. Americansturned that potential embarrassment into a les-son in law and order by arresting their one-timeally. “People were shocked when we did that,”Roe says. “It was a brand-new idea that no onewas above the law.”

What happened next was another hard lesson in political reality. At the urging of theGrand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a Najafian, basecommanders okayed an open election to replacethe governor. Eighteen candidates jumped intothe race, plastering the ancient city with colorfulcampaign posters in what seemed a joyousembrace of nascent democracy. Roe and her col-leagues began registering voters, and the peopleof Najaf stood in line for hours to sign the forms.But there would be no vote. An eleventh-hourcommand from Paul Bremer’s office in Baghdadnixed the election. Ostensibly, there were secu-rity concerns. Roe thinks otherwise.

“They got worried the wrong person wouldwin,” she says.

Roe’s suspicion underlines one of the pre-dominant tensions of reconstruction. Histori-cally, most occupying nations have sought torebuild countries in ways that suit their owninterests. After World War II, for example, U.S. operatives actively tried to sway electionsin Germany and Japan toward moderate, pro-democracy forces. Many people have suggestedthat the administration has similar motives in Iraq.

Self-interest isn’t always a bad idea, particu-larly in a politically turbulent, economicallyimportant region such as the Middle East. “It’s a

legitimate debate,” says Jon Pevehouse, a pro-fessor of political science who studies U.S. for-eign policy. “Is it justifiable for us to prevent theelection of a group that will work against ourlong-term goals? You could find credible peopleon both sides of the argument.”

But Pevehouse says the danger is thatoccupiers might work so hard to quash author-itarianism that they become authoritarian

Next to each of the tasks listed on the bulletin board was a

red or green dot, symbolizing the coalition forces’ progress in rebuild-

ing the city. When Roe arrived, the dot beside “re-establish courts”

was red. She was told to turn it green.

Nidal Hussein, here withher five-year-old son,was Najaf’s first femalelawyer, but her appoint-ment as a judge wasobstructed by funda-mentalist protest.

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themselves. And in the year and a half sinceHussein’s ouster, the American campaign inIraq has been dogged by that very accusation:that it clings too tightly to power to allow Iraqto be free.

Reasonable people also may disagree that thisis what caused cities such as Najaf to slide intoinsurgency. Roe knows only what she felt, andthat was a window of opportunity closing.

With its historical importance and the popularweight of its clerics, Najaf was destined to be aticklish city for American authorities in any case,but Roe believes the aborted election “pulled the

rug out from under us.” What Bremer and U.S.officials saw as due caution, clerics decried asmicromanagement. When officials in Washingtonleaked in November 2003 that they planned tohand-pick the authors of Iraq’s new constitution,Ayatollah Sistani bristled, calling it “fundamen-tally unacceptable.” And he wasn’t even the mainproblem. Assuming the role of the Americans’chief antagonist was Moktada al-Sadr, a thirty-year-old firebrand cleric who became the voiceand muscle of the growing impatience.

For months, the U.S. negotiated a torturedpath with Sadr, first shutting down his newspa-per in March, then calling for his arrest on murder charges in April, then seeking his cooper-ation with the new interim government that tookover in June. That tenuous peace fell apart againin August, when Sadr’s militia attacked coalitionforces in three cities, vowing to repel Americansfrom Iraq.

To Roe, Sadr represented not Najaf’s grow-ing fundamentalism, but its growing frustration.Unlike the wizened clerics who earned theirauthority through years of scholarship, Sadr

was “a kid, a guy who plays video games,”she says. “Neither of his wives would talkto him.” His power came from a differentsource: the boiling disaffection of youth.Najaf was full of angry young men, manyof them criminals and former soldiers inSaddam’s disbanded army who could easily lay hands on weapons of minordestruction. They were out of work andout of patience.

“What we really needed was a NewDeal,” Roe says. “They needed somewhereto go and a dollar at the end of the day.” InAugust, a few days before she was trans-ferred to Baghdad to work with the coali-tion government, a car bomb exploded nearthe Ali shrine, killing more than one hun-dred people, among them a respectedcleric. She could feel the city tightening

even as it made strides.

Roe watched Najaf’s dissolution from therelative comfort of Baghdad’s green zone,where she spent the final nine months of

her service. She returned to the holy city onlyonce, to bury a friend.

The hardships of a civil-affairs officer palecompared to those of front-line soldiers. Roelived in air conditioning and never went withoutfood or water, while her brother Josh, stationed

Civilians flee Najafafter the Augustclashes between U.S.troops and insur-gents. Roe saysmany people sheknows have left thecity, seeking peaceelsewhere.

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with a firefighting unit near Kuwait, subsisted onMREs and slept in the desert. Her single brushwith grave danger came when a bomb explodedoutside the heavily fortified central Baghdadhotel where she lived.

But war has other costs, paid in anger, frus-tration, hopelessness, and heartache. Her pridein her work is stained by a creeping sense ofgrief, that she and her country didn’t do enoughof the right things to protect Iraq. When hermind drifts to Najaf, as it often does these days,it fills with a mix of hope and concern.

While some Americans are ready towash their hands of it, Iraq has a tractor-beam pull on Roe. When her service endedin June, she came home long enough tocelebrate her brother’s birthday and renewher driver’s license. Then she headed back.She accepted a job with an internationalaccounting firm that is investigating possi-ble corruption in the Oil for Food pro-gram, a pre-war United Nations reliefeffort that allowed Iraq to trade oil exportsfor humanitarian aid. The U.S. govern-ment has alleged that Hussein siphoned offsome ten billion dollars of money intendedfor the Iraqi people since the programbegan in 1996 and paid multimillion dollarbribes to U.N. officials to keep it quiet. Itmay be the biggest financial rip-off in mod-ern history.

“We’re tracing the money,” Roe says. “It’s allmoney that belonged to the Iraqi people, andwe’re finding it for them.”

Several groups, including Congress and theU.N., have launched inquiries into the affair. Butthey are working against the powerful forces of anot-quite-dead conspiracy. In July, the ministerin charge of the Iraqi government’s investigationwas killed by a car bomb. Roe’s mother is notthrilled by her new job.

But Roe sees no great courage in her work.“We owe it to them to be there,” she says. “You

don’t just destroy a country and abandon it. Youdon’t just do something like that and walk awayfrom people.” The real heroes, she says, are theIraqis who wake up each day with the resolve torebuild their country.

She thinks about the last time she saw Najaf,a day almost a year ago now when she saidgood-bye to her friend. Muhan Jabr al-Shuwailiwas Najaf’s chief judge, who guided Roe’s recon-struction of the court system and inspired herwith his courage and forthright conviction thatIraq would be free.

Such boldness carries great risk in Iraq.Dozens of public officials have been murderedby insurgents, and a year ago, Shuwaili becameone of their victims. On a November morning ashe left his home for work, four men shoved himinto a car and drove him into the desert outsidethe city. That is where they shot him, and that iswhere he died, not far at all from that great armyof souls that stands guard over the valley ofpeace.

Michael Penn is co-editor of On Wisconsin

“We owe it to them to be there,” Roe says. “You don’t just destroy a

country and abandon it. You don’t just do something like that and

walk away from people.” The real heroes, she says, are the Iraqis

who wake up each day with the resolve to rebuild their country.

In the aftermath of theAugust battles, Iraqishave rebuilt a momen-tary peace in the holycity — but no one cansay how long it willlast.

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Lunch today is Norwegiansalmon, baked and bathed with awhite-wine-and-butter reductionsauce. On the side are greenbeans and herbed potatoes, anassortment of leafy greens andcrudités, and the house garlic-and-Dijon vinaigrette. Fordessert, there’s a freshly bakedchocolate cake, filled withraspberries and topped withwhipped cream. Everythingcomes with a view of LakeMendota through floor-to-ceiling windows, framed byexposed-brick dining roomwalls.

It is one of the campus area’sbest lunch spots and best-keptsecrets. Two blocks from theKollege Klub, and a few doorsdown Frances Street from theEmma Goldman Co-op, a low-slung, prairie-style house on thelakeshore serves up French foodmade from scratch, with a side ofFrench conversation. At a timewhen some in Congress would outlawthe French fry, La Maison Française ofMadison celebrates French language andcuisine as inspired by Betsy Piper.

Piper (who’s no relation to OdessaPiper, the chef at Madison’s famed L’Etoile) is in her third decade ofsautéing and souffléing for the thirty-some student residents, plus dozens ofweekly visitors to the French House. Afixture of the French department, thehouse is also open to the community,increasingly so since the Madisonchapter of the Alliance Française, aworldwide network of Francophones

and Francophiles, took upresidence there in 1995. Eliza-beth Hulick ’83, who directsthe local chapter, says theFrench House “is somethingvery special. I still have thisweird regret that I didn’t livethere as a student.”

It’s de rigueur for UWFrench classes to troop tothe French House for lunchor dinner, but plenty ofnonstudents find their wayto the buffet as well: rustyonetime French majorswanting to brush up,French nationals studying

engineering and science, andFrench-speaking professorsand staff. The French Houseexperience even draws highschool classes from as far awayas Green Bay and Illinois.Everyone comes to pull up acafé chair and parler.

Betsy Piper came to bothcooking and the French House

by chance. As a five-year-old, she emi-grated with her parents and four sistersfrom Eastern Europe, and grew up inChicago. When her publisher employermoved to Madison, Piper did as well. In1981, the previous French House chefconvinced her friend Betsy to fill in onweekends with the promise that shecould cook with all the cream and buttershe wanted. Despite having little knowl-edge of either cooking or French, Pipersoon took over full-time in the kitchenand launched the popular Friday publiclunches. The self-taught chef nowteaches cooking as well.

With a big smile, Piper jokes abouther French House “bucket cookery,”scaling up classic French, French-African, or Cajun recipes for the sixty ormore who come for the public meals. Sheonce made coquilles St. Jacques for 120.Another time, she cracked twelve dozeneggs for soufflés, folding in the whites by hand. She might laugh about her enmasse methods, but not about the food:“We don’t eat methods. We eat results.”

And the results are star quality. “Wecould petition for a special place in theMichelin guide,” says Gilles Bousquet,dean of international studies and a nativeof France. Carafes of red and white wineare set out on the sideboard with everymeal (a very quaffable “château de car-ton” as Piper calls it). This being Wiscon-sin, gallon jugs of milk get put out, too.

It’s not quite the two-hour luncheonfor which the French are famous — thedining room pretty much clears in time

40 ON WISCONSIN

Thanks to Betsy Piper, students and Francophilescan experience French cuisine and conversation

without ever leaving campus.

BY CHRISTINE MLOT ’83

theFrenchChef

for a 1:20 class. But it reminds Bousquetof a homey Paris bistro. That is, exceptin price: a meal costs well under $10.“Betsy has kept the dining experienceauthentic and affordable,” he says. “Youfeel that dining and eating have a specialplace in the culture.”

Today Piper cooks for the public onWednesdays and Fridays, and preparesevery weekday lunch and dinner for thestudent residents. Two other cooks helpwith breakfast, weekend meals, and thebaking, but on a Wednesday afternoon,Piper is solo in the bright yellow kitchenwith Provençal curtains, prepping for thenight’s public dinner: steak au poivre, aFrench classic and house favorite. “Wealways have a mob of people when it’s onthe menu,” she says.

In running shoes, she moves with themasterly ease of someone in her ideal job.“I could do it all blindfolded,” Piper says.Thirty pounds of oven-seared beef

tenderloin are covered and resting alongwith sixteen pounds of green beans. Thechocolate ganache that will cover the yellow cake gets a test stir. Only occa-sionally does Piper glance at the clock.

The pepper sauce goes into produc-tion in a pan the diameter of a garbagecan: a slab of butter, shallots, tarragon,spoonfuls of Dijon mustard from a nine-pound can, two quarts of cream, greenpeppercorns. An hour before dinner, agallon of rice goes on to cook.

Half an hour later, two studenthelpers arrive, and the pace picks up.Piper now operates like an air-trafficcontroller at O’Hare during rush hour,overseeing food going onto the stove andout to the dining room. At 5:50 she slicesten baguettes. Finally, the meat is carved,arranged, and draped with the sauce.The dinner bell rings; the dining roomand diners fill up, chattering en françaisall the while.

