COAVolume 5 | Number 2 Fall 2009

The College of the Atlantic Magazine

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Cover:

(Anchor) Undo Disaster by Annabel Linquist ’00, 36” x 60,” silkscreen, latex, china marker, graphite and oil stick on canvas, 2010. (See full story on pages 19–21.)

Back Cover:

Skip by Meryl Mekeel ‘09, 36” x 34,” digital photograph, 2009.

H.G.“Skip” Brack was photographed by Mekeel in his Hulls Cove Tool Barn as part of her senior project, Environmental Portrait Photography.

Letter from the Editor

Donna GoldEditor, COA

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Phot

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Bill

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Printed on recycled paper with vegetable-based inks on equipment using 100% wind-generated power.

Back in September I visited Annabel Linquist ’00 in her Manhattan studio at the fringe of the old ware-house district in Chelsea. It was one of those late summer days when it is hard to tell the difference between mugginess and grimy rain, but Annabel’s studio was light and white, with high ceilings that comfortably accommodated her large paintings. As we stood surrounded by images of dark green rain-bow-like arches, hot air balloons and diving masks—human attempts to explore the heights and depths of life—Annabel cocked her head and said, “I had my heart broken…” I wanted to reach out to this young woman, dwarfed by her artwork, by the very painting that is now on the cover of this magazine, but she was still talking. “I realized he had touched some essential part of me, something I needed to understand.” Annabel was not speaking of protecting herself or bury-ing her sorrow—no. With amazing courage and clarity, she was talking about sending those diving bells deep within herself to examine the wounds, knowing that with enough attention she would learn what this relationship and its lesions had to teach her, and could use that knowledge to transform herself—and in the process create objects of wonder and mystery.

A few weeks later, I talked with Emily Troutman ’01. She had recently been in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, among people who have endured a decade of civil war. Upon returning to her home state of Maryland, she found that dear friends had lost their baby and had their house robbed—on the very same night. “I needed to find a way to transform my anger,” she said to me. And so she began writing and thinking, and came to the concept for a video that won her a “Citizen Ambassador” role at the United Nations (page 60).

Underlying this issue of COA are numerous efforts at transformation, large and small, personal and public. The focus is on food systems, on how we produce and distribute and obtain and alter the very subsistence of our lives. If ever there were an area needing transformation, it would be this one. And our alumni—Nell Newman ’87 among them—already have begun. Through Nell’s work, the sacred tents of our supermarket chains, not to mention the coffee urns of the McDon-ald’s franchises in New England, have now found space for organic foods.

It is a cloudy fall night as I sit at my desk in Turrets wondering what it is that al-lows our students to move into the world with eyes so wide open that they see not only what is, but what could be. As I stare out the window, pondering the question, the wind shifts, the clouds break up and the full moon rides high in the sky, rippling its reflection in the tide below.

Is it the ever-changing beauty of this coastal spot in Maine? Is it our students, who arrive already engaged and curious? Or is it the education offered at College of the Atlantic? I imagine it is some sort of synergy of the above—these bright minds active in a place of nature, where the fundamentals of existence are spread out around them. Here, within the beauty and tragedy that is life, these creative, thoughtful students are encouraged to develop the tools they will need to move out into the world, and trained to hone their own clarity, courage and concern so that they can push beyond the expected, personally and professionally, and transform their lives and those around them.

COA Mission:

College of the Atlantic enriches the liberal arts tradition through a distinctive educational philoso-phy—human ecology. A human ecological perspective integrates knowledge from all academic dis-ciplines and from personal experi-ence to investigate—and ultimately improve—the relationships between human beings and our social and natural communities. The human ecological perspective guides all aspects of education, research, ac-tivism, and interactions among the college’s students, faculty, staff, and trustees. The College of the Atlantic community encourages, prepares, and expects students to gain exper-tise, breadth, values, and practical experience necessary to achieve individual fulfillment and to help solve problems that challenge com-munities everywhere.

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COAThe College of the Atlantic MagazineVolume 5 | Number 2 Fall 2009

EDITOR Donna Gold

EDITORIAL GUIDANCE Heather Albert-Knopp’99Richard Borden

Oliver Bruce ’10Dianne Clendaniel

Jennifer HughesDanielle Meier ’08

Matt Shaw ’11Rebecca Hope Woods

EDITORIAL CONSULTANT Bill Carpenter

ALUMNI CONSULTANTS Jill Barlow-Kelley Dianne Clendaniel

DESIGN Rebecca Hope Woods

PRINTING JS McCarthy Printers Augusta, Maine

COA is published twice each year for the College of the Atlantic community. Please send ideas, letters and submissions (we are always looking for short stories, poetry and especially revisits to human ecology es-says) to:

COA MagazineCollege of the Atlantic

105 Eden Street, Bar Harbor, ME 04609

www.coa.edu

features

David Hales President

Sarah Baker Dean of Admission

Lynn Boulger Dean of Development

Ken Cline Associate Dean for Faculty

Andrew Griffiths Administrative Dean

Kenneth Hill Academic Dean

Sarah Luke Associate Dean of Student Life

Sean Todd Associate Dean for Advanced Studies

COA ADMINISTRATION

William G. Foulke, Jr. Chairman

Elizabeth D. Hodder Co-Vice Chair

Casey Mallinckrodt Co-Vice Chair

Leslie C. Brewer Treasurer

Ronald E. Beard Secretary

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Edward McC. Blair Life Trustee

T. A. Cox

Amy Yeager Geier

James M. Gower Life Trustee

George B. E. Hambleton

Samuel M. Hamill, Jr. Life Trustee

Charles E. Hewett

Sherry F. Huber Trustee Emeritus

John N. Kelly Life Trustee

Philip B. Kunhardt III ’77

James A. Lewicki

Susan Storey Lyman Life Trustee

Suzanne Folds McCullagh

Sarah A. McDaniel ’93

Jay McNally ’84

Phyllis Anina Moriarty

Philip S. J. Moriarty

William V. P. Newlin Life Trustee

Elizabeth Nitze

Helen Porter

Cathy L. Ramsdell ’78 Trustee Emeritus

John Reeves Life Trustee

Hamilton Robinson, Jr.

Henry L.P. Schmelzer

Henry D. Sharpe, Jr. Life Trustee

Clyde E. Shorey, Jr. Life Trustee

William N. Thorndike

Cody van Heerden

John Wilmerding Trustee Emeritus

※ ※ ※

Letter from the President 2

COA Beat Articles 3

Notes from a Watson Journey 4 Mackenzie Delta By Brett Ciccotelli ’09

Marine Mammal Conference 6

Waterbird Society: Seabird Habitats 7 on Great Duck Island

Lessons from White Earth 10 By Johannah Berstein ’83

In Search of the Amazing Mr. Forbush 13 By Sean Todd, Steven K. Katona Chair in Marine Sciences

Oral History: Pam Parvin ’93 16

Poetry 18 By Jenny George ’02

Psychic Alchemist: Selections from the Holy Map Series 19 By Annabal Linquist ’00

Fiction: Almost Like Flying 22 Prologue: The Boy Named Davy, Utica, New York: 1943-46 By Marni Berger ’09

Class, Faculty and Community Notes 37

In Memoriam 43

Donor Profile: Environmentalist Horace “Hoddy” Hildreth, Jr. 44

Annual Report FY 2008–2009 45

COA Awards 58

Q&A with Emily Troutman ’01 60

Human Ecology Essay Revisited 61 A Human Ecologist’s Journey By Cory Whitney ’03

Feed the World

Sustainable Farming and Food Systems at COA 25 and Around the World by Heather Albert-Knopp ’99

Digging In: A photo essay of four alumni-owned Maine farms 26 by Matt McInnis ’09

Organics for the Masses: Nell Newman ’87 30

Planting Peace, Bringing it Home 32

Technology’s Trojan Horse 35 Ian Illuminato ’06 researches nanoparticles in our foods

Beech Hill Farm Remembers a Decade 36 by Eliza Worrick, COA intern

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Letter from the President

David Hales, COA President

In September, COA convened Food for Thought, Time for Action, a major interna-tional conference on the sustainability of food systems around the world. In October, COA students and faculty were omnipresent at the international Society for Marine Mammalogy conference, with twenty peer-reviewed presentations. In December, COA will send a fully accredited delegation of two faculty members and fifteen stu-dents to participate in the Copenhagen negotiations on climate change. This winter, our largest contingent ever will participate in our term-long concentrated course of study in the Yucatan peninsula. And, on October 23, one of our alumni, Emily Trout-man ’01, was introduced to the General Assembly of the United Nations as one of five UN Citizen Ambassadors.

Our “home” campus is on an island off the coast of Maine, but more than ever, our “classroom” is the world.

That doesn’t mean that our world doesn’t include our immediate vicinity. Our work with the Bar Harbor Chamber of Com-merce is literally changing the way energy is used on the island. Through our connection with the social entrepreneurship enterprise, Ashoka U, we will be working even more with the Mount Desert Island community to make this corner of Maine as sustainable as possible. Our Geographic Information Systems laboratory remains the reference system for all the governments on the island, and was at the core of the work of Acadia National Park and the National Park Service in ad-dressing the wasteful light pollution that threatens to steal the beauty of the night sky from our children. In the process of balancing our budget in difficult economic times, we still contributed more than $23 million to the economy of Hancock County, funds that ultimately assist a state struggling with the loss of jobs.

It goes without saying that the experiences inherent in a College of the Atlantic education transform the lives of our stu-dents, preparing them for responsible roles in a changing and challenging world. We are also influencing the world in the broadest sense.

We do not have a climate problem, a water problem, a biodiversity problem, a human rights problem. We have a prob-lem.

The challenges that we face are based in the way we humans have organized ourselves to occupy, manipulate and exploit our habitat and our planet. As I have said before, I believe that by the end of this century, we will live in a world that is sustainable, peaceful and just, or we will live in a world that is unstable, violent and insecure. To move with purpose and intention to a more sustainable future, we must understand the relationships among humans and the systems we have cre-ated, as well as understand the nature of change in those systems. We must strategically project the implications of what we learn and develop the skills and wisdom to make effective choices among practical alternatives.

This is the study and practice of human ecology and this is the mission of College of the Atlantic.

Progressive educational institutions—exemplified by College of the Atlantic—will be the crucible in which both individual and societal responses to this challenge are shaped.

In this issue of COA, you’ll be introduced in a very personal way to many of the items I mentioned above, to other ac-tions we’re taking and to the people who are leading them. Keep following their stories at our newly redesigned website: www.coa.edu.

David Hales. Photo by David Camburn.

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COA is a Changemaker CampusAnd we’re not the only ones saying it!By Samantha Haskell ’10 and Donna Gold

College of the At-lantic has been named a “change-maker campus” by Ashoka, the world’s largest net-work of social en-trepreneurs, whose founder, Bill Dray-ton, was called “the

godfather of the social entrepreneur movement” by The New York Times. This global nonprofit fostering social, environmental and economic change recently launched Ashoka U to work with five college campuses a year—including COA.

In October, some thirty students, faculty, staff and local community members spent a weekend brainstorming what COA and Ashoka could focus on during their three-year collaboration to make both Mount Desert Island and COA more sustainable socially, economically, and environmen-tally. By Sunday, Ashoka’s project coordinator Lennon Flowers could hardly contain her delight in the college.

“The fundamental principles shared by many of today’s leading social entrepreneurs—humility, empathy, creativ-ity, and a commitment to a brighter future—are built into the College of the Atlantic lifestyle, appearing in everything from the campus cafeteria to the dorm waste facilities, and especially in the people who call COA home,” she said. “COA students arrive inspired—they are ready to act in a way that is revolutionary, intentioned and impactful.”

Through directed conversations about regional issues, re-sources and long-term visions, the group decided upon three goals:

Better coordinating COA’s many applied sustainabil-ity classes

Solidifying avenues of connection between the COA campus and the MDI community

Spreading Social Economic and Environmental De-velopment (or SEED) to other colleges

Noah Hodgetts ’10 is the COA project manager. He’ll be working with Jay Friedlander, the Sharpe-McNally Chair in Green and Socially Responsible Business, and Kate Macko, Sustainable Business Program administrator, to promote intermediate goals, such as looking into how COA teaches sustainability, inventorying applied learning opportunities on MDI, increasing food systems education on campus and undertaking community agriculture education and support projects.

Ashoka U is in its second year of working with colleges and universities. This year’s other partner schools are Bab-son College, University of Colorado at Boulder, The New School and Tulane University. These schools will also con-nect with last year’s partner universities: Cornell, George Mason, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Maryland. According to Lennon, despite COA being the smallest school Ashoka U has worked with, it had the largest plan-ning meeting of any of the ten schools, and the only one attended by people from the local community.

Among those looking into the three-year plan-ning for COA as a Changemaker Campus are, from left to right, Samantha Haskell ’10, Ashoka U staff member Neela Rajendra, Kate Christian ’10 and Joslyn Richardson ’12.Photo by Bob Karetsky of Ashoka U.

New Carbon Offsets PurchasedCOA funding a truck stop electrification program

College of the Atlantic has been NetZero for carbon emis-sions since 2007. What emissions we can’t reduce or avoid, we offset. This year, COA offsets support truck stop electrification through Carbonfund.org, providing electric-ity to drivers at truck stops to eliminate engine idling.

Long-haul truck drivers must take a ten-hour rest period for every eleven hours on the road. Typically, drivers idle their trucks during those hours; the engines heat or cool the cab and power appliances and electronics. But idling produces carbon dioxide, contributing to climate change. By providing electric outlets for truckers to plug in, the earth is spared the emissions from about a gallon of diesel an hour.

Rajakaruna ReturnsAnd COA plans three more faculty hires

In 2008, concern over the troubled economy caused COA to suspend three of five faculty searches. This fall, a higher-than-expected bottom line has encouraged the college to reopen two of the three suspended searches.

Nishanta Rajakaruna ’94, or Nishi, who five years ago took the late Craig Greene’s position as faculty member in botany—and in 2008 left for a stronger research position—has realized his heart is with COA and its students. He has decided to return and will officially begin in the fall of 2010. COA is also searching for an anthropologist, the Al-lan Stone Chair in Visual Arts and the Chair in Sustainable Food Systems.

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The endless sunshine of seventy Arctic summers and the harsh winds of seventy Arctic winters have darkened and wrin-kled her face and grayed her long dark hair. Seventy years of happiness and hardships are etched into her skin. Yet for her age, her five-foot frame is incredibly agile, her arms still strong, and her hands quick with a knife. On the eastern shore of the Mackenzie Delta, Alice is at home. On a good day her husband John and friends bring six or more large fish to her table every three hours—from early morning until midnight. And with skill acquired from her ancestors, and honed on countless white and coney fish, she cleans and prepares each one for drying. She hangs the fillets on bare wooden beams in the smokehouse, or outside to dry under the unending light of twenty-four hour days.

While she works, Alice laughs easily, smiles often, and talks fondly about the times when dozens of families would come to this spot in the summer to amass dry fish stores for the long winter. Today many of the fish Alice smokes are sold in town, a reality that troubles her. She worries that too few people still have the desire to fish in the bush, or even know how to do it. She remembers the long marches through the snow with dog teams from her childhood—marches where both man and dog were fueled by fish dried during the short Arctic summer. But, she says, times change and these fillets are worth twenty dollars a piece in town, so she chases away any jays, ravens, or weasels that get too close to the drying fish.

When enough fish have been smoked, the weather turns foul, or Alice is ready to return for the weekend’s bingo tourna-ment in town, John packs up the fish, rifles and dogs and helps Alice into the boat. The forty-kilometer trip back to Inuvik, in the Northwest Territories, takes nearly two hours—during which time the boat passes a handful of other bush camps. The camps are built from old school buses, logs, scrapwood, storage trailers, or Hudson Bay Company trading posts. Like many of the twenty-five thousand lakes in the Mackenzie Delta, these camps are perched on banks nearly three meters above the surface of the muddy river. The beaches are covered in large tracks from errant grizzly bears and wolves. Ducks, geese, swans, eagles, loons, gulls, cranes and mosquitoes continually fly overhead.

The delta is Canada’s largest, and the second largest delta in the Arctic. It has been growing along the southern coast of the Arctic Ocean since the retreat of the last continental glacier nearly ten thousand years ago. Its muddy depths are made from the deposition of the eroding Rocky Mountains and the soils of northern Canada. The delta is still growing; thick mud and sediments create and wash away new banks every day. Hidden beneath this mud are natural gas deposits and mammoth tusks.

Since the river rises drastically in spring and fall, there are almost no permanent docks along the banks. In-stead, many of the boats in town are tied to one an-other in nautical knots that end with one boat lashed to a small branch driven lightly into the mud. When Alice’s boat arrives, its berth is no different. After dock-ing, they locate someone with a driver’s license and a few minutes to spare and soon Alice, John, and the week’s bounty of fish are loaded into their truck and on their way home. Unlike the log cabin and canvas tents of the bush, their home in town is a prefabricated aluminum apartment joined to dozens of others and raised on stilts above the permanently frozen soil.

The city of Inuvik sits on the eastern edge of the ex-pansive Mackenzie Delta. It was built in the 1950s when the only other major settlement in the region

Mackenzie DeltaNotes from a Watson JourneyBy Brett Ciccotelli ’09Brett Ciccotelli calls his Watson journey, Change Along the Banks: Explorations in River Deltas and Coastal Wetlands. He is currently in Italy, and plans to continue his pursuit of rivers and their people in Mexico, Bangladesh and Egypt. We will hear from our other two Watson Fellows, Nick Jenei ’09 and Michael Keller ’09, in the spring issue of COA.

Looking west over the delta. The East Channel of the Mackenzie Riv-er is visible in the bottom left corner. The haze over the delta is from large fires in the nearby Yukon Territory. All photos taken by Brett Ciccotelli ’09.

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was constantly threatened with flooding. Its construction was also fueled by the need for a permanent settlement to act as a gateway to the Arctic’s rich mineral and petrol resources and a physical mark of Canadian sovereignty above the Arctic Circle.

When not in camp eating fresh fish and cari-bou, much of Alice and John’s food, like most in Inuvik, comes frozen, canned, processed, overripe, over-priced and from far to the south, symptoms of the communities’ remote-ness and of the cultural assimilation policies of the not-so-distant past: policies that forced southern culture, religion and behavior on the northern aboriginals. Today there are move-ments afoot to help the residents of Inuvik en-joy a fresh and healthier diet. Nearly ten years ago, an indoor community garden opened in the town’s old hockey rink. It provides plots for citizens to take advantage of endless summer days to grow their own produce. Meanwhile nonprofit groups advocate for healthy northern diets through outreach and education.

Alice’s relationship to her drinking water is also different in town. In the bush John obtains fresh drinking water directly from nearby lakes; in town it must pass from the tap through a water filter to remove some of the abundant heavy metals that come north with other industrial air pollutants. The proximity of the town’s waste water treatment, labeled on maps as the “sewage lagoon,” reinforces the need for personal water treatment.

Inuvik is also troubled by an overabundance of youth gangs that roam the town’s few streets—streets that, at least in sum-mer, are home to a few dozen friendly homeless residents struggling with drug and alcohol abuse. And yet, Inuvik is still a community with incredible pride and generosity. It sits in a region familiar with change and challenges—defined by sea-sonal, rather than daily sunsets and sunrises, blistering winters and blinding summers, abundance and scarcity. With glob-al climate change and new pressures for its mineral and fuel resources, the town and delta have an uncertain future. The millions of migrating waterfowl, hundreds of fish species, scores of marine mammals, moose, wolves, bears, caribou herds and uncountable insects that depend on the delta need to be recognized as resources more valuable than the gas and oil locked beneath it; and the thousands of northern people and their communities around the delta and Arctic coast need to be recognized and respected as more than tools for national sovereignty.

Alice hard at work preparing fillets and hanging them to dry.

On one of the many lakes scattered in the delta on a trip for drinking water.