The next day, the remaining tender-loin becomes stroganoff. On Friday,there’s chicken sautéed with tomatoes,mushrooms, and onions. After the lunchrush, Piper surveys the leftovers. In fourhours the residents will be back for din-ner. What’s on tonight’s menu? “I don’tknow yet,” says Piper, admitting to thefallback of all chefs, great and small:“Sometimes I’d just like to order pizza!”

For more information on the FrenchHouse and to make reservations, checkwww.uwfrenchhouse.org.

Christine Mlot ’83 usually writes about science andteaches in the UW-Madison Department of Life Sciences Communication. She can occasionally be heard practicing her rusty French in the French Housedining room.

WINTER 2004 41

Vive le chef! In most French kitchens, oneegg may be un oeuf, but the French Houseoften serves dozens of patrons at a time.

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The critical event in the history ofthe modern Middle East verynearly happened on the night of

January 20, 1919. Nearly, but not quite.It might have happened, not in Bagh-

dad or Mecca or Damascus, but in Paris,in the dining room of the Hotel Crillon onthe Rue de la Concorde. And the almost-key players weren’t prophets or poten-tates, but history teachers — lead amongthem William Westermann, a classicsprofessor at the University of Wisconsin.

With him that night were the histori-ans George Beer and James Shotwell ofColumbia University and Isaiah Bowman,president of the American GeographicalSociety. They had come to France not tostudy the past but to build the future, toattend the Paris Peace Conference andhelp write the treaties that would end theFirst World War. All were members of theInquiry, a U.S. government organizationcharged with nothing less than redesign-ing the world into ethnically logical, politi-cally viable states. Westermann led theInquiry’s western Asia section, focusingon the Middle East.

The food at the Crillon was excellent— “too good to make me feel quite com-fortable,” Westermann wrote in his diary,“since so many people here are withoutproper food.” The armistice was just sev-enty days old, and the French had noteven begun to recover. Most likely themeal included neither wine nor pork —that night’s guest was the emir Feisal, sonof Hussein ibn Ali, the sherif of Mecca.He spoke no English, and the Americansspoke no Arabic, so another guest, aBritish colonel named T. E. Lawrence,translated. He, too, was a historian, an

Oxford-trained medievalist. But thatnight, Westermann recorded, he wore “agray cloth over the head falling back overthe shoulders, held in place by a sort ofwhite coil with pink balls of cloth hereand there” — the trademark kaffiyeh ofhis persona as Lawrence of Arabia.

Feisal and Lawrence talked of theArabs’ role in the war and their revoltagainst the Ottoman Turks. Lawrence’sexploits were already becoming legend:the ride of the camel cavalry, the captureof Dera’a, the grim work of shootingArab wounded so that they wouldn’t fallinto Turkish hands. During the war,Lawrence said, the Arabs had takentwenty thousand Turkish prisoners; theTurks had taken six Arabs alive.

More importantly, they talked abouthistory. For centuries, the Turks hadruled the entire Middle East from theNile to the borders of Iran. But Turkeyhad chosen the losing side in World War I,and now its empire was crumbling.According to Feisal, the Arabs dreamedof creating their own free state. If theAmericans agreed to support independ-ence, there would be statues raised tothem in Arab towns. But, he said, “anyman who would try to split the Arab peo-ple when they were uniting was a devil.”

Westermann was swept away. Thatnight, he wrote in his diary: “Great isLawrence and great is Feisal. I am aconvert.”

History was on the verge of unfold-ing very differently. There would be noIraq or Syria or Lebanon or Jordan, and probably no Israel or Saudi Arabia.There would be just one Arab nation,developing free of Western interference.

If the Inquiry had the authority thatWestermann believed it did, this wouldhave been the Middle East’s decisivemoment.

But Westermann was wrong.

Today, as the Middle East againseems to be boiling toward vastchange, it’s tempting to see

events there as unprecedented. PresidentBush has declared that Iraq will be a firststep toward removing tyranny, spreadingdemocracy, and engendering peace. “Theestablishment of a free Iraq at the heartof the Middle East will be a watershedevent in the global democratic revolu-tion,” he’s said.

But this isn’t the first time the worldhas approached this watershed. Eighty-five years ago, the U.S. governmentbelieved it could put democracy on themarch, in the Middle East and every-where else. President Woodrow Wilsonbelieved that authoritarian governmentswere a cancer, and the First World Warwas their fatal result. Democracy wouldbe the antidote. When he asked Con-gress to declare war in 1917, he said thatthe United States wasn’t fighting for itsown self-interest but “for the peace of the

36 ON WISCONSIN

Classicist William Westermann’s studiesoccasionally carried him to the TurkishEmpire. The U.S. government desperatelyneeded experts on this part of the world —even if their expertise ended around theage of Caesar.

UW classicist William Westermann led America’s

first attempt to re-create the Middle East.

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world and the liberation of its peoples ...for the rights of nations great and smalland the privilege of men everywhere tochoose their way of life and of obedience.The world,” he said, “must be made safefor democracy.”

And to a large extent, he meant it,though he wasn’t sure how to bring thishappy state into being. So he asked theDepartments of State and War to createan organization to determine what con-crete goals America should fight for. Wil-son, who’d been president of PrincetonUniversity before entering politics, hadan abiding faith in doctors of philosophy,so he wanted this group to be made up ofacademics who would sift and winnowthe truth, not diplomats or soldiers whowould look for strategic advantage.

Wilson also wanted their purpose andexistence to be kept secret — both fromthe enemy, who shouldn’t know U.S. waraims, and from the electorate, which wasoverwhelmingly isolationist. The resultwas the Inquiry, a vaguely named organi-zation intended, according to one of itsearly reports, to be “a new idea in inter-national relations — the idea of utilizingthe expert services of scholars in deter-mining the facts that should be the basesof the peace settlements.”

John Cooper, a UW historian whospecializes in U.S. foreign policy of this

period, describes the Inquiry as a combi-nation of today’s National SecurityCouncil, CIA, and other intelligenceservices, only without the espionage.“What they did was create the first realsystem for gathering expert advice, stud-ies, and detailed plans,” he says. “Theyput a lot of energy into planning for thepeace negotiations, for what to do if andwhen we won the war.”

Walter Lippmann, the Inquiry’s secretary, set the standard for recruitingscholars. “What we are on the lookoutfor,” he wrote, “is genius — sheer, startling genius, and nothing else will do,because the real application of the Presi-dent’s idea to those countries requiresinventiveness and resourcefulness, whichis scarcer than anything.”

The Inquiry was ultimately dividedinto eight geographic sections coveringthe war’s most pressing problem areas,including the Franco-German border,Poland, the Austro-Hungarian Empire,Italy, the Balkans, eastern Asia, western

Asia, and colonies around the globe. Themost acute need was for western Asia, forTurkey, a country of which few Ameri-cans had any concrete knowledge. TheUnited States hadn’t declared war onTurkey — just its German and Austrianallies — but its territory contained a massof potential ethnic conflicts: Kurds, Arme-nians, Greeks, Jews, and Arabs. Igno-rance here, Lippmann thought, could ruineverything. “It isn’t difficult to win thewar and lose the peace,” he cautioned.“England did it over and over again in thenineteenth century in regard to Turkey.”

Into this vacuum stepped Wester-mann, then a rising star on the UW fac-ulty. His students found him shy andprickly, a teacher “in the German style,”meaning he was a martinet in the

The map above shows the OttomanEmpire near its height, in 1721. Until1914, it covered almost all the territorywe call the Middle East today. After WorldWar I, Westermann (and President Wilson)envisioned a much more diverse MiddleEast (next page).

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classroom. But he’d traveled in the MiddleEast, and his politics were impeccable. Inan essay published in 1917, he wrote about“our great tradition of readiness to helpany people to attain freedom.” Like Wil-son, he believed it was America’s destinyto make the world safe for democracy.

“Ordinarily, historians stay at somedistance from their subjects,” saysCooper. “Which one of us wouldn’t wantto have an effect on history, to make it?”When the Inquiry contacted Wester-mann, he joined.

If in the current war in Iraq, the U.S.suffers from having too few allies, itfaced the opposite problem in 1919:

at the end of World War I, there weretoo many friends sitting at the table. Inall, some thirty-two nations countedthemselves among the victors and sentofficial representatives to the Paris PeaceConference. Each of them wanted areward.

When the war began in the summerof 1914, the lineup of leading powers hadbeen much smaller. The German andAustrian Empires were on one side, andthe Triple Entente — Russia, France,

and the British Empire — were on theother. Then things got complicated. TheTurks sided with the Germans late in1914, and in 1915, Italy joined theEntente. What held these alliancestogether was the promise of territory —the winners would take land from thelosers. And the Entente powers covetedthe land of the Turkish Empire.

In 1915 and 1916, the members ofthe Entente negotiated a series of secretagreements dividing up Turkey and itsMiddle Eastern possessions. “If you lookat the treaties,” says Cooper, “the powerswere treating Turkey like a big pie. Eachone wanted a slice.” The most notoriousof these agreements was the Sykes-PicotTreaty, named for its authors, the Britisharistocrat Sir Mark Sykes and theFrench diplomat Georges Picot. It promised France the lands that are nowLebanon and Syria, along with the Kurd-ish region around Mosul in modern Iraq;Britain would take Mesopotamia andtoday’s Jordan. Palestine was to fallunder international jurisdiction, thoughthis plan was complicated by the Britishforeign minister, Arthur James Balfour,who publicly declared that the region

should become “anational home forthe Jewish people.”

The secret agree-ments came to lightin December 1917,and that samemonth, the Inquirygave the president itslist of suggestedwartime goals, whichWilson adopted ashis peace terms,known as the Four-teen Points. The firstspecified that allinternational agree-ments should hence-forth be “opencovenants of peace,

openly arrived at.” The twelfth demandedthat “nationalities which are now underTurkish rule should be assured anundoubted security of life and anabsolutely unmolested opportunity of anautonomous development.”

These two points would guide West-ermann’s efforts in examining the MiddleEast. He felt the allies’ treaties were “follies of secrecy and blind self-interest,”but he also believed that they could beundone through America’s moral andeconomic influence. “I did not see howthe French-British agreements couldhold,” he wrote, “since we came into thewar ignorant of them.”

And so he and his Inquiry colleagueswent to work. Scouring the nation’slibraries and archives, they assembledtheir evidence. They indexed books andarticles to find historic, economic, andmilitary facts. They collected old mapsand made new ones, delimiting ethnicboundaries and evaluating the nationalaspirations of “suppressed, oppressed,and backward peoples.” They wrote upwhat were, essentially, comprehensiveresearch papers, but instead of publish-ing them, they expected to see themturned into national policy.

The idea of destroying the Ottomanspleased Westermann. Theirs, he thought,was “a government whose corruption wasa stench in the nostrils of the world.” Buttheir end posed a series of thorny ques-tions: Should the Kurds have their ownstate? The Armenians? Who should con-trol Istanbul and the straits that connectthe Black Sea to the Mediterranean? Was the Balfour Declaration proposing aJewish state really a wise policy? Wester-mann knew that, in Palestine, Arabs outnumbered Jews six to one. MakingPalestine a national home for the Jewishpeople seemed undemocratic. And yetWilson had already endorsed the plan.

And, finally, the Arabs: ought they to be one state or many? They were adiverse people, made up not just of SunniMuslims, but Shiites, too, and alsoDruses and Christians — Maronite,Nestorian, and Assyrian.

By the time the fighting ended inNovember 1918, Westermann’s western

38 ON WISCONSIN

WINTER 2004 39

Asia section had generated sheaves ofdocuments: maps and charts, economicreports and historical narratives. All ofthese were crated up for President Wilsonand his negotiating team to take to Paris.With them went Westermann and theother leaders of the Inquiry, now officiallycalled the Division of Territorial, Eco-nomic, and Political Intelligence. Duringthe crossing, Wilson gave his experts aboost of confidence. “Tell me what is rightand I will fight for it,” he told them. “Giveme a guaranteed position.”