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At the 2009 Biennial Conference on the Biology of Ma-rine Mammals in October—the quintessential professional gathering on marine mammals worldwide with 2,500 at-tendees—twenty presentations came from COA (ten from research conducted at the Edward McC. Blair Mount Des-ert Rock Research Station). While it might be typical for a large-sized institution to contribute five or ten abstracts, COA’s level of scientific productivity by faculty, alumni, staff and students is downright extraordinary.

Even more exceptional is that eight of these presentations come from current students or recent graduates—and six are senior authors—two as first-year students!

With hours spent underwater and traveling great distances, whales are a hard study. Thanks, however, to photographic identifications in Allied Whale’s North Atlantic Humpback Whale Catalog, it’s possible to follow individual whales year after year. As the whales mate and calve, researchers can study entire families, piecing together social structure, habits and travels, thereby aiding conservation.

Three COA student papers focused on migrations:

While most humpbacks that breed in the West Indies migrate to the North Atlantic to feed, some go to Ice-land. Or do they? As a first-year student, Virginia Brooks ’12 looked into the migrations of humpbacks feeding off Iceland to see if they’re more likely to breed in the Cape Verde Islands or the West Indies.

Adrianna Beaudette ’11 looked into why whales stop off in Bermuda, midway in their migration from the Gulf of Maine to the West Indies.

Kathryn Scurci ’11 studied the whales of Labrador using the photographic catalog. She found thirty-seven indi-vidual whales that had been consistently seen in Labra-dor—indicating that these whales tend to be quite loyal to their feeding grounds.

Two other papers involved senior project investigations into whale entanglements with fishing gear, generating strong interest at the conference from federal and state managers, according to Sean Todd, Director of Allied Whale and the Steven K. Katona Chair in Marine Sciences:

While most research focuses on deadly entanglements, Laura Howes ’09 studied photographic evidence of en-tanglement scars on living whales in the Gulf of Maine and Greenland (with a much smaller lobster fishery), to see how frequently they may be caught in fishing gear. Concludes Howes, “humpback whales may be becom-ing entangled in gear far more than is considered sustain-able.”

Dominique Walk ’09 used GIS to map whale entangle-ment risks as a way of finding a holistic approach to the management of whales and fisheries, mapping both lob-ster gear positions and concurrent sightings of whales.

So who are these devoted researchers? Brooks, Scurci, Be-audette, Walk, Howes and Colby Moore, MPhil ’09 are the senior authors who did their work while at COA. Eliza-beth Morrell ’12, Solomon Spigel ’12 and Jacqueline Bort, MPhil ’11 are contributing authors to other papers. Sherri Eldridge, a Hancock County special student, received hon-orable mention in the “most innovative study” award for examining connections between whale and elephant sen-sory perception, based on her final project for Todd’s 2008 Marine Mammals and Sound class.

Also presenting were faculty researchers Sean Todd and Chris Petersen, faculty member in biology; Allied Whale researchers Judy Allen and Rosemary Seton; and many alumni: Jessica Damon ’99, Dan DenDanto ’91, Julianne Kearney ’06, Christine Mahaffey, MPhil ’06, Robin Sewall ’06, Toby Stephenson ’98, Peter Stevick ’81, Greg Stone ’82 and Courtney Vashro ’99. Additionally, Steve Katona, former COA president and Allied Whale founder, was sin-gled out as an early force behind international collabora-tion, and Allen, now COA registrar, and Stevick ’81 were mentioned as outstanding organizers and researchers. Also present were members of Todd’s Marine Mammals class.

Todd reported that many of his colleagues commented on how progressive COA was in sending students to a profes-sional conference. One esteemed scientist was heard to say something along the lines of, “How come it’s always COA that comes up with these great ideas?”

Extraordinary COA Presence at Marine Mammal Conference

Over forty College of the Atlantic students, alumni, staff and faculty attended the 18th Biennial Conference of the Biology of Marine Mammals in Quebec City in October 2009. A portion of that group is photographed here. Photo by Paula Olson.

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It’s Getting Crowded in Here!Density, nesting and other investigations into seabird habitats on Great Duck Island

Each summer, with guidance from John Anderson, the Wil-liam H. Drury, Jr. Chair in Evolution, Ecology and Natural History, a group of students head about a dozen miles over the Atlantic Ocean to Great Duck Island. For six weeks they live in an old light keeper’s house, now the Alice Eno Research Station, with the hills of Mount Desert Island as a distant backdrop. Each student develops a research top-ic, a thesis, and a strategy to prove the thesis. Frequently, the work is strong enough to be accepted by the annual Waterbird Society Meetings. This year, Anderson and four students will be presenting at the meetings; two of them, Anna Perry ’10, a Goldwater Scholar, and Gregory Smith ’10, received travel awards to attend.

Studying the nesting habits of burrowing seabirds can be frustrating. Frequently, the burrows seem occupied—but are not, threatening to skew research statistics. Anna Perry ’10 studied the spatial distribution of occupied Leach’s storm petrel burrows on Great Duck, the largest petrel colony in the eastern United States. By listening for call responses, using infrared video and other techniques, she determined which burrows were occupied—and found that just because one burrow was being used, it didn’t mean its neighbor was. Yet location might be a reasonable predic-tor, because the highest burrow occupancy rates occurred along the forest edge. With this work, Perry was able to enhance the protocols used by future census takers.

Renee McManus ’12 looked into the nesting density of black guillemots to see whether density impacts behavior. She thought density would breed relaxation. By observing the nests daily, alternating between high and low density areas, she found that while density made a significant dif-ference, her thesis got it wrong. Much like in human cit-ies, the higher the density, the more the birds fought over territory.

Aspen Reese (’12) examined the nesting habits of herring gulls. Like the great black-backed gulls, herring gulls con-centrate their nests in vegetated meadows and shoreline granite jumbles, with nearly two-thirds preferring rocks. Wondering why, she looked into three possible variables: the survival rate of chicks, territoriality, and the presence of great black-backed gulls. She found that the chicks nest-ing on the rocks had a much higher rate of survival, and that the presence of black-backed gulls didn’t seem to mat-ter. By going over records from the past decade, she also found that gulls do prefer boulders, possibly for the protec-tion they offer from bald eagles and other predators.

The high density of nests and the fidelity with which these seabirds return to the same area over their long lives makes them optimum carriers of parasites. Gregory Smith ’10 researched the parasitic impact on herring and great black-backed gull nestlings. He found that the chicks in the vegetated areas were more likely to have mites than those nesting on rocks. While he couldn’t make a clear connec-tion between mite infestation and survival, he did find that the ten-day survival rate of chicks raised on the rocks was higher than those raised in the vegetation.

Anderson’s paper, co-authored with Reese, questions the accepted history of bird populations in the Gulf of Maine. Most conservationists assume, they write, that “prior to intensive hunting and egging by the descendants of Euro-pean colonists in the nineteenth century, the region sup-ported an extensive and highly diverse avifauna.” To re-store this diversity, conservationists have focused on gull control. Yet Anderson and Reese are finding that other predators—bald eagles and American mink—are devas-tating seabird colonies. They suggest that, rather than be-ing the vast productive seabird paradise depicted in some discussions, significant portions of the Gulf of Maine may have been relatively free of any breeding seabirds prior to European intervention, and the densely populated is-lands that had been exploited by the millinery trade were the unforeseen product of predator control and land-use practices by settlers. The two conclude that a deeper look into the historical record might indicate a more complex conservation management strategy.

Herring and black-backed gulls with their chicks on Great Duck Island. Photo by John Rivers.

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JulyAcademics: Princeton Review’s Best 371 Colleges:

#3 in nation for “Most Politically Active Students”

#11 in nation for “Class Discussions Encouraged”

Only about 15 percent of four-year colleges in the United States and two Canadian colleges have been chosen for the 2010 volume. COA is also noted for its strong financial aid, great food and lack of competitive athletics—though it might be one of the few schools in the nation where students frequently finish out the day with a game of cricket. The narrative offers these additional comments: “Students eagerly sing the praises of their professors: ‘an eclectic and brilliant group of people’ who are ‘extremely accessible.’”

Sustainability: Princeton Review’s Best 371 Colleges: One of only nine colleges on the Green Honor Roll for the second year in a row.

Sierra Magazine: #5 in nation on its list of “Cool Schools.” They write: “At Maine’s College of the Atlantic conserving energy is simply an unobtrusive part of campus life.”

AugustAcademics: US News and World Reports:

#3 in nation for global diversity

#6 in nation for small classes

The National Survey of Student Engagement, or NSSE: Again, COA stands with the top 10 percent of the 643 participating colleges and universities (among them Bennington, Bryn Mawr, Evergreen, Northeastern, Pepperdine, Simon’s Rock and Tufts). This survey is considered to be the most comprehensive assessment of effective practices in higher education.

Ashoka, the world’s largest network of social entrepreneurs, chooses COA as one of five “changemaker campuses,” this in its second year of working with colleges and universities.

OctOberAcademics: The New England Board of Higher Education awards COA its Robert J. McKenna Award for Program

Excellence, praising COA’s major in human ecology. “This approach challenges traditional attitudes and practices and encourages students to think and act comprehensively on a daily basis,” writes Michael Thomas, president and CEO of NEBHE.

Sustainability: Sustainable Endowments Institute releases its College Sustainability Report Card, giving COA its highest designation: Overall College Sustainability Leader, one of twenty-six in the US and Canada. COA is the only college in Maine to achieve this status.

Nearly every month, College of the Atlantic receives a new national accolade. Yes, we’re being noticed for our deep concern with sustainability, but our unique academic approach gets plenty of attention, as you can see...

Keep up!it’s very hArd tO

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More than 180 COA community members, farmers, fishermen and other practitioners from as close as Bar Harbor and as far away as Germany, Mexico, Venezuela and Alaska converged in early October for the college’s first Food for Thought, Time for Action conference, funded by the Partridge Foundation. With the aim of envisioning more sustainable food, farm-ing and fisheries for the twenty-first century, speakers and discussions covered a range of topics including local to inter-national policy, current Maine issues, community-based food marketing and distribution, sustainable nutrition, and food sovereignty. Keynote speakers Raj Patel (author of Stuffed and Starved) and Marion Nestle (NYU professor and author of Food Politics and What to Eat) gave provocative lectures that painted a dynamic and alternately troubling and hopeful pic-ture of the current food system, from food industry nutrition labeling to the World Bank’s structural adjustment policies. COA’s transatlantic partners from the University of Kassel in Germany and the Organic Research Centre in the United Kingdom shared invaluable perspectives from overseas, and Maine Farmland Trust curated a Food for Thought, Time for Action art exhibit in COA’s Ethel H. Blum Gallery. Participants also attended hands-on workshops including sampling heir-loom apple varieties at Beech Hill Farm, exploring year-round growing at Four Season Farm owned by former trustee Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch, and learning meat prepara-tion techniques with chef Cassady Pappas from Havana, one of the restaurants owned by Michael Boland ’94. Presenters and participants left the conference with new connections, ideas for action in different arenas, and visions of more sus-tainable and democratic food systems. A second conference is being planned for 2010. ~Heather Albert-Knopp ’99

COA HOsts sustAinAble FOOd systems COnFerenCestAy tuned FOr 2010 COnFerenCe

tHe rOCk—COA Will rebuild

Abe Noe-Hays ’00 (center, tan jacket) offers his workshop, Com-post: What goes around, comes around. Behind him are Stacie Brimmage ’08, Christiaan Van Heerden ’09, Leland Moore ’10, sustainability consultant Craig Ten Broeck and Juan Olmedo ’12. Photo copyright Noreen Hogan ’91.

College of the Atlantic’s Edward McC. Blair Marine Research Station on Mount Desert Rock sits twenty-five miles out to sea, making it the point of land farthest east in the nation. It has been a key scientific station for COA and Allied Whale researchers, as well as for numerous scientists seeking to understand offshore life within the Gulf of Maine.

In August 2008, the boathouse was rebuilt. One year later, on August 23, 2009, storm surges from Hurricane Bill swept onto the island, destroying the boathouse and the ground floor of a nearby shed containing a workshop and classroom. The six-foot surge also pushed through the keeper’s house, though that damage is not structural. Fortunately, all scientists and students had been evacuated and the seventy-foot lighthouse, with its four-feet-thick walls, still stands. COA is now raising funds for reconstruction.

Before and After Top row left to right: View of research station before Hur-ricane Bill and two images showing the “bite“ the hurricane took out of the generator shed, which may have protected the light keeper’s house. Bottom row left to right: Boathouse before Bill and afterward. A crew composed of scientists deeply con-nected to Allied Whale went out to survey the damage and clean what they could. Here they are in what had been the boathouse: Toby Ste-phenson ’98, Courtney Vashro ’99, Dan DenDanto ’91, Scott Swann ’86, MPhil ’95, faculty member Sean Todd, Yoko Bowen ’10 and Peter Stevick ’81. Photos courtesy of Allied Whale.

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Seen from a helicopter hovering above, one can im-mediately understand why the Inuit refer to Green-land as Kalaallit Nunaat, or White Earth. On Green-land’s west coast, two hundred and fifty kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, the Ilulissat Glacier seems untouched and indeed untouchable by humans. But the map—and one’s eyes—tells only half the story. The two-million-year-old Greenland icecap, more than two kilometers thick and covering 80 percent of the island, is melting at a dangerous pace. The visuals are stunning. The fifty-six kilometer Ilulissat Icefjord, a United Nations World Heritage Site, is filled with enormous craggy bergs, some towering over one hundred meters high. Occasional pools of emerald-blue water are a reminder that the floating ice pack abounds with marine resources that live in a complex but delicate food web.

The landscape has an eerily primordial, al-most prehistoric feel-ing. As the helicopter descends, I feel like I have landed directly from the moon to the sea floor. It might have been the bitter cold, but many of us aboard are moved to tears. And yet the reality is so paradoxical.

Ilulissat—like portions of the North and South poles—is among the most precarious of climate hot spots on the planet, warming at nearly twice the global average rate. In these regions, the effects of exponentially ris-ing greenhouse gas emissions are concentrated in out-sized proportions, like the icebergs that thunder daily from the Ilulissat Glacier through the Icefjord on their way to Disko Bay. The noise itself serves as a contin-

ual climate change alarm in the ears of thousands of climate scientists around the world.

Unfortunately, the Greenland ice sheet is not on the agenda of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. And since the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, carbon emissions have actually accelerated from 1.3 percent per year in the 1990s, to a staggering 3.3 percent per year from 2000 to 2006.

This trajectory has propelled humanity into the worst-case scenario envisioned by the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. For many key parameters (global mean surface temperature, sea-level rise, ocean and ice sheet dynamics), the climate system has moved beyond patterns of natural variabil-ity. Many of the world’s leading atmospheric scientists now caution that key impacts of global warming, such

as sea level rise and loss of summer Arctic sea ice, are happening much sooner and more severely than scientists had estimated only a few years ago.

Since we are nowhere near properly positioned to transition to a global, carbon-free energy path, there is a significant possibility that many of these trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts. Yet current climate ne-gotiations are being carried out on the basis of out-dated climate science. The key challenge is to ensure that the ever-widening gulf between science and poli-tics is bridged decisively. Weaker targets for the year 2020 increase the risk of crossing irreversible tipping points. This will make the task of meeting 2050 targets not only impossible, but ultimately a moot exercise in reckless number crunching.

During our boat trip to the old coastal village Oqaat-sut in western Greenland, I learn that the Inuit of the region believe that their cosmos was ruled by no one; and that they do not believe in the concept of domin-ion over nature. They believe that the earth is alive and that humans are connected with the earth’s sys-tem in a harmonious relationship, one that must be continually renewed and revered, as anirniq—spirit and soul—is present in all beings, both sentient and non-sentient. This underpins their solemn moral duty to respect all life forms. Yet now, for the first time in their social history, the Inuit’s cosmos is ruled by those—white men—whose profligate excesses have

I ponder what the Kyoto Protocol would have looked like had it been drafted by a group of Inuit elders.

Lessons from White Earth By Johannah Bernstein ’83

“That sea water tasted absolutely alive and sweet, like the best oyster you can imagine,” notes the photographer.

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resulted in dangerous interference with the global cli-mate system and with the ecosystem upon which the Inuit livelihood depends.

Frozen ice is the lifeblood of the Inuit. They have dem-onstrated a remarkable ability to live in harmony with a hostile physical environment. But the increasingly un-reliable ice conditions are affecting the Inuit’s capacity to hunt for food and to sustain their traditional liveli-hoods.

I ponder what the Kyoto Protocol would have looked like had it been drafted by a group of Inuit elders.

Just as we need to elevate the new climate science, so too must we draw deep from the ancient wisdom of the Inuit. But this requires a radically different form of political leadership, one that is based on an ability and willingness to balance competing interests in a way that respects planetary boundaries and which bridges new science with ancient wisdom. Instead, the international community is only negotiating that which is politically viable as opposed to what nature requires and what new science informs. Meanwhile the Greenland ice sheet may collapse within a century.

Forging a new climate deal grounded in the most au-thoritative science and principles of equity will require deeper modes of cooperation and new forms of innova-tion and ingenuity. How ironic that we have come so

close to answering the question of whether we humans are alone in the universe, but are moving so very far from being able to sustain the conditions necessary for actually keeping our species alive.

We need a new collective mindset, a deep and radical change of soul and heart, and perhaps a new mental map; one that repositions humanity in a different rela-tionship with the greater earth community, and which recognises that in the midst of this magnificent diversity of life forms, there is common destiny.

Johannah Bernstein is an international environmental lawyer with law degrees from Oxford University and the Osgoode Hall Law School in Canada. She advises governments, international organizations, NGOs and

the private sector on global sustainability issues.

All images on these pages are of Disko Bay in Greenland, by photographer Rick Amado (r.l.amado@gmail.com). Of the photo with Johannah Bernstein left, he writes, “Did Johannah tell you we ate the ‘ice baby?’ Wa-ter thousands of years old, what a trip. It was excellent: straight, clean and uncomplicated. A bit ‘dry’ even. Jo and I also went for a swim, OK a dip.”

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Copenhagen’s COA DelegationUNFCCC meetings include official COA delegation + one official delegate

When the decisive United Nations Framework Con-vention on Climate Change opens in Copenhagen this December, COA will be there—with its own delega-tion. Attending will be at least fifteen students—from Finland, New Zealand, Peru, St. Lucia and the United States—along with faculty members Ken Cline (en-vironmental law) and Doreen Stabinsky (international relations). The group will be doing what they can to energize youth participation and learn about interna-tional negotiations.

The commitment period for the current UN treaty on climate change, commonly known as the Kyoto Proto-col, is ending. It is likely that the agreement signed in Copenhagen will guide climate change action made by nations around the world for the coming decade—which is why the COA students find it essential to be present. The COA group may well be the most pre-pared of all youths attending the convention. They’ve been studying the issues since January, alerting each

other daily to articles and position papers. This fall, they are each taking two classes directly related to the convention: The Road to Copenhagen which they designed with Stabinsky, and Cline’s Advanced International Environmental Law. This commitment is a trend: COA students have been at every one of the past five climate change meetings.

While most of the students will be part of a massive global youth network, Neil Oculi ’11 of St. Lucia (more on page 32) will be one of the lobbied. He will be a voting participant as a member of his nation’s official delegation.

What motivates them?

The delegation, in part. Top from left: Lindsay Britton ’11, Richard Van Kampen ’12, Lauren Nutter ’10, Emily Postman ’12, Taj Schottland ’10, Noah Hodgetts ’10, Geena Berry ’10. Bottom: Juan Soriano ’10, Annick Bickson ’12, Neil Oculi ’11, Oliver Bruce ’10, Brooke Welty ’11, Samuli Sinisalo ’12, faculty member Ken Cline. Photo by Donna Gold.

“I spent my summers visiting my grandmother in the high-lands of the Huaylas Valley. The Andes have some of the most beautiful snowcapped mountains in South America. But every time I visit, I witness the consequences of en-vironmental degradation. Not only are the glaciers melt-ing but also the fruits from my grandma’s orchard are not the same because an abnormal proliferation of mosquitoes is damaging crops and forcing farmers to use pesticides. The frogs that once fed on the mosquitoes disappeared a few years ago; their extinction has been attributed to the shortening of hibernation periods as a result of a rise in temperature.”