When Westermann arrived inParis on December 15, hefound that all eyes followed

the movements of the Big Four — Wil-son, British prime minister David LloydGeorge, French premier GeorgesClemenceau, and Italian prime ministerVittorio Orlando. But Westermann pre-ferred the smaller gatherings of the trulyknowledgeable — people like himself,who would, he assumed, be the trueauthors of the peace.

The more people he met, the more hebelieved Feisal was right, that Arab unityand independence was the best policy. Hehad few illusions about what sort of gov-ernments would arise in a free MiddleEast. Most Arabs told him that Feisalwas weak and represented only one fac-tion in a complex Arab community. Andmany of them told him that, if given fullindependence, the Arabs would fightamong themselves to their own ruin. Butit seemed better than the alternative —abandoning them to occupying powers.

With a bow toward Wilson’s rhetoric,the British and French governments hadsuggested that they be given not coloniesbut mandates over the Arab lands —something like a mentor-protégé relation-ship in which they’d control the territoryuntil the Arabs learned good govern-ment. The Arabs, Westermann realized,“have absolutely no faith in the term‘mandate’ as it is interpreted by theFrench and British.” There was no time

limit for how long the Western powerswould control Arabia, and the borders ofthe mandates looked suspiciously likethose arranged in the secret treaties.

“If my assumption ... is correct,” hewrote, “the Turkish Empire is the lootingground of the war and the talk of selfdetermination and ‘the wishes of the peoples concerned’ is just a succession offutile phrases.” Westermann had come tohis absolute position. Now it was up toWilson to fight for it.

The trouble was, the French andBritish wanted Arabia very badly. Thetwo powers had impoverished themselvesfighting the war, and there was money tobe made in the Middle East in cotton andoil. And Wilson needed their support forhis own strongest desire, creating aninternational body that would preventfuture disputes from growing into newwars: the League of Nations. CharlesSeymour, the Inquiry specialist in chargeof the Austria-Hungary section, toldWestermann that “President Wilsonwould sacrifice his principles, in the mat-ter of territorial settlements, to get com-promises upon the League of Nations.”

Westermann found that he was beingignored — or worse, edited. “A state-ment entirely unfavorable to the ‘JewishState’ idea ... had become entirely favor-able,” he recorded. “This sort of thing isimpossible. Many of the ideas are notmine at all, and [my report] reads like avaledictorian high school address.”

Finally, Westermann was told to stopinterfering. He received a memo statingthat, as the United States had never actu-ally declared war on Turkey, it had nobusiness making demands. Effectively,wrote Westermann, that was the end.“We could not oppose the division ofAsia Minor and the Arab countries onthe basis of the Sykes-Picot Agreement.”

When the Big Four met to discussthe final disposition of the OttomanEmpire in May, Westermann found thathe and all the other experts were lockedout. “It was evident that they did not

want anyone in there who had any realcomprehension of what was going on,”he wrote in his diary.

Soon afterward, he asked to bereleased from the peace conference, and at the end of June, he set sail for America.He returned on the president’s ship butrecords no more conversations with Wil-son. “The more I see of great men,” West-ermann wrote, “the less I think of them.”

Ultimately, Westermann con-cluded, “the war was a tragedyto the Arab cause,” and the

peace conference was worse. It would,he thought, rot the Middle East “untilthe distant day when the Arabs and allthe East shall definitely discard theunjustified assumption of Westernersembodied in the formula of the ‘whiteman’s burden.’ In principle, it is only awhite-washed imperialism, chiefly com-mercial.” He predicted it would result incenturies of blood.

When the final treaties with Turkeywere written, France received mandatesover Lebanon and Syria, but had to fighta war to keep them. Feisal abandonedParis for Damascus in the spring of 1919,and declared himself King of Syria. The French drove him out. The Britishreceived mandates over Palestine, Transjordan (today’s Jordan), andMesopotamia, to which was added Mosul.They created a name for the country,Iraq, and installed Feisal as its king —then fought a war against the region’s Shiites and Kurds to keep him there.

Back in the States, Westermann didnot stay long at the UW. His Inquiryconnections opened Ivy League doors,and in 1920, he secured a position atCornell University, then, in 1923, atColumbia, joining Beer and Shotwell. Hegave up foreign affairs and wrote littleabout his experience at the Peace Con-ference. He donated his Paris diary tothe library at Columbia, but only on theunderstanding that no one would look atit without his permission until well afterhe had died. Historians, it seemed,should record history, not make it.

John Allen is associate editor of On Wisconsin.

“If my assumption is correct, the Turkish Empire is the looting ground of the war.”

42 ON WISCONSIN

Multiple-choice test: What stopped thespread of deadly SARS in 2003? Was it (a) modern science, or (b) ancient

practice? If you guessed (a), guess again. Modernmedicine has learned a lot about the virus thatcauses severe acute respiratory syndrome, but itoffers neither prevention nor cure.

Instead, credit the ancient practices of quaran-tine and isolation for containing SARS in its placeof origin, China, as well as in a related outbreak in

Toronto, Canada. The epidemic, which infected8,098 people around the world and killed 774,could have been much worse without the simplemeasure of separating the sick from the healthy.

But while they may be medically effective, isolation (which refers to the separation of peoplewith active cases of an infectious disease) and quarantine (which isolates those who have hadcontact with active cases) involve deeper tensionsbetween public health and individual liberty. With

Whenmedical historian Judith Leavitt delved into the century-old

tale of America’s most infamous disease carrier, she found a

dilemma for our own time: Can we stop untreatable infections

without stomping on civil liberties?

By David Tenenbaum MA’86

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quarantines in particular — whenpublic-health officials wield powerto segregate people who may be per-fectly healthy — it raises a thornyquestion: Am I willing to put upwith limits to my freedom to keepyou safe from infectious diseases?

For Mary Mallon, the Irish-borncook who helped trigger an outbreakof typhoid fever in New York City inthe early 1900s, the answer was no.Although she never contractedtyphoid herself, Mallon was ahealthy carrier of the intestinal bac-terium that causes the potentiallydeadly illness. After she was blamedfor spreading the fever through food shehandled in her employers’ kitchens, shewas dubbed Typhoid Mary, a name thathas come to signify anyone who jeopard-izes the public health by carrying andtransmitting disease.

Mallon’s fate has long fascinatedJudith Leavitt, a professor of the historyof medicine at UW-Madison. “I am con-vinced that until the day she died, shewas not convinced that she was a dan-ger,” says Leavitt. In her view, the factthat Mallon felt no symptoms of illnessand never understood why she wasbarred from human contact illustratesthe fundamental conundrum of quaran-tine. “She was healthy; no way could shebelieve she could transmit typhoid,”Leavitt says.

Forward to the Past

Not long after 1938, when Mallon died inisolation, the importance of quarantinesseemed to fade as vaccinations and antibi-otics put microbes on the run. From theend of World War II until the appearanceof AIDS around 1980, infectious diseaseseemed destined to be more history thanscience. “We thought we’d conqueredinfectious disease,” says Leavitt.

Hardly. HIV, the AIDS virus, joineda frightening run of new and resurgentpathogens that included Legionnaires’disease, a respiratory infection that grewin air ducts; Ebola, an African bleedingdisease; hantavirus, carried by rodents inthe American Southwest; and Lyme dis-ease, spread by deer ticks across the

Northeast and Wisconsin. Biologistslearned that bacteria can develop andshare genes that make them immune tothe “wonder drugs” designed to killthem. Many old microbes, such asinfluenza and tuberculosis, have resur-faced in new, super-resistant forms.

Some diseases, including influenzas,can jump between species in an unendingcat-and-mouse game with animal immunesystems. Many human influenzas origi-nated as a virus in birds, which explainsthe intense concern sparked by a flu thatis scourging poultry in Southeast Asia.The virus — and deliberate extermina-tion of infected flocks — have killed 100million fowl in just two years. Untilrecently, every human case of that birdflu was traceable to contact with fowl.But in September, Thai authorities beganinvestigating possible cases of human-to-human transmission — an event thatcould allow the flu to travel far beyondthe flocks where it currently is contained.

In a reminder of the killing potencyof influenza, UW-Madison virologistYoshihiro Kawaoka recently demon-strated that only a few genetic tweaksseparate mild forms of flu from the lethalvirus responsible for the global flu pan-demic of 1918–19, which claimed 20 mil-lion lives (see related story, page 15).Add in the fragility of the systems wehave to fight the virus — as powerfullydemonstrated by the flu-shot crisis inwhich contamination wiped out roughlyhalf of the U.S. supply of vaccine — and you understand the growing dread

among many scientists of anotherpandemic.

But our renewed concern aboutinfectious diseases did not stem just from the natural evolution ofmicrobes, nor from their increasedmobility through globe-hopping jetplanes. The anthrax attacks thatkilled five Americans in 2001 raisedthe threat of biological weapons toa nation already traumatized by theSeptember 11 attacks. While theIraqi bio-weapons threat provedillusory, it’s now clear that a mas-sive Soviet program spent decadesbrewing weapons from a smorgas-

bord of deadly microbes. Although itwould be difficult to pull off, an expertattack using drug-resistant microbes,alone or in combination, could start a pandemic.

That reality has public-health officialsscrambling for antidotes, and quarantine,one of the oldest tools in the bag, may alsobe one of the most reliable against thesethreats. According to a report publishedin January by the Centers for DiseaseControl, “SARS provided an example ofthe power of traditional public-healthmeasures — including surveillance, infec-tion control, isolation, and quarantine —to contain and control an outbreak.”

Quarantine, in fact, vastly predatesthe discovery of microbes. In 549 A.D.,the Roman emperor Justinian tried tostop bubonic plague by isolating the sick.China also quarantined plague-strickensailors returning from the sea during theseventh century. The effort to containpathogens continued through lepercolonies and tuberculosis sanatoriums.As people congregated in ever-largercities, quarantines became the provinceof public-health departments that aroseto control the rapid spread of diseases incrowded urban areas.

The poster child of quarantineremains Mary Mallon, who was twenty-two years old in 1907, when she was iden-tified as the source of a fearsome typhoidfever outbreak in New York City. Blam-ing six cases of infection on her, public-health authorities shipped her to an islandin the East River, where she spent three

Irish immigrant Mary Mallon, seen in a New York hospitalbed shortly after she was seized by public health officialsin 1907 (facing page), was forced to live in this tiny houseon an island in the East River for nearly thirty years.

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years before being released on thepromise not to resume cooking. In1915, however, she was caughtworking under a pseudonym inthe kitchen of a hospital wheretwenty-five people had contractedtyphoid. The health departmentreturned her to the island, whereshe lived, solitary and bitter, untilher death.

Mary, Mary,Quite ContraryAlthough Mallon furiously resis-ted her imprisonment, she attracted littlesympathy from a public more concernedabout its health than her liberty. She was,in a sense, a prisoner who neither under-stood her crime nor repented it. A letterMallon wrote in 1909 gives a flavor of herattitude: “There was never any effort bythe Board [of Health] authority to do any-thing for me excepting to cast me on theisland and keep me a prisoner withoutbeing sick nor needing medical treatment.”

You could see the Mallon story as asimple triumph of public health over awillful, ignorant, infectious immigrant.But for Leavitt, whose 1996 book TyphoidMary: Captive to the Public’s Health was thebasis for an episode of Nova aired inOctober, it’s not so simple. She believesthat public-health authorities were moreeager to prove their power than to helpMallon understand her situation or find asafe way to make a living.

“I am convinced she was a healthycarrier, and if she cooked for people, shehad potential for infecting them. Butthere were a lot of things she could havedone that were perfectly safe,” Leavittsays. Although the idea of retrainingarose during Mallon’s second quarantine,by then, Leavitt says, “she’d developed apretty strong resistance” to advice fromthe health department.

Did her case reflect pure injustice or pure medical necessity? “I think it’ssomewhere in the middle,” says Leavitt.“It was certainly not only an injustice.”