Juan Soriano ’10, Lima, Peru

“The environment is one of the most demanding challeng-es my generation will face. That is why the presence of youth in the conference is so crucial; it is our generation and the ones after us who face the consequences of deci-sions made now. Youth have to step up to the challenge, show that we care and push the agenda of sustainable de-velopment.”

Samuli Sinisalo ’12, Tampere, Finland

“It does no good to sit on the sidelines and hope that the United States’ position on climate change is a good one. I plan on reminding those in power that their decisions will have long and irreversible effects on generations to come.”

Taj Schottland ’10, Putney, Vermont

This is one of the most monumental global environmental meetings to date. As an activist, I must bear witness to and learn from the event. Besides, the decision-makers need to understand that we, as students, need a strong treaty. We are among the ones who will inherit this world from those making decisions and we would like to have a say at this pivotal meeting.”

Brooke Welty ’11, Portland, Maine

“Our generation must be given a voice, because the deci-sions we make today will shape tomorrow’s world. I can’t imagine placing my energy elsewhere this December.”

Lauren Nutter ’10, Uxbridge, Massachusetts

“I am going so I will be able to say to my grandkids that I put up a front and was there.”

Oliver Bruce ’10, Rotorua, New Zealand

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In Search of the Amazing Mr. ForbushBy Sean Todd, Steven K. Katona Chair in Marine Sciences

Sometime back in the 1970s, I saw a film called The Amaz-ing Mr. Forbush, starring a young John Hurt and Hayley Mills. The hero, a flamboyant and lackadaisical graduate student, reluctantly travels to Antarctica at the behest of his graduate advisor to census penguins. In this portrayal of Isolated Human Battling Against the Elements, Hurt goes slowly mad and eventually believes himself King of the Rookery, addressing his flock daily and even declaring war upon the predatory Skuas. I knew there and then, at the tender age of ten, in front of my black and white television, that Antarctica was where I needed to go, a place with which I identified.

Fast forward thirty-five years or so. I stand in a stark, mono-chromatic environment, my visibility varying from five to fifty feet within the space of seconds. I am on Half Moon Island, in Antarctica. It is the middle of the Austral sum-mer. A blizzard has arisen with almost no warning and instantaneous fury. The wind, now a sustained forty knots, blows snow with such force that each flake feels like a nail driven into my cheeks. Around me, two-hundred-pound Antarctic fur seals tuck down for the storm, their mournful howls sounding like ghosts within the violent noise of the gale. Soon, the blanketing snow makes it difficult to tell the recumbent seals from rocks. Behind me, a blue whale jawbone over twenty feet long is draped casually over the landscape, a remnant of leviathans the size of which we haven’t seen on this planet for a century—the direct result of decades of whaling. Ahead, at ten-yard intervals, is a slow, undulating line of flags that I have set to help me and the dozen suffering ecotourists I am leading find our way

back to the landing site. We move from flag to flag, staying close, leaving no stragglers, mindful of the fur seals.

We are not actually in any danger. I have a compass, GPS and radio connected to my colleagues who are never farther away than half a mile or so. Our clothing, far evolved from the days of Ernest Shackleton or Otto Nordenskjöld, keeps us basically warm but the abundant layers hinder rapid movement. At the landing site is all the survival gear we could need. There is even a nearby research station somewhere through that blizzard melee. Morale is high. Antarctica is throwing herself at us, though perhaps at only a tenth of the force she could use during the polar winter, and we persist.

We make it back to the landing site to find the calm seas whipped into an aggressive, soaking chop. After all the passengers are safely on our mother ship, the MV Minerva, I launch myself into the Zodiac, waves crashing violently over her stern. We bounce and toss our way back to the larger vessel. The captain has turned the ship to offer some lee from the storm; even so, the waves at the gantry are six to eight feet high, which means our landing platform oscillates between four feet above and four feet below us every five seconds or so. One by one we jump to safety. Two of us remain in the Zodiac to prevent it from flipping

Sean Todd uses a sextant to measure the size of a tabular iceberg, over six miles long. Photo by Chris Srigley. All other photos by Sean Todd.

Clockwise from left: A pair of gentoo penguin chicks in Paradise Bay, a chinstrap penguin, an Adelie penguin and a king penguin.

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in the wind as it is hoisted to the deck. By the time I reach the bridge the winds have escalated to hurricane force, and yet there is the congratulatory air of a team that has pulled off a difficult landing. Exhausted and relieved, I return to my cabin to marvel at how a human ecologist came to be here.

This is my third season in Antarctica, a luxury afforded by my sabbatical. I am part of an expedition team aboard an ecotourism vessel. For the cost of a couple of lectures and Zodiac driving skills, I have free board and passage to study the southern humpback whales that come here to feed every summer.

There is a density of life here, despite the hostility of the environment to human physiology. This density attracted the first whalers and sealers to come south, and now justi-fies my presence here. By photographing and identifying individual humpback whales, I can contribute to the pro-cess of assessing the recovering population after a hundred years of whaling. Arguably, it was the drive to exploit these populations as resources that motivated countries to spon-sor the explorers of the so-called heroic age. There was some nationalistic pride too, but there’s little doubt that

the driving force was the profit motive. With me aboard, the ship has gained more than a biologist; it also has a hu-man ecologist. Only within human ecology can one fully appreciate the tension of landscape, natural history, hu-man history, politics, governance, resource exploitation, human spirit, and sheer audacity that resides in Antarctica; manipulatively, I use my opportunities as a lecturer aboard Minerva to stress that lesson to my captive audience!

Shortly after the storm I sit on a beach on South Georgia, a sub-Antarctic island where the great whales were slaugh-tered by the hundred thousands back in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Across the bay lies the aban-doned community of Grytviken, probably the largest whal-ing station on South Georgia. These stations that thrived in the 1920s are now ghost towns. Indeed, they feel haunt-ed. By one interpretation, whalers were mass murderers, slaughtering stocks to the point of extinction. In another view, they are heroes, pitting themselves against the ulti-mate challenge of elements and leviathan. It is difficult for me to resolve these two views.

Within twenty feet of me lies a huddled trio of massive southern elephant seals, each maybe ten feet long. Ahead is a small group of king penguins. They appear unaware of me, or at least unconcerned by my presence. The biologist in me marvels that I can be in such close proximity to these animals, so much in their environment. Half a day later I go to St. Andrews Bay, one of the largest king penguin colonies in the world; later I sit in my Zodiac breathing in the foul halitosis of a ten-foot leopard seal, an animal quite capable of taking my own life, but for now much more in-terested in the penguin he is inhaling for lunch. The sights, sounds and stenches of these moments are overwhelming, the experiences stirring. As a biologist I am at a loss to explain my inspiration. As a human ecologist, I am better equipped to understand that connection.

To study Antarctica effectively one has to turn to human ecology. Nowhere is one’s ecological footprint so appar-ent. The governance of Antarctica is a marvelous experi-ment that has lasted over fifty years—an entire continent essentially run by committee. Environmental concerns, not economical, are prime considerations. The politics be-tween the countries that are members of the committee are fascinating, convoluted and sometimes downright sinister. It is here that you see the definitive and observable effects of climate change—even in the eight years that I have been visiting this place, I see evidence of glacial retreat. Finally, there is the paradox of life (both human and “other”) in such a harsh climate. I am only here in the relatively mild summer, and yet there have been times when I have been challenged close to my own limits. I would describe those moments as extremely rewarding—even, perhaps, fun. One can only marvel at the persistence of human spirit in the story of Antarctica; that self-sacrificing, undaunted drive of the early explorers. What inspired Capt. Lawrence Oates to sacrifice himself to a storm so his starved team-

Once the whales were rendered down, whalers would leave the bones on the beach. Because there is no significant bacterial ac-tivity due to the cold, these bones have lasted over ninety years.

The ecological equivalent of a Serengeti lion, this eleven-foot leopard seal scans the water for such easy prey as a penguin.

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mates could eat his food? How did Shackleton get his entire stranded team back safely? What happens to one’s mind when one is stuck in the middle of a frozen ocean with no hope of rescue? The story of Antarctic exploration is a testament to everything that is good—and in the case of exploitation, bad—about being human. If it is within us as a species to answer these personal challenges, then surely we can muster the courage and will to save the world in crisis today.

I was originally attracted to Antarctica by the juxtaposition of brutal environment and persistence of life. Nowhere have I seen such stark beauty and stunning landscape. One quickly exhausts oneself of superlatives. Part of Ant-arctica’s draw is its fantastic and prolific fauna. Yet also I find myself inspired to write about Antarctica entirely out-side the realm of science. As I move further away from my discipline-based training, I move closer towards the com-fort of human ecology. Within that framework, I choose to end this account not with science, but a verse from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, used by Sir Ralph Vaughan Williams in his account of Scott’s doomed expe-dition to the South Pole, Sinfonia Antarctica. In no better way can one place the human into Antarctica.

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;To love, and bear; to hope till Hope createsFrom its own wreck the thing it contemplates;Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;This, like thy glory, Titan, is to beGood, great and joyous, beautiful and free;This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

Above: The king penguin colony at St. Andrews. Below right: Photo-identifying Southern Ocean humpback whales (inset: A humpback whale calf spy-hops to investigate the author’s boat. Even thought this is only the calf’s first year of life, its snout is already heavily parasitized.).

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Oral HistoryPam Parvin ’93Pam Parvin, now a counselor in Bar Harbor, was the heart and soul of Take-A-Break for twenty years. She is often thought of as COA’s first cook, but actually she was the third, coming on when six weeks into the second year, cook #2 quit. Pam was twenty-three at the time, a single mother with a young child. And while at first she worked with fellow cook Jerry Smith, covering breakfast, lunch and dinner between them (and sharing child care as well), when he moved on after three years, she was on her own. Eventually, she began taking classes at COA, graduating after thirteen years. A portion of our talk follows.

Donna Gold: So, COA was vegetarian at the time, was that what you were asked to do?