The tensions in Mallon’s case haveechoed through the history of quarantineand isolation, says Richard Keller, anassistant professor of medical history and

bioethics. In the 1930s, for example, in the French colony of Tunisia, the eminent bacteriologist Charles Nicollewas in charge of controlling epidemics.Nicolle had already won the 1928 NobelPrize for identifying lice as the carrier of typhus in Tunisia. “When bubonicplague broke out in 1930,” says Keller,“he initially suspected that it was amigrant-laborer population that trans-mitted it, so he rounded up four hundredsoldiers, sent them to buildings wherethe migrants were living, took them to aprison, and quarantined them.

“What was so remarkable was thatthere was only one case of plague, and thesource was elsewhere,” says Keller. “Butthis guy was director of the Pasteur Insti-tute, had won the Nobel Prize, [and so]he must know how diseases operate. Yethe couldn’t think beyond the idea that agiven population must bear responsibility.It’s a frightening aspect of how scienceand public health often interact.”

Discrimination and instinctive blam-ing were also evident, Keller argues, inthe early 1980s, at the start of the AIDSepidemic. Haitians, he says, were singledout as a source of infection, even thoughother subgroups had a higher rate of HIVinfection. “Haitians were the only popula-tion, on the basis of ethnicity, that werebanned from donating blood,” he notes.

Taking It to the Streets

If there is one thing we know about con-trolling epidemics, it is that the behaviorof the public matters. Whether you’retrying to keep the sick at home or getimmunizations to the uninfected, you

must enlist the cooperation of thecommunity. But the actions ofpublic-health authorities can doas much to antagonize the publicas to reassure it.

As an example, Leavitt con-trasts an 1894 smallpox vaccina-tion campaign in Milwaukee witha similar effort undertaken in1947 in New York City. Milwau-kee’s authorities bungled theresponse, she says, by stressingthe letter of the law and discrimi-nating against the poor. In a 2003

article, she argued that the public healthdepartment used “strong-arm tactics onits poorer citizens,” leading to a “com-plete breakdown of law and order” thatled to a month of rioting. As a result, the city endured what she described as a “raging epidemic,” which killed 244 citizens.

Half a century later, after a smallpoxoutbreak in postwar New York, an activepublic-health department promoted thepublic stake in mass vaccinations. Themayor made a big show of taking hisshots, and, amid what Leavitt described as “civic order and citizen cooperation,”more than 6 million people were vacci-nated in four weeks. The disease claimedtwo victims.

When the federal government grewworried about smallpox two years ago, it could have learned from those prece-dents. But the bioterror-inspired cam-paign to inoculate medical personnelacross the country “fell flat on its face,”Leavitt says. “The public was not con-vinced it was a real threat. There was not enough work to be confident in thevaccine itself, nor in how the current population would respond to it,” giventhe large number of people with immunesuppression.

“Public response matters,” she says.“A positive reaction can lead to success-ful programs; a negative one can pro-long and exacerbate the infectiousdisease and put more people at risk.”

With SARS, public cooperation was a significant factor in containing it. Although the Chinese government was initially slow to act, it managed to

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In a six-page, scrawled diatribe written in 1909, Mallonexpressed bitterness and confusion about her captivity.

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quarantine about thirty thou-sand people in Beijing alone.Similarly, about seven thou-sand people were quaran-tined in Toronto, ending theCanadian outbreak. Yet aswe credit quarantines fortheir medical efficacy, thesocial costs are still revealingthemselves. One study pub-lished in the Journal of Emerg-ing Infectious Diseases foundthat about 30 percent of peo-ple quarantined in Torontohad symptoms of post-trau-matic stress disorder.

Ready or Not

For decades, state agenciescharged with carrying outpublic-health campaignshave complained about alack of funding and inade-quate tools. Few public-health departments havebeen able to tap into evensimple technologies such ase-mail to monitor infectiousdiseases and disseminateinformation. In an age ofpossible bioterrorism, that ischanging, says Wisconsinstate epidemiologist JeffreyDavis ’67, an adjunct pro-fessor of population healthsciences at UW-Madison.Since 2001, “every state hasreceived resources for pub-lic-health preparedness andto improve personnel and infrastruc-ture,” Davis says. “There are more peo-ple on board doing surveillance [and]invoking plans for prevention and con-trol, more laboratory capability to testfor certain agents, and more assessmentsfor vulnerability in certain settings.”

In Wisconsin, for example, hospitals,clinics, emergency rooms, labs, and firstresponders can link to a secure commu-nications web known as the WisconsinHealth Alert Network, which is designedto speed detection of public-healththreats and give authorities a way torespond quickly to new threats. “This is

something we couldn’t do three yearsago,” says Davis. “It’s not perfect, butevery year we are more prepared thanthe year before.”

Such new tools are one indicationthat public health extends well beyondthe realm of microbes and vaccines. “Iwould argue,” says Keller, “that publichealth exists simultaneously in twoimportant domains. One we normallythink of as the medical domain, but it’s atleast as much in the province of law andpublic order.”

In that regard, we may be returningto the age of Typhoid Mary, when thehardware assembled to fight the next

outbreak may matter lessthan the “software” — theless docile human factorsthat sometimes requireauthoritative control.

“In our country, thevalue of individual rights is so strong,” says Leavitt,“but so is the value of gov-ernment protecting thehealth of people where individual efforts are notenough. You can’t expecteverybody to find their ownclean water, so you have amunicipal water system.The same is true with someepidemic responses. Therewill have to be some societalresponse, and that will haveto be coordinated by localgovernment. Part of publichealth is militaristic, or at least police oriented,because you often are ask-ing people to do things theywould not think of doing ontheir own.”

As Davis points out,state and local health depart-ments have always had coer-cive power to stop riskybehavior. “If it’s serious,” hesays, “a disease for whichthere is no effective preven-tion other than limiting peo-ple’s movement, and if thatdisease has terrible conse-quences, the case for quar-

antine can be made fairly decisively.”But how will that fly in a nation that

values privacy, liberty, and individual-ism? Davis is guardedly confident. “Myexperience, after twenty-five-plus yearsin the state, is that people have beenpretty responsible. Given some of thethings we may need to confront, I hopepeople will understand their responsibili-ties, as individuals, as people livingwithin a family structure, and as peopleliving in the community.”

David Tenenbaum covers science regularly for the Why Files (www.whyfiles.org).

WINTER 2004 45

TheModern Quarantine: SARS in China

A Chinese worker peers through the locked gate of a Beijing buildingwhere authorities identified cases of SARS in April of this year.

Some thirty thousand people were quarantined in the Chinese capitalduring SARS outbreaks in 2003 and 2004, a massive effort that

appears to have kept the epidemic from growing worse.

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At five-thirty on a fall morning,hardly anything moves on thestreets around Carly Piperx’05’s neighborhood. Hardlyanything, that is, except forPiper. Six days a week, whilemost of the campus slumberson, Piper pulls on sweats andheads to the Southeast Recre-ational Facility for two hours inthe pool. Before most people sit down to their morningWheaties, she’ll have swumthree miles.

This is the life of a goldmedal winner.

Sure, there are glamorousmoments. After swimming thesecond leg for the U.S. 4-by-200-meter freestyle relay team— the one that demolished aseventeen-year-old world recordand won gold at the summerOlympics — Piper has seen hersenior year turn into a parade ofceremonies and banquets. She’ssigned countless autographs.She threw out the first pitch at a

Detroit Tigers game. In October,she had to skip a day of classesto join her Olympic teammatesfor a reception at the WhiteHouse.

But the truth is that a goldmedal hasn’t made Piper’s lifeeasier. It doesn’t take her zool-ogy exams. It doesn’t let hersleep later. And it doesn’t satiatethe competitive hunger that hasalways made her want more.

“I think she’s certainly proudof what she accomplished, butat the same time, there are afew more things she wants todo,” says Eric Hansen, coach of the UW men’s and women’sswimming teams. “The bestones are never satisfied.”

So it is with Piper, the firstBadger to win an Olympic medalwhile still in school since rowerPeggy McCarthy ’78 won abronze in 1976. Just two weeksafter standing atop the medalplatform in Athens — “I still getshivers thinking about it,” she

says — Piper was back into theroutine of her training regimen,setting lofty goals for her finalseason at Wisconsin.

Eight times an All-Americanand nine times a Big Ten cham-pion, Piper is a big part of therecent resurgence in Wisconsinwomen’s swimming. On thefringes of the sport’s elite whenshe arrived, Wisconsin has tickedupward in each of her three sea-sons. Last year, the team rankedtenth at the NCAA champi-onships, its highest finish ever.

Many have shared in build-ing that success, including lastyear’s Big Ten swimmer of theyear, Bethany Pendleton ’04,and current teammate AmaliaSarnecki x’06, who holds twoUW records in the breaststroke.Including members of the men’steam, which finished sixteenthat the NCAAs last season, theUW sent eleven swimmers tothis summer’s U.S. Olympic TeamTrials. Another, senior Adam

SPORTS

TEAM PLAYER

Anthony DavisFive things to know aboutAnthony Davis, the Badgers’senior running back:• Earlier this year, he became

Wisconsin’s second all-timeleading rusher, trailing onlyfellow New Jersey nativeRon Dayne x’00.

• He’s one athlete perfectlywilling to be a role model.An elementary-educationmajor who has alreadyearned a degree in Afro-American studies, he loveschildren and hopes to be ateacher or counselor whenhe’s done with football.

• He may also be the firststudent teacher who had tosign autographs before hecould lead a class at theMadison public schools.

• As president of the OmegaPsi Phi fraternity, he’shelped organize a blooddrive and a campus forumon diversity.

• So who were his role models? As a kid, he hadposters of Barry Sanders,Muhammad Ali, and Mr. Ton his bedroom walls.

Golden GirlOlympic champion Carly Piper swims toward uncharted waters.

After winning a gold medal and helping set a world record at the 2004 Olympic Games, Carly Piper has nointention of resting on her accomplishments.

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SPORTS

The UW men’s cross countryteam swept the top three spots atthe Big Ten championships, seal-ing the program’s sixth consecu-tive conference title. Simon Bairux’06 won the individual title forthe second year in a row, beatingout teammates Chris Solinsky x’07and Matt Tegenkamp x’05. TheBadgers, ranked as the top teamin the country at press time, willrace for the national champi-onship November 22.

Awards continue to pile up forsenior hockey goaltender BerndBrückler, named the preseasonplayer ofthe yearby thecoachesof theWesternColle-giateHockeyAssocia-tion. Lastseason,Brückler posted a 19-10-8 recordand led the Badgers to the great-est defensive season in team his-tory, setting UW records for thelowest goals-against average andbest save percentage.

More than 150 UW students par-ticipated in the 2004 MadisonIronman in September. Thetriathlon, which involves a 2.4-mile swim in Lake Monona, a112-mile bike ride through south-western Wisconsin, and a 26.2-mile run around the city and theUW campus, hosted a record2,188 participants — and there’sno sign its popularity is waning.Registration for the 2005 racewas filled in thirteen hours.

Mania, qualified for Poland’steam and joined Piper in Athens.

“What Carly did in theOlympics represents just how farwe’ve come as a program,” saysHansen. “But, really, to takeeleven kids to the trials and havethem swim as well as they did iseven better.”

Wisconsin’s strong presenceat the summer meets has“opened doors with a lot ofrecruits,” Hansen says. “Whenyou have success, it’s importantto reload and build on it.”

One could say Piper was abit of a “reload” recruit herself.A solid but unspectacular athletefrom Grosse Pointe Woods,Michigan, she came to UW-Madison to compete in eventsthat had been dominated forthe previous four years by EllenStonebreaker ’01, one of themost illustrious swimmers in theprogram’s history. Within a year,Piper astonished coaches by sur-passing Stonebreaker’s stan-dards. “Those were not the firstrecords I thought would fall,”Hansen says. “It was a pleasantsurprise, and she just kept get-ting better and better.”

But while past results mayhave come on the strength ofPiper’s legs, this year maydepend as much on her mouth.Piper is one of three captains ofthe women’s team, and as theBadgers’ resident Olympians,she and Mania are beingcounted on to inspire and cajoletheir teammates to new levels ofperformance.

“Carly has what a lot ofpeople want. What she pulledoff gives her instant credibility asan example to her teammates,”says Hansen.