Pam Parvin: I was a vegetarian and so it was Frances Moore Lappé and Diet for a Small Planet and all that. Everybody was pretty interested in being low on the food chain. I’m pretty sure it was an All College Meeting decision. I can’t imagine getting away with making any kind of a unilateral decision at COA.

DG: Did you try to be organic?

PP: That was not so big a deal then. We did have a kitchen garden at the college, way, way before there was a Beech Hill Farm. I remember starting to hire work-study students and figuring out what to plant. The gardens at school were organic, but you couldn’t buy all-organic food.

DG: Where did you have to go to get your food?

PP: We did a lot of sourcing ourselves. We would go buy frozen blueberries from somebody. We would go buy hon-ey from somebody. Then we started the food co-op. For a time, Jerry and I—and this got traded off—would drive to Boston and go to Chelsea market and buy food. We were young and we thought that was a fun thing to do—driving through downtown Boston in a twenty-foot truck.

DG: And was the food always homemade?

PP: It was my style. My mother was a fabulous cook. I learned to cook when I was a little, tiny kid. And I was into whole wheat and honey and whatever. We made our own yogurt and our own bread and we made pancakes and there would be muffins and stuff all day. You could have as much as you wanted. Dinner was family style.

DG: Early students remember that so fondly. Bringing the big pots to the table and everybody just digging in. Did you sit with them?

PP: Yes, usually. And kids would come in and say, “Can I make myself hot chocolate?” or “Can I have tea?” or “Can I sit in here?” There were a lot of people feeling like they

were free to come into the kitchen to talk or get some-thing: “I wasn’t here at lunchtime, can I make myself a sandwich?” I provided a pretty warm and friendly atmo-sphere, so people were in and out all the time.

DG: Did you talk to the students about their classes?

PP: Yes. I ended up doing a lot of informal advising before there was an advising system. I think I’m a good nurturer and people would come in and be unsure about things and need somebody to talk to, just the way they would talk to other people at school. COA was very open to talk-ing about these things because it wasn’t cemented: people were really searching. You were supposed to be self-di-rected and when you have to be self-directed you flounder a little. That’s a good thing because you learn a lot. So, people did a lot of talking to each other and other people, trying to get some bearings.

…I think we all felt responsible for each other. And people got to know each other pretty well, because All College Meeting could take all day—or half a day, anyway. Were we going to have recycled toilet paper or not? Those things went on for years. And they had to be reinvented because they were a part of the education. There could be a new crop of students who felt that something had to be different, and we would talk about it all over again. That was part of people’s growing up, to have a voice and an opinion.

DG: You were on personnel committee, right?

PP: I was. I co-chaired it for a while. I loved being on it—it was the hardest thing I think I ever did in my whole life—having to gather everybody’s opinion and having to talk to people about their shortcomings. And lots of decisions that were made in personnel were tough.

DG: Do you think the committee system is worth the en-ergy it takes?

PP: I do. I really do. I was on admission committee; I was on the compensation committee. I didn’t have a BA yet, but that didn’t matter to people. COA was more or less egalitarian. If you were good at something people recog-

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nized that and you got a lot of credit for it. They thought I was a good mentor. I helped start the advising system, which I loved. For ten years, from like ’81 to ’91, I got this little, tiny stipend to be advising coordinator.

Whatever you were willing to volunteer to do, people would say, “OK, you can do that.” So, you could get a tremendous amount of experience because people trusted you and if you were willing to fledge or flap your wings, people would say, “OK, we’ll support you while you do that.” You couldn’t ask for a better place to kind of grow up. I felt very grateful.

DG: It does seem like committees are part of the educa-tion—learning how to think about systems.

PP: I think so. Look how successful COA grads are, how they learn to think. I’m really impressed by what people do. It’s not so much the knowledge they learned, but the system thinking, the thinking outside the box, how to work with other people. That’s huge. COA people really have to learn to work with each other. To take people’s ideas in and figure out how to move forward with that. That’s huge in life.

DG: When did you start attending classes for credit?

PP: The first one was fall 1980. It took me to 1993 to finish my degree. But I did it. I got a lot of support. When I had my personnel reviews, people were like, “Go, go, go. Do it, do it, do it!” I got my master’s degree in 1996.

DG: Thirteen years for your BA and three for your master’s! Had you had any college before?

PP: I had three semesters of college at Bard … my mother was sick and ended up dying and I dropped out of college because I had no financial support.

DG: Tell me about cooking after the fire—

PP: We were doing Take-A-Break out of Turrets’ teeny-weeny kitchen. It was outrageous. We still baked bread—one of my work-study students was a great bread baker—and we made soup: one big pot of soup every day. And we baked muffins if we could. We had one little, teeny re-frigerator and we did a lot of shopping in what was Don’s Shop ’n’ Save at that point. There was no room for too many big orders. But it was fun because we’d serve in the beautiful Turrets room.

DG: And everybody would eat around the table?

PP: Or take something with them or whatever. Wander around. One of the things we used to have to do was go with a great dish bin and wander all over campus looking for our silverware and bowls and things. Although they probably still do that now.

DG: Absolutely! Were you working at the time of the fire?

PP: No, we had the summers off. I lost all my recipes in the fire. People lost everything. People lost research, people lost books, people lost a lot in their lives. But it was pretty amazing how people rallied. It’s like, OK, we’re having school in September, how are we going to do this? People really pitched together, and those are the kind of things, I’m going to tear up … you know, when Dick Davis died … when your community is devastated … when those kinds of things happen to the community—and they happen in everybody’s family and everybody’s community—you pull together. You need each other.

DG: Those were difficult times, and yet COA survived. Which is amazing, because it was such a fledgling school—

PP: Yes. So strong in some ways, fragile in others. We had tremendous trustees over time. And I think that all the con-tributors have known that somehow it was really special even if it was floundering sometimes.

DG: Tell me about the leftovers. Was that your idea to serve leftovers at a reduced price? Or was it just natural?

PP: Pretty natural. And it gave people more than one thing to eat. Then we could be cooking ahead for the next day. Otherwise, how would you ever know how much to make? What would you do with leftovers? People were happy for a lesser-priced meal. It made total sense to me.

DG: COA has been noted for its really good food—

PP: I know! I was the first to be on the list! 1992: #2 in the country. That was my fifteen minutes of fame. I thought it was pretty funny because here we are, this teeny-weeny school. But it’s nice to have that as a legacy.

Students serve themselves soup at Take-A-Break’s temporary quarters in what is now Turrets’ George Putnam Seminar Room.Photo courtesy of College of the Atlantic Archives and Special Collections.

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Last night, in the deeper hours, I found myselfwatched over by the large, single eye of a cowwhich hung above my bed, its veins rich and elaborate as a chandelier.The eye’s seeing graced me in violet.I felt visited. I felt seen into the very stations of my bones—the kind of seeing which hasno purpose beyond its own canny radiance. The eye was grand and shocking and notaltogether unwelcome. It tinged my sleep with a quality of vividness, like dreaming under a wakeful star, or a jellyfish streaming through night’s wavy suspension.Between breaths, the bed’s feathers rustlednoiselessly. Outside, other windows in other houses glowed with their own living dreams…

PoetryBy Jenny George ’02

Jenny George ’02 received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2004. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she helps run the Seasons Fund for Social Transformation, a Buddhist-based foundation that supports the integration of social justice work and con-templative practice. This fall she was a Rona Jaffe Fellow at the Vermont Studio Center, and spent a month there as a resident writer.

Vision EarsThe pig is already dead.It hangs from the ankle,slumped as lightthrough a heavy curtain.Draped onto the slab.One ear folded like a lilyunder the ample head,pressed nearly in half,silent origami.The other ear, large as a trumpet flower,turned open as if to receivethe sound of some distant thingapproaching—a train through fall fields,an insect in forgotten raftersdroning its thin scarves of sound.The one earbent shut, weightedunder the pig’s last greatness.The other, supple horn, listens outward,catches that final echo of birth,squeal of the gate hinge,first bells of tomorrow.

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COA | 19

Psychic Alchemist selections from the holy map seriesAnnabel linquist ’00

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in many ways, Annabel linquist (better known at cOA as Anna linquist) had no choice but to become an artist. People would talk

to her about their lives and she would respond with symbols and words—images that still come to her and that she still can’t turn

off. “i’m really, really intuitive,” she says. Now, in addition to her own work, she paints what she calls psychic portraits—commissions

that become guideposts for people’s lives, composed of layers of paint, symbols and words built through linquist’s intuition. the

layering sometimes buries the images, or maybe only part of a word shows through. this approach—along with her integrity, passion

and delight in life—has brought linquist extraordinary recognition. in July, Jessica latham of Vanity Fair wrote about her in her blog.

in August, linquist was written up in elle under “chic Week.” then there’s the music she creates. And the installations—such as a

magical, protective fort. Keep following her at www.iloveannabel.com.

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“i had my heart broken and i realized that people with whom we share the deepest connections can become mirrors through which

we can find the portal between our outer worlds and our inner worlds—that when we’re most raw and vulnerable we can tap into

those places that we want to emerge. these people are creating a feedback loop—they’re opening up a trapdoor to see parts of our

insides that we haven’t been aware of. that’s why i like the idea of the diving bell being the central character. And it doesn’t have

to be the devastation of a breakup. every regular relationship has some kind of emotional trauma programmed in and everyone has

their own stories that take them inside themselves because the human condition is not a balanced system.”

Annabel linquist ’00

Previous page: superfix Anchor by Annabel linquist ’00, 24” x 18,” silkscreen, latex, china marker, graphite, oil stick on canvas. this page, clockwise from top

left: holographic Ram (Random Access memory), 30” x 40,” silkscreen, latex, china marker, graphite, oil stick on canvas; holy magic, 60” x 72,” silkscreen, latex,

china marker, graphite, oil stick on canvas; photo of linquist in her studio by erin Kornfeld for elle magazine, courtesy of Annabel linquist.

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“Sometimes,” Davy Cohen mouthed each syllable to the living room ceiling, lying on his back, his eyes squinted and teary. “Sometimes the color of my eyes is black.” Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? the ra-dio tinned forth, interrupting his thoughts.