Leading is a role that thequiet and humble Piper is stillgetting used to. “I’m definitely alittle shy,” she says. “But theexperiences I’ve had have helped

me feel a lot more comfortablespeaking up.”

Not that she’s had todemand attention. When shereturned to campus, she waspractically mobbed by team-mates. Most of the time, theirwelcoming hugs were closelyfollowed by a request: Can I seeyour medal? She grew so accus-tomed to bringing it out that fora while it was stored not in asafe-deposit box, but hidden inher closet.

But apart from that littlepiece of jewelry, Piper broughtback from Athens somethingelse — a new appreciation forthe support of teammates.Standing there with the medalaround her neck, she began tothink about all the people, fromher parents and coaches to herOlympic teammates to her

friends in Madison, who hadpushed her there.

Swimming is a sport of disci-pline and denial. The workoutsare long and tedious, and thesacrifices great, especially ifyou’re a student wanting tohave a social life. “So manytimes, my friends will say, ‘Let’sgo to a movie,’ and I have to tellthem it’s my bedtime,” Pipersays. “It’s not the typical collegeexperience.”

In the end, what makes itworthwhile for Piper is the real-ization that it’s not a solitary ven-ture. “You’re suffering, but you’resuffering together,” she says.“Especially since this is my senioryear, I just want to enjoy thatwhole team atmosphere. Any-thing we do is going to be fun,because we’re all in it together.”

— Michael Penn

WINTER 2004 49

Bernd BrücklerIN SEASON

WrestlingComing off a recruitingbonanza that broughtseven wrestlers whowere all ranked amongthe top fifteen competi-tors in their weight class,Coach Barry Davis hasa promising group ofathletes to put on themat. The Badgers wonseventeen of twenty-three dual matches lastyear, their best recordsince 1986, but want to improve on their seventh-place Big Ten finish.

Circle the dates: November 27, first home match of the year, versusNorthern Iowa; March 5–6, Big Ten championships, Iowa City, Iowa;March 17–19, NCAA finals, St. Louis, Missouri.

Keep an eye on: It’s all in the family for the Badgers’ three sets ofbrothers — Kelly x’05 and Ryan x’05 Flaherty, Tony x’05 andTyler x’06 Turner, and Josh x’08 and Jordan x’08 Crass.

Think about this: Two Big Ten schools — Iowa and Minnesota —have won eleven of the last thirteen NCAA team titles.

Kelly Flaherty was among eight UWwrestlers to compete at the NCAA championship meet last year.

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Making Badger ConnectionsWAA seeks to deepen relationship with UW grads.

WAA NEWS

With alumni living around theworld, it’s a challenge to givethem all the same access to theUW. To help ensure a more con-sistent Badger experience at localalumni events — whether it’s anacademic lecture or a happy hour— WAA formed an AlumniTouch Points Task Force. The taskforce is a coalition of representa-tives from the WAA board ofdirectors, alumni chapter leaders,and UW Foundation and WAAstaff who will meet monthly todiscuss goals and ideas.

“Every touch point we havewith an alum — whether it’s ane-mail, a phone call, On Wiscon-sin Magazine, or a chapter event— should deliver the messagethat we’re proud to be part ofthis great institution,” says WAAPresident and CEO Paula Bon-ner MS’78. “The Alumni TouchPoints Task Force will refine ourfocus on customer service andmake recommendations forimprovement.”

The task force was formed atWAA’s board of directors meetinglast spring and aims to maintain acustomer focus in all that WAAdoes, a guiding principle of theassociation’s Vision 2008 forAlumni Relations. The associationis positioning itself as the campus

strategic coordinator for alumnirelations by offering UW schools,colleges, and departments theopportunity to tap more than140 years of expertise in reachingout to grads. WAA has alreadypartnered with nineteen UWschools and colleges to work oncentennial celebrations, eventinvitations, newsletters, andother communications.

WAA also hopes to involve200,000 alumni and friends inthe life of the university duringthe next four years, by providingmeaningful ways to stay intouch — local get-togethers, anonline alumni directory, classreunions, association member-ship, and more. The touch-points team will bring togetherWAA and its alumni chaptersaround the country to reachBadgers in their communities.

“We want to provide excep-tional customer service to ourvolunteers and alumni, no mat-ter where they live,” says JeffWendorf ’82, WAA’s vice presi-dent of programs and outreach.“This task force will defineexpectations for our chaptersand for our national office toensure that alumni can find the

same kind of events in Boston asthey do in Los Angeles.”

By revamping local events,WAA hopes to increase alumniengagement with the university.A major goal of the touch-pointsteam is to evaluate what is cur-rently offered at alumni chaptersand fill in any gaps. The groupwill also conduct research aboutwhat alumni think about localevents and take action based onthat feedback.

There are currently more thanninety alumni chapters in citiesnationwide. These groups helprecruit students to attend UW-Madison, raise money each yearfor scholarships, and host socialevents that enable alumni tomeet people and learn about newdevelopments at the university.

“Our alumni chapters arepart of a strong network thatmakes a big impact for the uni-versity in communities nation-wide,” says Bonner. “By creatingan even stronger, deeper partner-ship with our volunteer leaders,we’ll advance the objectives ofthe university and give alumni amore meaningful way to recon-nect with their alma mater.”

— Erin Hueffner ’00

WAA board members Jim Goetz ’64 and Jeanan Yasiri MS’85 brain-storm ideas for ways to connect with alumni at a meeting in April.That meeting helped create WAA’s Vision 2008.

Thanks from Bucky’s Campaign HQHomecoming 2004 is now history, and though theHomecoming Committee promoted the themeBucky for President, our favorite badger is not head-ing to the White House. Still, Bucky and crew wouldlike to thank the following sponsors for aiding hiscampaign: The Wisconsin State Journal, WISC-TV,Channel3000.com, Z104 Radio, Chalmers Jewelers,Chin’s Asia Fresh, and Chipotle.

Bucky Badger approved this message.

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WAA NEWS

If knowledge is power, thenWAA just made its memberssome of the most powerfulalumni in America. Thanks to anew benefit, WAA members willnow have access to the UW-Madison Libraries and all theinformation they contain.

“We’re very proud to beable to give our alumni accessto the library system,” saysPaula Bonner MS’78, WAA’spresident and CEO. “The mostimportant thing we all share, asalumni, is the great educationthat the UW provides. The edu-cational materials on campuscan continue to be a great assetin people’s lives, and we wantto help graduates take advan-tage of that.”

WAA members will nowhave access to such UW Libraryfunctions as ProQuest, a servicethat provides access to thou-sands of periodicals and news-papers, and ABI/INFORM, adatabase that contains contentfrom a wealth of business jour-nals. The benefit also provides

access to reference librarianswho can copy and send docu-ments to WAA members whorequest them. Although thealumni associations of severaluniversities offer similar pro-grams, WAA is the only group toprovide this service at no chargebeyond regular annual dues.

The library service is one ofseveral new features that WAAis now offering its members.Other new benefits include useof the executive dining roomand the eighth-floor Study Pubat the UW Fluno Center forExecutive Education, which for-merly was restricted to FlunoCenter guests; a third issue ofthe members-only Insider Maga-zine each year; and, for thosewho join at the Super Memberlevel, a twelve-month calendarfeaturing photos of campusscenes. Further, WAA’s annualmembership dues are now tax-deductible, a change in statusover previous years.

“We’re constantly workingto improve the value of a WAA

membership,” says Bonner.“We want alumni to be able toget something back for theirloyalty to our alma mater.”

— John Allen

Sarah Brennan x’07 and UW director of financial aid Steve Van Essshare a laugh during WAA’s scholarship reception in October. Thereception gave students the chance to meet with the alumni and staffwho made their financial aid possible.

Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Develop-ment Roberta Gassman (left) and Paula Bonner field questionsduring a Kohl Center forum entitled Educational Assets:Strengthening Wisconsin’s Economy. The October forumbrought together leaders from the university, state govern-ment, and industry, including UW-Madison Chancellor JohnWiley and UW System President Kevin Reilly, to discuss theeconomic value of Wisconsin’s educational resources. WAA co-sponsored the event, along with Apple Computer, WisPolitics/WisBusiness, and the Wisconsin Technology Council.

For ReferenceWAA adds new benefits, including a link to the library.

Year in ReviewLast month, WAA released its2003–2004 annual report, Proud toBe Part of It. You can order a free copyat uwalumni.com/publications, orcheck out the interactive multimediaversion at uwalumni.com/proud.While there, post a message, order awindow cling, or enjoy a virtual tourof WAA’s Alumni Campus Abroad tripto Normandy.

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WAA NEWS

BadgerGiftsWith the holidays fastapproaching, WAA’s onlinealumni store is packing itsvirtual shelves. Shoppers can find not only traditionalBadgerware, including items from The UniversityBook Store, the WisconsinUnion Store, and Wisconsinmade.com, butalso new items, such asgreeting cards that featurewinter scenes from campus,which are available untilNovember 30. Also, the storenow offers prints by the lateRon Daggett ’38, MS’39, aformer professor of mechani-cal engineering and an avidwatercolor artist. Some four-teen of his images of Madi-son landmarks such as theRed Gym, the state capitol,and State Street are availablewith a 5 percent discount forWAA members. (For more onDaggett’s life and work, visitkln.appliedtech.us/.) Salesfrom WAA’s online storegenerate funding to supportUW-Madison studentscholarships, alumni lifelonglearning programs, andcareer services. For details,visit uwalumni.com/store.

Above: WAA’s president, Paula Bonner, and chair, Gilda Hudson-Winfield,join Bucky in a Homecoming jig.

Right: Members of thisyear’s Homecoming courtventured onto the field at Camp Randall Stadium during the big game, whilethe marching band (aboveleft and right) helped thecrowd celebrate a victoryover Northwestern.

Below: The HomecomingCommittee took advantageof this year’s theme, Buckyfor President, to launch a Rock the Vote voter registration drive on campus.

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ALUMNI NEWS

Compiled by Paula WagnerApfelbach ’83

40s–50s

Dancing with GIs: A Red CrossClub Worker in India, World War II (Warren Publishing) recallsthe “lighter side of wartime, notthe combat and casualties,” saysLibby (Elizabeth) ChitwoodAppel PhD’43 about her newbook. The author chroniclessuch adventures as her stationsin the jungle of Assam and thecity club of Karachi, a leave inRajputana as the guest of anIndian prince, and finally, herelopement with a GI beforereturning home in 1945. Appel’spostwar life has included beinga newspaper columnist, collegeinstructor, performing pianist,and “proud mother” who livesin Davidson, North Carolina.

Sheldon Lipshutz ’50,MD’53 put his expertise intobook form when he wrote 10 Things You Need to Knowbefore You See the Doctor: A Physician’s Advice from Morethan 40 Years of Practicing Medicine (Silver Lake Publish-ing). Lipshutz contends that the“technology advances thatmake American medicine theenvy of the world” also creategaps in health care that requirepatients to learn how to communicate effectively withtheir doctors and navigatebureaucracy. Lipshutz, nowsemiretired, lives in WoodlandHills, California, with his spouse,Rita Parks Lipshutz ’52. “I stillfeel very connected to the Uni-versity of Wisconsin,” he says.

“I’ve never done anythinglike this,” Arthur Gilmaster ’51 told a reporter from the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune.He was referring to writing, illustrating, and publishing achildren’s book about how hisgranddaughter, Zoe, learned todownhill ski at the age of two.

To “test market” the book,Gilmaster read it to first-gradersat several Wisconsin Rapids-area schools.

From Dick Rodman ’51in Bay Village, Ohio, we heardabout the USTA Midwest’s“super-senior” tennis sectionalchampionships, held in June.Rodman, at age seventy-five,and Jerry Thompson ’46,MS’49 of Ripon, Wisconsin — at eighty — teamed up for thefirst time to play doubles andwere the “oldest-ever Wisconsingraduates to play a USTA seniortournament together,” Rodmansays. Even though they lost, heassures us that they “put up agood Badger fight!”