Although he already knew, Davy, who took most things literally, pondered the answer to this mechanical ques-tion. He rested his hands behind his head and attempted to peel his eyes so far back that he could imagine his oversized lashes tangling with the hairs from his eye-brows. He focused to increase the intervals between each blink as he absorbed the evil cackles of The Shadow, his favorite radio show.

In the late winter after school, the home on Utica’s Bleecker Street grew dark before dinnertime, so that real shadows threw themselves across the furniture, exciting Davy’s imagination. He preferred to stretch his eyes wider than normal while lying in the dark to improve his night vision. During the first few minutes of each session, he could see almost nothing, but eventually objects would pop into appearance as if by magic: usually first was the old menorah on the top of the bookshelf, probably be-cause it glinted gold; then to the right of the menorah stood a picture of his parents, Krejci and Bene, curled together professionally within a copper frame.

Today he saw the frame first. Then his father’s home sew-ing machine, a forgotten coffee mug, a pen, old note-books, prayer books, a copy of Frankenstein, the ceiling fan with its five blades—not four!—as his mother pre-ferred, etc. He pulled his eyelids together as he reached a maximum interval of fifty-two seconds. When he sat upright and a tear spilled onto his wrist, he knew it wasn’t because he was sad. He knew about tear ducts and biol-ogy: how tears don’t make sadness, sadness makes tears. The neighbor boys didn’t know this. Davy was a gifted student. Still he couldn’t help but feel a little crazy when he watched the wet drop disappear behind the pores in his skin. He decided to remove the pen from the shelf and practice writing. He understood that distraction would be useful for this project and The Shadow wasn’t enough. He wanted, although he half-believed it impossible, to achieve his goal today. He wrote on several pieces of pa-per as the tears spilled down the edges of his arms, prac-ticing his cursive, his print; he made periods into spirals. “Davy rules the world. Davy Cohen. Daaaaavy.”

Usually after The Shadow he would run to the bathroom mirror to see how large his pupils had expanded. His goal was for them to increase to the size of his irises, so that he could tell the neighbor boys that sometimes the color of his eyes was black. He could prove it to them by show-

ing them; his best friend Jules usually arrived exactly two minutes after The Shadow ended so they could discuss the events of the show together—this allowed his pupils very little time to shrink. He already knew he could get a dollar from each boy. He knew their weakness because it was his weakness: love for all things weird.

But today, only half-way through The Shadow, Davy’s will weakened and his doubts began to spread with the shadows in the room. He knew the pupil experiment would never really work, that he could never make his irises that black. There could never be enough shadows, even in Utica. And he could never have enough strength to leave his eyelids apart for longer than fifty-two sec-onds, not only because of the tears, but also because he was afraid mosquitoes might descend upon them, even in winter. And so he would try to throw the thoughts of black irises from his mind to brace himself against pos-sible disappointment. Directly above the radio, a light switch popped into appearance. Should he turn it on? But still….

Krejci flicked on the light. “Turn off the radio.” The old man pulled his seven-year-old son onto the sofa by his armpits. “It is time for lessons. Do you know what your last name means?”

Davy stared at his father like a stranger, rubbing the hairs of his eyebrows although he knew they were probably straight. The abruptness of the moment had made him awkward. When he felt his eyebrows, a few hairs fell out, which made him feel strangely lonely. His father worked so hard at the tailor shop that they met only during din-nertime. Today he was home early. “No, Krejci,” Davy responded. Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men? The cackle ran through the boy’s mind with an ex-citing thrill; despite the awkwardness, he grinned. The Shadow knows.

“Davy. Call me Daddy.” The old man pulled a mug to his lips and squinted. Davy tilted his head into his fa-ther’s neck and inhaled the smell of coffee. The old man thumped the mug onto the glass table over a cardboard coaster and continued his speech. “Cohen means priest. Our family is of the priests of Levi.”

Davy had learned this definition from Hebrew school, but now recognized today to be the day that his father would to teach him what it truly meant.

“We are the chosen ones.”

The Shadow knows. His pupils were surely the normal size by now. His mind would not focus. The radio show hadn’t even ended. Who knows?

Almost Like FlyingPrologue : The Boy Named Davy, Utica, New York : 1943-46By Marni Berger ’09

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“David.”

“Chosen whats?”

“People.”

“By who?”

“By God.”

“For what?”

“For love.”

“Oh.” Davy yawned, not out of nonchalance, but out of a strange fear of his father that inspired clumsiness in all his body parts, including his mouth. He watched the steam ripple from the coffee mug.

Krejci took the yawn as a sign of nonchalance. He pressed harder. “You must practice for two hours each day after school. Be a good boy.” The old man matched dry lips to dry paper with a kiss and passed his old prayer book to his young son. “You read English. Now read Hebrew.”

“Yes, Krejci.”

“It is God who brought me to America.” Kre-jci closed his eyes for an extended blink, soaking in the loneliness of a father whose child does not un-derstand him. He sighed and sweet-ened his tone. “I will teach you. Coffee?”

Davy closed his teeth around a fingernail. “No.”

“You are tired. Don’t bite your fingers. Drink.”

Davy pressed the ceramic lip to his mouth, tasted the bit-ter liquid, and flinched.

“Kiss it.”

“Okay.” Davy wiped the dribble of coffee from his lips before inhaling the smell of crinkled paper and aged leather. He placed the book to his mouth.

“We begin.”

And so it happened that at the age of seven, Davy Co-hen, who took most things literally, began Hebrew les-sons with his overworked father. The first few weeks his mind traveled to The Shadow, the size of his pupils, the

neighbor boys, especially Jules whose calls from the front door were often suppressed by Bene:

“Julesy, Davy’s practicing. Why don’t you practice, Jule-sy? Never mind. Now go. Be a good boy.” Sometimes she would give him a slice of cantaloupe. In the follow-ing days, Davy began to fear that Jules came only for the cantaloupe.

For several nights, to relieve the fear of the cracking friend-ship and the anxiety of missing boyhood adventures, Davy escaped through the window as he had in the past to climb a tree with Julesy and the boys, ride down the hill inside a tire, scale the bottom of the water tower, or taste the stem of a pipe that Jules had found behind the syna-gogue. At first the thrill of adventure overrode the guilt of deceit, but soon the guilt of deceit overrode the thrill of adventure and eventually Jules became replaced as best

friend by Krejci; and the old night visits faded into a single window apology in which a yo-yo was thrown down toward Jules with a note at-tached: “sorry” scrawled on one side and “Jules rules the world” printed carefully on the other.

Day after day, fa-ther and son knelt head to head, star-ing at the same book, at the same page, lips moving around the same consonants, trou-bling out the same possible vowels,

both wearing homemade yarmulkes. Some days they touched each other’s hands to keep from touching the pages in their excitement, in case the oil from their skin would scar God’s significance. This kind of consideration was usually reserved for the Torah, but Krejci considered his prayer book just as sacred. Sometimes, under the pretense of protecting the book, they held hands, which made Krejci’s heart swell. The little boy would push the old man’s veins while stumbling in prayer, imagining a control over the flow of his father’s blood, curious about the tiny balloons that symbolized the old man’s existence: God’s balloons. God’s chosen balloons.

After the first three weeks of lessons, their intimacy in-creased when the two took to never speaking anything to each other but Hebrew. Since the little boy knew only a few prayers, their code grew even more codified, some-

“fire” detail from “earth/air/fire/water” by George Benington ’82 and Diane Wiencke, pigment inkjet prints, oil, encaustic, mixed media book, 2009.

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thing even Bene could not understand: the blessing over wine came to mean, “Let’s study now;” the blessing over bread meant, “Let’s take a bathroom break,” and the first few lines of the joyful song, Ein Keloheinu אין כאלהינו came to mean, “I love you, Krejci;” Adon Olam אדֹון עֹולם meant, “I love you, too.” By together recognizing God as their Lord—Krejci for the second time and Davy for the first—they seemed to recognize God as each other. Their first languages differed, the father’s Hungarian and the lucky son’s English, and so their previous detachment toward each other’s lives seemed now obviously excused by a third language’s inability to reach a first language. How could a Hungarian-rooted man understand an American boy? But their second languages matched: the gift that God had chosen for the chosen ones.

Over the next few years, Krejci began to revert to long hours at the tailor shop, trusting in Davy’s religious zeal and patriarchal love.

At the age of seven, Davy had memorized The Lord’s Prayer in Hebrew, and recited it often. He also memo-rized many of the Psalms, his favorite being Number 29: “Attribute to the Lord all glory and power.” At this age, Davy’s signature outfit consisted of a tallis, yarmulke, jeans and brown sneakers.

At eight, he maintained the previous outfit, but had graduated to black slacks and shiny dress shoes that Kre-jci had proudly created for him from an old pair of his own shoes. It was at this age that Davy’s favorite lyrical prayer from the previous year, Ein Keloheinu אין כאלהינו was replaced with his repetitive and sober recitation of Kol Nidre כל נדרי, a prayer recited in the synagogue at the beginning of the evening service on Yom Kippur כיפור the Day of Atonement. It is written in Aramaic, not ,יוםHebrew and so that is how Davy intoned it. At the age of nine, Davy refused to leave the house without Krejci’s old prayer book and never walked home from school without first visiting the synagogue to consult with the rabbi. Was he a good Jew? Was he devout? Most impor-tantly: Was he orthodox? Of course his parents were, but still…. The rabbi would respond with a smile, but would add another task that would, as Davy saw it, bring him further along in his quest to become the most chosen of the chosen ones.

At ten, Davy began to miss school. He could be found sitting on a hard bench, unblinkingly staring at the locked doors that protected the Torah, tears falling onto his wrists. Childishly, he supposed that if he kept his eyes open long enough, God would pop into appearance like the images in the dark room during those late afternoons listening to The Shadow.

When Krejci was interrupted from precious hours of work at the tailor shop by Davy’s annoyed school princi-pal, only to find the boy crying in the synagogue, he im-mediately broke their language pact. He grabbed Davy’s wrist, yanked him from the bench. “David,” he whined. Together they marched from the sacred room of worship

and into the rabbi’s office. The two old men stared at each other as tears spilled from Davy’s down-tilted head.

“Look at him,” Krejci accused the rabbi. “Are you his fa-ther?”