The summer film The Notebook (New Line Cinema)features our very own Gena(Virginia) Rowlands x’51 ofLos Angeles. Her longtimespouse was the late actor, director, and screenwriter JohnCassavetes; their son, Nick Cassavetes, directed The Note-book. Rowlands is an Emmy andGolden Globe award winnerwho debuted on Broadway atage eighteen, and she’s twicebeen nominated for Oscars —for Gloria in 1980 and AWoman under the Influence in1974. She was a Badger Beautywhile on campus.

How can rocks solve crimes?To find out, check out Evidencefrom the Earth: Forensic Geologyand Criminal Investigation(Mountain Press Publishing) byRaymond Murray MS’52,PhD’55. In this revision of thepioneering Forensic Geology,which Murray co-authored in1975, you’ll learn how forensicgeologists analyze traces in earthmaterials and present their findings as evidence in legal proceedings. Murray retired in1996 as a geology professor andVP of research at the University ofMontana and lives in Missoula.He’s worked with crime labsaround the world.

With the goal of creating the Windy City’s first newmuseum of the twenty-first century, Chicago’s Museum ofBroadcast Communications haswelcomed Al Schwartz ’53 andChristopher Bury MA’77 to itsboard. Schwartz, of Beverly Hills,is a veteran Hollywood TV producer who retired recently assenior VP of Dick Clark Produc-tions. He’s well known as thelongtime producer and directorof the Golden Globe and American Music Awards. Bury, of Bethesda, Maryland, is a corre-spondent for the ABC News pro-gram Nightline and has a deepknowledge of television history.

Lavern Wagner MMu-sic’53, PhD’57 has self-pub-lished a family memoir calledPick Up Your Feet: A Family’sMusic and Mirth, Living and Loving. The book and its accom-panying CD tell how the musicalinterests and talents of Wagner’slate spouse, Joan, and theirfourteen children bound themall together during the familysinging group’s tours andrecordings. Wagner, who taughtmusic at Quincy [Illinois] Collegeand still lives in the town, notesthat he was the first UW studentto receive a PhD in musicology.

The John Deere Gold MedalAward — one of the AmericanSociety of Agricultural Engi-neers’ most prestigious honors— has gone to William Chan-cellor ’54 for his “application ofscience and art to the soil.” Aprofessor emeritus of biologicaland agricultural engineering atUC-Davis, Chancellor is recog-nized for his pioneering researchin the soil’s physical properties,particularly agricultural field-soilcompaction. He also initiated adatabase index system for agengineering literature that hasaided professionals worldwide.

After a career with the Asso-ciated Press (AP) that includedservice as a foreign correspon-dent, as well as VP and secretary

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54 ON WISCONSIN

ALUMNI NEWS

Street ShotsYou might call Jerome Mallmann’53 a “stealth” photographerbecause of the small, quiet cam-eras, fast film, lack of flash, andnon-intrusive approach that hetakes with his subjects: New Yorkers on the streets inunguarded moments, living outtheir private lives in public spaces.Since the late 1960s, Mallmann has been drawn to the streetsof the Big Apple to record residents in their natural habitats— contemplating, eating, sleeping, smoking — and in thehands of this artist, the familiar and seemingly mundane canbecome intriguing, mysterious, or even disturbing.

Smoking and sleeping were the particular subjects ofMallmann’s first solo show, at age seventy-two: a summerexhibit at the UW’s Elvehjem Museum of Art called Smokersand Sleepers: Photographs by Jerome Mallmann. That exhibit ofblack-and-white photos, as well as its accompanying catalog(www.lvm.wisc.edu/museumshop), captured individualsbetween 1991 and 2003 who were driven or escaped into thepublic arena, where they put their solitude on display. Hefound that while young smokers tended to use cigarettesmore as adornments, older smokers appeared to be merelycarrying out pleasureless addictions. The sleepers, whetherhomeless or exhausted, were, naturally, at their least posedand most vulnerable.

But these individuals hardly cover the full range of Mallmann’s subjects, and he views his work more as photog-raphy than documentary. “I’m not really making a socialstatement,” he notes. “Street photography appeals justbecause it is spontaneous. Street photography is winging it.”

It is Mallmann’s training in art and painting, however —both at the UW and in San Francisco — that allows him to“wing it” with a sense of composition that Elvehjem curatorAndrew Stevens calls masterly. “Without the composition,”Mallmann says, “the content would be pretty weak stuff.”

Mallmann pursued photography as a hobby while work-ing for most of his career as an editor for a naval-architecturefirm in New York. But now retired and living in Brooklyn, he spends three days a week on the streets, in search of subjects. “He is an amateur in the best sense of that word,”says Stevens, “someone who does something for the love of it.He’s always been fascinated with the city, and he loves thespectacle of the people in the city.”

When Mallmann visited Madison for his exhibition’sopening, he was impressed by the Elvehjem Museum, whichdidn’t exist during his student days. “I enjoyed my years in Madison enormously,” he adds. “They were the mostimportant years of my life. I made friends I still see.”

— P. A.

of the AP corporation, ConradFink ’54 has become a professorof newspaper strategy and management at the University of Georgia in Athens.

John Check MS’56, PhD’59has left his professional markboth as a professor of educa-tional psychology who retiredfrom UW-Oshkosh in 1987, andas a prolific composer. Through-out his teaching career, Checkperformed with his orchestra andwrote 284 original tunes in thepolka/waltz genre. More than athird of them reside right here oncampus in the archives of MillsMusic Library, and six are in theNational Music Museum Archivesin Vermillion, South Dakota.

For forty years, Joe Nyiri’59, MS’61 has been a belovedfixture at the San Diego Zoo —teaching children’s art classes,consulting, and painting murals.The May issue of the zoo’s magazine, Zoonooz, included a feature on the artist, whomaintains studios in San Diegoand Hadley, Massachusetts.Nyiri’s advice to his pint-sized artstudents? “Learn to see thingsin your own way. See things anddraw them, and then draw,draw, and draw some more!”

60s

“After retiring from the practiceof law,” began Alf Leif Erickson’60, “and teaching law at FloridaInternational University in Miami,I retired to Bangkok, Thailand. I am now the captain of theScrewy Tuskers and the ScrewlessTuskers elephant-polo teams.Each year we raise money for theElephant Conservancy in Thailandby organizing an elephant-poloworld championship in Hua Hin.”Erickson also flies hot-air balloonsin Europe. Other than that, he assures us that he’s “quitenormal in every other way.”

The International Associa-tion of Attorneys and Executives

in Corporate Real Estate haselected a UW grad as its chair:Bruce Cohen ’62, principal ofthe Cohen/David & Associateslaw firm in Atlanta.

It took sixty-six hours forBozo’s Circus to best the other167 boats in this year’s Chicago-to-Mackinac Island sailing race— by a mere four minutes. In so doing, Bob Listecki ’62completed his twenty-fifth“Mac” as a crew member. Therace, conducted by the ChicagoYacht Club, is the oldest (firstrunning in 1898) and longest(333 miles) fresh-water yachtrace in the world. Listecki is apharmacist who owns the GlenEllyn [Illinois] Pharmacy.

A new twist on the favoritechildren’s tale The Little Red Hen has arrived as Mañana,Iguana (Holiday House), by Ann Whitford Paul ’63. In thiscolorfully illustrated story, youngreaders learn some Spanishwords as they listen in onConejo, Tortuga, and Culebra,who always end up telling theirincreasingly exasperated friend,Iguana, that they’ll help her prepare for her fiesta mañana...Happily, the trio mends its sloth-like ways in time to create a bitof a surprise ending. Paul, of LosAngeles, has also written poetryand other children’s books.

Following a career in university teaching, KayeBache-Snyder PhD’64 wrotefor the Denver Post and was aneditor for the Daily Times-Call inher community of Longmont,Colorado. She now teaches writing workshops and reviewsliterary works for the Small PressReview. In May, Finishing LinePress published Bache-Snyder’sPinnacles & Plains, a chapbookof poetry that celebrates Colorado’s landscapes.

Madisonian Carolyn CraigShelp ’66 has written a bio-graphical history of the Shelpsand seven related family lines.This labor of love — now a

WINTER 2004 55

ALUMNI NEWS

beautiful, hardbound book —took nine years to complete andis dedicated to her spouse, Wel-don Shelp ’58, MD’61.

Lillian Lodge KopenhaverMA’67 has become dean of theSchool of Journalism and MassCommunication at North Miami’sFlorida International University,which she’s served since 1973. Anauthority on the First Amendmentand the student press, Kopen-haver has received the Wells Key,the highest honor of the Societyof Professional Journalists.

Bounded Choice: TrueBelievers and Charismatic Cults(University of California Press) is a new work by Janja (Janice)Lalich ’67, an assistant profes-sor of sociology at CaliforniaState University in Chico. Onereviewer noted that Lalich’s“theory of ‘bounded choice’ is likely to reshape scholarlythinking for years to comeabout the dynamics of…howand why people may act againsttheir own self-interest in pursuitof higher causes.”

Ward Welty MA’67 retiredas an associate professor ofEnglish at Alabama A&M University in December 2003 —but he didn’t remain retired forlong. In July, Welty became thenew academic enrichment coor-dinator at Calhoun CommunityCollege in Decatur, Alabama. He lives in nearby Huntsville.

New to the American BarAssociation’s board of governorsis James Baird ’68, a partner inthe Chicago law firm of SeyfarthShaw. He’ll represent the stateand local government law sec-tion during his three-year term.

Accessories magazine hailedthe Milwaukee-based Carson PirieScott & Company as Retailer ofthe Year in its June issue. Amongthose at the store’s helm is seniorvice president and general mer-chandise manager Dave Harris’69 of Mequon, Wisconsin, who’sbeen with the company through-out his thirty-five-year career.

Larry Genskow ’69 ofWest Chester, Ohio, is the asso-ciate director for process andemerging technologies in corpo-rate engineering at Procter &Gamble, and he’s earned P&G’shighest honor for engineering.It’s his latest achievement thathas the company abuzz, how-ever: Genskow is the editor ofthe drying, humidification, andcooling section of the eighthedition of McGraw-Hill’s Perry’sChemical Engineers’ Handbook— the most authoritativeresource used in chemical engineering worldwide.

Crowning a long history ofservice to the Beverly Hills BarAssociation — including leading it through a challenging periodrecently in an interim capacity —attorney Marc Staenberg ’69has become the association’s newexecutive director. Staenberg hasfocused his career on entertain-ment law, with a special emphasison protecting child actors.

70s

New York composer ChesterBiscardi ’70, MA’72, MMu-sic’74 is one of those rare individuals who’s experienced an artist’s residence at therenowned MacDowell Colony inPeterborough, New Hampshire.Chosen by a panel of musicexperts on the sole criterion oftalent, Biscardi worked this fallin one of the colony’s thirty-twoartist studios — hamlets whereThornton Wilder, Leonard Bernstein, and Aaron Coplandcreated such cherished works as Our Town, Mass, andAppalachian Spring.

In “a book for the genera-tion that missed the tune-in,drop-out memoirs of the ’60s,”Terry Tarnoff ’70 takes readersalong on his own eight-yearjourney in The Bone Man ofBenares: A Lunatic Trip throughLove and the World (St. Martin’s

Press). With only a bag, a guitar,and sixteen harmonicas, he setoff in 1971 to see Africa, Asia,and Europe — a quest thatyielded startling adventures anda belief in the universal need forconnection. Tarnoff is now a San Francisco screenwriterwhose one-act, one-actor playof the same name was stagedthis fall in his home community.

When Rollie Cox ’71,MS’73 nominated Russell J.Hosler for posthumous induc-tion into the Business EducationNational Hall of Fame, his admiration for the former UWprofessor was clear. Cox wasparticularly taken with Hosler’sgenuine interest in his studentsand remembered fondly hisexperiences with Hosler’s land-mark contribution, ProgrammedGregg Shorthand. Hosler joinedthe Hall of Fame, housed atUW-Whitewater, in October. His widow, Mary MargaretO’Connell Hosler MS’64,PhD’67, is a UW-Whitewaterbusiness professor, and Coxteaches business technology atMadison Area Technical College.

John Clark ’72, MS’77 hasearned the highest honor of theAmerican Chemical Society’sagrochemicals division: the Inter-national Award for Research inAgrochemicals. Clark is a profes-sor of environmental toxicologyand chemistry at the Universityof Massachusetts in Amherst,and directs the MassachusettsPesticide Analysis Laboratory.

Susan Masterson ’72,MS’86 has been voted presi-dent-elect of the National Asso-ciation of Elementary SchoolPrincipals. This principal of Monroe Elementary (one of thisreporter’s schools!) in Janesville,Wisconsin, ran on the platformof “instilling hope” for her col-leagues and students througheffective communication. Shealso received the Association ofWisconsin School Administra-tors’ top honor in 2003.

Bookmark

Thomas Froncek ’64chronicles what marinersknow to be an inevitable,inescapable progression inhis autobiographical tale, A Splendid Madness: A Man,A Boat, A Love Story (Sheri-dan House). “Like many ofmy newfound sailing bud-dies,” he writes, “I came tothe sport relatively late inlife, and I soon found myselfswept away by a loopy pas-sion for all things nautical …struggling to balance needand desire, boat and family,love and obsession.”

Sailors who adore thesheets, the cleats, and thespray can surely empathize,while those who adore thesailors are left on shore, feeling abandoned — if onlyfor an afternoon — by thosewho’ve gone off to followthe siren song they hear.

A Splendid Madnessaddresses both points ofview, rouses the passions of sailors new and old, and beckons to those whoremain landlubbers but who can nonetheless feel the draw of sails and sea.

Froncek has been areporter for Life, Newsweek,and American Heritage, andspent twenty-five years as an editor for Reader’s Digest.Now retired, he’s writing inBrunswick, Maine — not atall a bad place for a sail.

ALUMNI NEWS

Barbara Birch ’73, MA’81,PhD’89 writes that since 1991,she’s “gone through the ranks”to become a full professor in theDepartment of Linguistics atCalifornia State University inFresno, served as its chair for thelast four years, and has nowbecome chair of the institution’sDepartment of Foreign Lan-guages and Literature. Birch haswritten English L2 Reading: Get-ting to the Bottom (LawrenceErlbaum Associates) and Learn-ing and Teaching English Gram-mar, K–12 (Merrill/Prentice Hall).

As director of market oversight at the U.S. CommodityFutures Trading Commission in Washington, D.C., (Jon)Michael Gorham MS’73,PhD’76 was the commission’sfirst overseer of the nation’stwelve futures exchanges. Now he’ll use that expertise inChicago, in his new role asdirector of the Center for Financial Markets at the IllinoisInstitute of Technology’s StuartGraduate School of Business.

Clarence Rawlings PhD’74has retired after thirty years withthe University of Georgia’s Col-lege of Veterinary Medicine —but not really. The emeritus pro-fessor of small-animal medicineand surgery is working half timeat the college, as well as teach-ing practitioners and consulting.Rawlings, a leader in minimallyinvasive surgery and heartworm-disease research, recentlyreceived the American KennelClub’s Career AchievementAward in Canine Research andthe American Veterinary MedicalAssociation’s 2003 Fido Award.

Pamela Redmond Satran’75 published not one, but twobooks this summer: Babes in Captivity, her second novel withDowntown Press; and the fifthrevised edition of the baby-naming book she co-authored,Beyond Jennifer & Jason, Madison & Montana (St. Martin’sPress). Satran, a former Daily Car-dinal editor, lives with her spouse,

Richard Satran ’77, in Montclair,New Jersey. She also writes fre-quently for national magazines.

In July, Brent Smith ’75,JD’78 was elected the new chairof the Wisconsin Technical College System board, makinghim a member of the UW boardof regents as well. An attorneywith the La Crosse, Wisconsin,law firm of Johns & Flaherty,Smith replaces Madisonian Nino Amato in the position.

At a special sitting ofBhutan’s governing body inAugust — one attended by HisMajesty the King — the reins ofexecutive authority passed fromLyonpo Jigmi Thinley to thenation’s new prime minister,Lyonpo Yeshey Zimba ’75,MA’76. Six years ago, the kingdevolved executive authority tothe people, and continuing tomanage that transition will be akey challenge for Zimba. Otherpriorities include national securityand debt, salary increases for civilservants, youth employment, the Bhutanese constitution, andDruk Air, the country’s airline.

Congratulations to JoyAmbelang Amundson ’76!She’s a new corporate vice president at Baxter Internationalin Deerfield, Illinois, as well as thenew president of its BioSciencebusiness. Amundson has been an executive with Abbott Labora-tories for more than twenty years,most recently as president of itsRoss Products business.

Many people would cite balance as something they’d likea whole lot more of. For thatreason, Debbie Lessin ’76 cre-ated Life Is a Balancing Act … AFun Book (Balancing Act Produc-tions). The book offers insight —in sixty-six quick-reference sec-tions — on how to attain morelife balance and have fun doingit. Lessin, of Chicago, is thepresident of Balancing Act Pro-ductions, a CPA, art gallery con-sultant, writer, public speaker,and small-business advocate.

Two UW grads were honored at the National BlackNurses Association’s (NBNA)annual conference in August.Brenda Montgomery Dockery’77, a family nurse practitionerat Milwaukee’s CH MasonHealth Center, earned theNBNA’s Advanced-Practice Nurseof the Year Award, while Madisonian Tamaria Parks ’04received the Student Nurse ofthe Year Award for outstandingacademic achievement. This wasin addition to the UW School ofNursing academic award thatParks received in May, when her classmates praised her forthe sacrifices she’s made as areturning adult student.

The Republic of Indonesia’snew ambassador to the UnitedNations Educational, Scientific,and Cultural Organization(UNESCO) is M. (Moehammad)Aman WirakartakusumahMS’77, PhD’81, who’s settledin Paris now for this role.Wirakartakusumah has been aprofessor of food science andtechnology, as well as the rectorof Bogor Agricultural Universityin Indonesia. He also sits on theDean of International StudiesAdvisory Board at the UW,received WAA’s DistinguishedAlumni Award in 1999, andheads WAA’s Indonesia alumnichapter.

Come on, admit it: you lovehurling things into the air just forthe sheer joy of it. WilliamGurstelle ’78 shares your delightin The Art of the Catapult: BuildGreek Ballistae, Roman Onagers,English Trebuchets, and MoreAncient Artillery (Chicago ReviewPress). His book offers safe, step-by-step instructions; diagrams;and wickedly interesting historicalexamples — with a little physicsthrown in — to help “wannabemarauders” build seven working-model catapults. Gurstelle is anengineer in Minneapolis who’salso written Backyard Ballisticsand Building Bots.

56 ON WISCONSIN

BookmarkOh, Christmas tree… Oh, Christmas tree… Howshiny are your branches?The answer is “Quiteshiny!” whenyou’re talk-ing aboutone of Amer-ica’s mostbeloved holi-day kitschicons, thealuminumTannenbaum.Now Julie Lindemann ’83and John Shimon ’83 havecreated the first book to celebrate these symbols ofthe “arrival of the modernistChristmas”: Season’s Gleam-ings: The Art of the AluminumChristmas Tree (MelcherMedia).

Photos of more than fiftydazzling trees — some bask-ing in the multi-hued glow ofrotating color wheels — willcertainly give you an eyefulof the glittery stuff, but Lindemann adds that“behind the color, sparkle,and humor, there’s a touch of melancholy that comesout of great holiday expecta-tions dashed and the harshrealities of the atomic age.”

When they’re not collect-ing trees, the authors/pho-tographers form the duo ofJ. Shimon & J. LindemannPhotographers in Mani-towoc, Wisconsin, whichwas the home of the Alu-minum Specialty Company— the premiere (in 1959)and premier manufacturer of the often-imitated “Ever-gleam” trees. Lindemannand Shimon (www.shimon-lindemann.com) specialize inportraiture using antiquar-ian, large-format techniques,and their winter show atChicago’s Wendy CooperGallery will include somealuminum-tree daguerreo-types. They also teach photography at Appleton’sLawrence University.

ALUMNI NEWS

Jean Dookhoo Patel ’79is a new member of the board ofSHARED, a Brookline, Massachu-setts-based nonprofit dedicatedto helping the world’s poorestpeople gain access to medicines.She’s the president of MarketingMastery and has extensive experi-ence in the health care field.

80s

“I am currently vice provost anddean of undergraduate studiesat the Catholic University ofAmerica,” writes Chris Wheat-ley MA’80, PhD’87. “My bookPoland Is Not Yet Lost: Heroicand Tragic Tales for the PolishDiaspora was just published byAdam Mickiewicz UniversityPress in Poznan, Poland.”

As a member of the Associ-ated Landscape Contractors ofAmerica, master landscapearchitect Tim Garland ’82 wasone of twenty professionalsselected nationwide to designthe NYC Commemorative Parknear Ground Zero, in honor ofthe heroes of 9/11. Garlandowns Gardens by Garland inShorewood, Wisconsin.

As author Terry Kay (TerryHouse Kraucunas JD’82) says,“When the paths of a stalker, a stripper, a medical student, and an all-American girl cross,someone is sure to get hurt.”And that’s exactly what happensin Kay’s 2003 book, A Promise of Revenge: The Death of Javier(Xlibris Corporation), whichlaunched her series. The secondand third books are, respectively,The Secret at St. Sans (publishedthis year) and More than Guilty(planned for 2005). Kay, ofElkhart, Indiana, was a featuredauthor at Choices: Milwaukee’sBlack Festival of Books in August.

Joan Sahagian Stuck-mann ’82 has become the newVP of sales for the broadcastdivision of Magnolia Restora-tions, a Chicago home-renova-tion firm that restores beautiful,

old homes to their “originalspirit.” Stuckmann arrives atMagnolia from Infinity Broad-casting, where she was a senioraccount executive.

We’ve heard so many goodthings about Steven Braun ’83,a former Wisconsin Alumni Stu-dent Board member. He’s now a financial representative withChicago’s McTigue FinancialGroup — part of the Northwest-ern Mutual Financial Network —whose latest achievement isbecoming president of the com-pany’s Financial RepresentativesAssociation. Braun has also beenMcTigue’s Agent of the Yeartwice; is a life member of theMillion Dollar Roundtable; andhas earned the National Quality,National Sales Achievement, andMaster Achievement Awards.

In Queer Social Philosophy:Critical Readings from Kant toAdorno (University of IllinoisPress), author Randall Halle’85, MA’87, PhD’95 conductsthe “first sustained queer critique of seminal works in German critical theory.” Halle,an associate professor of Ger-man studies at the University ofRochester [New York], has alsoco-edited Light Motives: GermanPopular Film in Perspective.

From Minnesota came thistasty bit: the 2004 chair of theboard at Land O’Lakes is PeteKappelman ’85, who milks fourhundred Holsteins and farmsabout eight hundred acres withhis brother at Meadow BrookFarms in Two Rivers, Wisconsin.Kappelman also heads the UWCollege of Agricultural and LifeSciences’ board of visitors, andhe’s worked in Malawi in Africato foster family dairy productionand cooperative milk marketing.

After earning an MBA andworking at several technologycompanies, Steve Spector ’85 ofBedford, Massachusetts, is thedirector of WARM2Kids (www.warm2kids.com), an acronym forWe’re All Role Models to Kids.

The group’s mission is to engagecorporations, the community, and celebrities in inspiring peopleof all ages to make positive lifedecisions, and it offers an onlinecommunity and a large set ofresources to assist families withthe many difficult issues theyface. Chicago-based Fox TVmeteorologist Rick DiMaio ’86is a WARM2Kids topic expert.

Richard Green MS’86,PhD’90 has joined the GeorgeWashington University School ofBusiness in Washington, D.C., as its chair of real estate andfinance. He taught for twelveyears at UW-Madison, and was honored as the 1995Teacher of the Year by the UW’sGraduate Business Association.Green’s also been the principal

WINTER 2004 57

True CallingDiana Lardy MD’77 saysher mother tricked her intobecoming a doctor. Lardydidn’t know what shewanted to do with her lifeafter college, but she had alove for travel and a passionfor helping those in need.Her mother mentioned a ship called the Hope, outfitted as a float-ing hospital that travels to medically underserved countries. IfLardy were a doctor, her mother said, she could travel the world.

Though Lardy didn’t travel on the Hope, she did end up goingto medical school at UW-Madison and giving hope to people indesperately impoverished parts of the world. Her first medical-service trip was a month in Oaxaca, Mexico, in 1987. Since then,she’s devoted her life to her medical missions. Each year, Lardyspends two months in the poorest regions of Senegal, Rwanda,and Kenya working in small medical clinics. Her time overseashas been life-changing.

“People are dying [in Africa] because they can’t get a dollar’sworth of medication. This is just unconscionable,” she says. “AndI’m not talking AIDS. It’s malaria — the biggest killer, certainly, ofkids in Africa. That’s something that’s very easy to treat with med-ication.” Lardy also treats children suffering from pneumonia anddiarrhea — easily curable afflictions that are often fatal in Africa.

Much of her work is funded by Lalmba, a nongovernmentalorganization that bills itself as “the world’s smallest international-relief agency.” When she’s not overseas serving the poor, Lardyworks at the Madison Abortion Clinic — her flexible schedulethere allows two-month trips to Africa yearly. She shuns televi-sion and appreciates the more relaxed way of life she’s come tolove in Africa.

“People say, ‘Oh, it’s so wonderful that you sacrifice!’ ” shesays. “And I’m not sacrificing. I learn so many things when I go[to Africa] about the basics of living and really what’s important.”

Lardy says her education at the UW Medical School gave herthe skills she needed to pursue her dream. And with the multitudeof service programs now offered at UW-Madison, perhaps morestudents will follow her path.

“Unfortunately, when I was there, they didn’t have the programs they now have,” she says. “Now, the students organizetrips to South America or to Africa.”

— Erin Hueffner ’00

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ALUMNI NEWS

economist and director of financial strategy and policyanalysis at Freddie Mac.

Working to protect theearth’s endangered environ-ments presents both challengesand, thankfully, some victories.Jennifer Gleason ’88 knowsboth very well as a U.S. staffattorney for the EnvironmentalLaw Alliance Worldwide (www.elaw.org) in Eugene, Oregon. InApril, she increased the myriadmiles she’s already logged withtrips to Liberia, Nigeria, Ethiopia,and Rwanda to work with grassroots lawyers there who are challenging plans to exploitnatural resources. Gleasonearned the 2002 Kerry RydbergAward for Achievement in PublicInterest Environmental Law.

Kevin “Kip” Piper MA’88shared his latest challenge: helping to implement the newMedicare prescription-drug bene-fit in his role as a senior adviser tothe administrator of the federalMedicare agency. He’s also theeditor of the Piper Report, a Weblog on health-related businessand policy, and he’s writing abook about solutions to America’shealth-care dilemmas. Piper livesin Falls Church, Virginia.

Brief... but impressive! Thatwas our reaction to news fromHarlan Marc Kaplan ’89 thathe’s just finished his executive-producer duties on two upcom-ing feature films: the horroranthology Death4Told, starringMargot Kidder, and the originalrock musical Temptation.Kaplan, of Columbus, Ohio, hasalso acted in movies, TV shows,and theater productions, andstarted producing films in 2002.

Madeline Scherb ’89spent the summer of 2003 atNorthwestern University on ajournalism fellowship, and nowshe’s become the new public-relations manager for educa-tional programs at the New York

Botanical Garden. Scherb spendsher spare time working on a documentary and writing a cookbook.

90s

As part of the inaugural festivitiesat Madison’s new Overture Center this fall, jaysi (JayshreeChander MD’90) offered audi-ences Lamps on Lilypads — a“provocative, multimedia per-formance of contemporaryKathak dance, Hindustani music,poetry, and storytelling, engagingtradition with the modernmoment, exploring freedom andpeace, challenging notions ofsuccess, and reveling in love.”She’s also a part-time physician atSan Francisco’s Tom WaddellClinic for the Homeless and an“assistant clinical professor with-out a salary” at UC-San Fran-cisco. In her own words, jaysi’s a“doctor by profession; a dreamer,dancer, and drummer at heart.”

Serge Dedina MS’91 isdoing well — and doing good —as the executive director of Wildcoast, an international con-servation team based in ImperialBeach, California, that works to protect endangered marineanimals and coastal wildlands.An avid surfer, he also earned the2003 Environmentalist of theYear Award from the Surf Indus-try Association. Dedina’s spouse,Emily Young ’87, MS’90, over-sees a grant program as the envi-ronmental director for the SanDiego Community Foundation.They return to Madison each fallto attend a Badger football gamewith Young’s father, CrawfordYoung, a UW emeritus professorof political science.

A big job awaits Kim HellerMarotta JD’91. As Miller Brew-ing Company’s new director ofcorporate social responsibility,she’ll develop its corporatesocial-investment plan, overseevisitor operations, and lead the

Milwaukee company’s commu-nity-outreach efforts, includingits upcoming 150th-anniversarycelebration. Marotta was previ-ously with the Wisconsin PublicDefender’s Office.

From Bemidji, Minnesota —where they know a lot aboutpesky insects — comes TicksOff! Controlling Ticks that Transmit Lyme Disease on YourProperty (ForSte Press) byPatrick Guilfoile PhD’92.The book arose from researchGuilfoile has conducted over thelast seven years as a professorand the chair of the biologydepartment at Bemidji State University — and from the first-hand knowledge he’s gained bymoving into a rural area inhab-ited by Lyme-transmitting ticks.

Robb Hecht ’93 is principalof the New York City public-rela-tions firm Hecht Consulting. Healso produces The PR Machine, a communications-industry blogresource about brand marketing.

From Oxford, England, toMankato, Minnesota: that’s thepath that Jeff IsemingerMA’93 has taken to accept hisnew position at Minnesota StateUniversity (MSU). As assistantvice president for integratedmarketing communications, he’lloversee all MSU marketing, PR,publications, and printing serv-ices, as well as KMSU radio. InOxford, Iseminger directed mar-keting and PR efforts at OxfordBrookes University, and prior tothat, was UW-Madison’s assis-tant director of communications.

As the president of OzMosesMedia, a Web-design, business-consulting, digital-video, andphotography company, AriDavid Rosenthal ’93 had the qualities that Milwaukee’sCoalition for Jewish Learningwas seeking — which is how hecame to join its executive com-mittee this summer. As part ofthe Milwaukee Jewish Federation,the coalition promotes Jewisheducation in the community.

Bookmark

“I’ve written a book aboutmy flight around the worldin a small plane,” began a note from CarolAnn Garratt ’77 of Orlando,Florida. Here’s the rest ofthe story: after losing her job in 2001 and losing hermother, Marie Garratt, to athree-year battle with ALS/Lou Gehrig’s disease in2002, CarolAnn flew her single-engine Mooney M20Jaround the world in 2003 —a seven-plus-month journeyof 31,643 nautical miles and226 flying hours (before side trips!).

As only the sixteenthwoman to make such aflight, she decided to capturethe air-venture both on aWeb site (www.kerrlake.com/mgarratt) and in UponSilver Wings: Global Adventurein a Small Plane. Reading itfeels like sitting next toGarratt as she navigates fifteen-hour flights, diag-noses technical troubles,and relishes her freedom.

At the end, she writes,“People all around theworld have been mostopen, friendly, and helpful.They, more than anything,have made this a most posi-tive overall adventure.” Allbook proceeds go to ALSdisease research. Upon Silver Wings is availablethrough the ALS TherapyDevelopment Foundationat (617) 441-7270, oronline at www.als.net/join/donatenow.asp.

WINTER 2004 59

Good luck — and happy collecting! — to Chris Winkler’93, who’s started a new debt-buying and debt-collections firmin Minneapolis called People FirstRecoveries. He’s been in theindustry there for ten years.

Madison educator Nick GlassMA’94 has founded Teaching-Books.net, a new service thatoffers thousands of author programs, book readings, bookguides, and other multimedia lit-erature resources for children andteens. Every Wisconsin residentnow has free access to Teaching-Books through the BadgerLinkonline service (www.BadgerLink.net), part of the state’s Depart-ment of Public Instruction. Teach-ingBooks’ editorial director isVirginia (Jennie) Harrison ’88.

Schuyler Baehman ’97, a former Wisconsin Alumni Student Board member, is nowthe assistant managing editor ofthe Charlotte, North Carolina-based Sports Business Daily, andits managing editor is MarcusDiNitto ’93. The national publica-tion, which Baehman tells us is“the leading daily publication inthe sports industry,” celebrated itstenth anniversary in September.Congratulations!

“Hi from Duluth,” beganChris Earl ’97, but Madison maybe more on his mind. Our fair cityis the setting of Earl’s first novel,Gotcha Down (Jones Books),about a game-fixing schemebetween a local TV sportscasterand an assistant coach in the out-of-control football programat “Wisconsin State.” Earl notesthat the work features charactersfrom throughout Wisconsin,showcasing its “unique regions.”Although his book is fictional,Earl’s in the sports biz for real, asthe sports director at KDLH-TV inDuluth, Minnesota.

In June, both Angela GauntDeProspo ’97 and Johan TaboraMS’03 received master’s of educa-tion degrees from the HarvardGraduate School of Education.

They had hoped to “smuggle insome celebratory cheese curds,”DeProspo writes, but didn’t risk it,due in part to “rampant Michiganalumni.” DeProspo is now teach-ing English/language arts at SouthBoston Harbor Academy, whileTabora is teaching physics atChicago’s Northside College Prep.We also congratulate these otherrecent grads: Michael David FoxJD’79 earned a PhD in drama andtheater through a joint program of UC-Irvine and UC-San Diego;Patrick Soto ’98 was awarded a doctor of osteopathic medicinedegree from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine;and Kimberly Spilker ’01 has anew JD through San Diego’sThomas Jefferson School of Law.

It was delightful to hear fromAngela Smith Wellsmith ’98 ofWaukesha, Wisconsin, a formerWAA intern extraordinaire and aformer president of AssociatedStudents of Madison. Even moredelightful was her news: she’s the co-founder (with her spouse,Pete) and CEO of MarryWell(www.marrywellinc.com), a marriage-preparation and educa-tion company. Through in-stateclasses and coaching worldwide,MarryWell teaches prenuptialcouples what to expect post-banns, and helps already-marrieds to strengthen theirbonds. Wellsmith is also back atthe UW to attend law school.

The John Kerry presidentialcampaign chose Milwaukeekindergarten teacher KellyMcMahon Wheeler ’98 tospeak on behalf of educators at this summer’s DemocraticNational Convention, where shewas an at-large delegate. Shealso had the opportunity to introduce vice-presidential candidate John Edwards at a dinner in Milwaukee in February.

2000s

Adolf Maas DVM’02 hasstarted his own veterinary

practice in the Indianapolis area.What makes it different is itsmobility and focus: he servesthose who find it difficult totravel with their pets, and hespecializes in nontraditional andzoo animals such as ferrets,birds, reptiles, tigers, bears,skunks, and raccoons. Maasgave a keynote address this summer at Purdue’s Conferenceon Societal Issues in AnimalManagement, where he spokeon the medicine and husbandryof reptiles and amphibians.

Wendee Gardner ’04spent nine weeks this summer in the nation’s capital — allexpenses paid — courtesy of the Washington Internships forNative Students program atAmerican University. Participantsserve as interns, take classes,earn academic credit, and buildleadership skills, all with the goalof taking those skills — as wellas a better understanding of

how federal policy is formed —back to their communities.Gardner is a member of theStockbridge-Munsee tribe.

The Miss Madison AreaScholarship Program is on a roll,having nurtured two consecutivestate winners: Molly JeanMcGrath ’04, the new MissWisconsin 2004; and TinaSauerhammer MD’03, MissWisconsin 2003. Fresh from thestate pageant, McGrath and herMiss Madison Area successor,Kelly Jo Stauffacher ’04,greeted fans during a July cele-bration at Memorial Union. Atthe state competition, McGrathwon not only the crown, butalso more than $12,000 inscholarships. Her platform hasbeen voter registration.

Compiled by Paula Wagner Apfelbach ’83,who’s pretty sure that her life’s events areconspiring to teach her a lesson aboutbeing more flexible.

Your Little BadgerCan be the First to Read

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