“But tears don’t always come from sadness,” Davy pro-tested.

“What are these?” screeched Krejci, oblivious to Davy’s comment and attempting to pull the tears as evidence from the child’s face.

The rabbi stared, horrified. “Krejci, I thought the boy came by your permission.”

Krejci moved his gaze to Davy, wisps of hair rising in distress from the edges of his yarmulke. “Davy, I am your father.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

On the ride home Krejci said, “Davy, you are an emo-tional boy. We must help you with that.”

Davy’s prescription for obsessive thoughts by Dr. Mar-shall, the boy’s lifelong physician, was three laps around Bleecker Street, four if the thoughts did not ease from three. The boy had too much energy. On the day of Davy’s prescription, Dr. Marshall comforted Krejci and Bene: “Not to worry,” he smiled. “It’s his age, you know.”

It was on this day, after Dr. Marshall took his hat and coat to leave, pressing a cigarette between his lips to relieve his own distress as soon as the screen door slammed, that father and son communicated something clearly other than Hebrew. Davy looked up at his father and timidly asked him for two things: the first was a request to change his name and the second was to become something other than a Jew.

Old Krejci pressed his fingers to his eyebrows and sighed. “What do you want?”

“I want to become the fastest runner in the state of New York.”

Marni Berger grew up in Oxford, Ohio and attended the wonderful McGuffey Foundation School where, in sec-ond grade, she became obsessed with writing. For her college years, she studied poetry, fiction and nonfiction at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina and College of the Atlantic. She now lives in New York City and is working on an MFA in nonfiction writing at Columbia University’s School of the Arts. Berger began her multi-generational novel Almost Like Flying in Bill Carpenter’s Starting Your Novel class and and completed it in subsequent tutorials, as well as in a residency with Karen Waldron.

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It’s ten years now since I graduated from COA. During that time I’ve had the good fortune to work in the dy-namic and expansive field of farming and food systems. I’ve organized campaigns against genetic engineering in agriculture, started a regional farm-to-school program, labored on farms and worked with food pantries. Everywhere this work takes me, I find human ecologists. In the world of food systems, COA folks are plowing a long, deep furrow: we run farms, farm stands and farmers’ markets; we develop innovative compost systems; we work to ensure that all people have access to wholesome food; we preserve working farmland and working waterfronts; we lobby and create policy; we organize fishermen and farmers; we teach kids about where food comes from; we are researchers; we develop innovative food businesses; we help new farmers hit the ground running; we shine a light on holistic nutrition; we are restaurateurs and run inspiring food service programs; we build local and international collaborations.

But what is a food system? To wrap your head around the concept and why it might be a natural fit for human ecologists, first imagine yourself standing in a farm field—maybe it’s a field of grass-fed beef in Vermont, or salad greens in California, wheat in North Dakota, corn in Iowa, or a small milpa on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. (Or perhaps you’re standing on a coffee plantation, a groundfish boat off the Maine coast, in a dairy barn, or even a confinement hog operation—wow, we get our food from so many sources!)

Take a step back from that field or barn or boat, and try to imagine the markets, processes, policies, ecological systems, cultural and social forces that help to determine not only what is grown there, but ultimately where that food goes. Who works this land, how did she* come to be here and is she able to support herself as a farmer? What prices will she get for her crops this year, how are those prices determined, and will they begin to bring her out of debt? Is the wheat ground into flour at the mill down the road and baked into a loaf at the local bak-ery, or is it exported to Egypt or Japan? Will the corn be hand made into tortillas, or transformed into the corn syrup that is helping to fuel our national obesity epidemic, or will it feed cows in a confined animal feeding operation and return to the atmosphere in the form of methane gas, contributing to global climate change? And how did all that food get from wherever it came from, across skies, seas and land, to end up in the grocery store and ultimately on your dinner plate?

How much of our current food system is sustainable? More important, what would it take for it all to be sustain-able? This is not just a question of whether organic farms yield as much per acre as conventional farms (they can, and do); it is also a question of whether food distribution systems can be made to benefit all, regardless of income; whether small-scale growers can regain access to land and a viable market share; whether local, na-tional and global policies can support the little guys. And perhaps the question we should be asking of ourselves as citizens and of people in positions of power is: How can we afford not to have sustainable farms and food systems? We’re addicted to cheap food—at what cost to our health, our communities and our future?

This edition of COA highlights some of the many COA alumni and students who are growing a more sustainable food system from the ground up. Here’s to a bountiful harvest!

Sustainable Food Systems Administrator Heather Albert-Knopp ’99 is helping COA launch its Sustainable Agri-culture and Food Systems program. She organized the first annual Food for Thought, Time for Action conference and is assisting with the burgeoning Trans-Atlantic Partnership with the Organic Research Centre, Elm Farm in the United Kingdom and the University of Kassel’s Faculty of Organic Agricultural Sciences in Germany.

*Given our choice of pronouns, we are using “she” because women produce between 60 and 80 percent of the food in most developing countries.

Sustainable Farming and Food Systems at COA and Around the WorldBy Heather Albert-Knopp ’99, Food Systems Administrator

Feed the World

Photo by Matt McInnis ’09.

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Digging InA photo essay of four alumni-owned Maine farmsBy Matt McInnis ’09

Location: Brooklin, Maine

Owners: Jennifer Schroth ’84 and Jonathan Ellsworth ’87

Years operating this farm: 19

Production: Mixed vegetables and salad greens, with a farm-based farm stand and greens sold to regional restaurants.

Acres in vegetables: 3

Biggest struggle: The work is never done! There is always more to do and a better way to do it and more money is always needed.

Greatest joy: Being on the coast of Maine, working outside.

Success: Keeping our land in the family for fifty years and three generations.

Do you see your work in a global perspective? Definitely. We stumbled upon farming in the 1980s, when it was not a cool thing to do; everyone was into business. Then farmer’s markets got to be hot and people got into food and farm-ing meant something to other people as well. People wanted to come here—that was one reason we started the farm stand. We’ve had a lot of school kids come; [COA anthropologist] Elmer Beal brings a class here every year. Kids don’t get a chance to go to farms, even Maine kids.

Carding Brook Farm

Jennifer Schroth, sons Walker and Nolan and John Ellsworth with their dog Poppy. Above: John Ellsworth. Inset: Walker Ellsworth.

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Location: Whitefield, Maine

Owner: Jane (Herndon) Frost ’06

Years operating this farm: 5

Production: A little bit of everything. We bought land that was mostly wooded, so we started out doing a lot of pigs—or-ganic pork; pigs will root out the rocks and twigs; and goats—to chew down the vegetation. We sell mixed vegetables and fermented foods: sauerkraut, kimchee, ginger carrots, and ruby kraut with red cabbage.

Acres in vegetables: 3

Biggest struggle: It’s always changing. Right now, having the infrastructure. We’re lacking buildings and machinery and trying to pay for everything we need has been a big struggle.

Greatest Joy: I just love having the two-year-old go out and help, having our family right there, seeing everything growing and making every-thing look good.

Successes: Fermented foods. We can never seem to make enough to keep up with orders.

Do you see this work in a global perspective? Originally, yes, but now it’s so intense, I just try to focus on what needs to be done, day by day.

Thirty Acre Farm

Right: Jane and Simon Frost stand in a cabbage patch with sons Otis (with fiddle) and Will and their dog Isi. Below, Jane and Will watch their pigs nurse.

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Location: Gouldsboro, Maine

Owners: Eugenio Bertin ’97 and Sarah Faull ’98

Years in farming: 10; 8 on Mandala Farm

Production: Vegetables, flowers, berries, meat birds, laying hens, goats, one dairy cow, beef cattle, pork.

Acres in vegetables: 3.5

Why farming? I was heading toward land planning or law; Sarah was doing research at Harvard. We came to Maine to work at H.O.M.E. Co-op for two weeks and stayed two years. We thought it was our responsibility to effect change; being at H.O.M.E. changed our perspective. We wanted to begin with stewardship of the land.

Biggest struggle: The weather. Economics.

Greatest joys: Nurturing and tending to the animals, seeing things grow—that magic and wonder. And seeing how people grow when they’re exposed to what we do.

Is farming a mission? If it were, we’d have given up by now. It’s our life’s work to try to improve the soil and provide food for the local community, to be available to our neighbor for a dozen eggs or a scoop of manure.

Mandala Farm

Left: Genio Bertin and Sarah Faull. Below: Farmhand Saras Yerlig ’11 picks heirloom tomatoes.

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Location: Brooklin, Maine

Owner: Clara (Poland) Rutenbeck ’01

Years operating this farm: 10

Production: Organic wild blueberries. We harvested and sold 12,000 pounds of blueberries this year and grew veggies for ourselves and the market. In the past we’ve raised all sorts of animals and vegetables; while we’re working ourselves back up to that, we’re taking a step back to catch our breath and analyze what has and hasn’t been working.

Acres: 30 in blueberries, half-acre in vegetables

Why farming: I’ve always wanted to be a farmer. Mostly, I’m too stubborn to work a regular job.

Biggest struggle: Money. Charging what the food is worth and balancing that with the belief that good food should be a human right.

Greatest joys: My family. Feeding people. Taking care of a piece of land that will be in our family in perpetuity—being part of this landscape.

Do you see this work in a global perspective? I see farming in a global perspective. I have great hope that the good work small farmers do will soon be recognized around the world.

Stoneset Farm

Above: Nathan and Clara Rutenbeck with daughters Margaret and Eleanor in front of their barn. Top: Farmhands sort and package blueberries.

Matt McInnis ’09 is an independent photographer freelancing for The New York Times. For more images and contact information, visit www.MattMcInnis.com.

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“Oh dear, my husband’s come in—I have to get off to feed Winnie,” Newman says, sounding just a bit distracted and discomfited. But she doesn’t get off, not just yet.

“You see,” she says as a door squeaks behind her, “we have this very old chicken, and when she molts, she stops eating and drinking. She’s a white leghorn named Winnie and leg-horns aren’t selected for much other than egg production—it’s very unnerving and a miracle she’s made it this far. In the old days you would just let your chicken die. We tube feed her, but it takes the two of us.” I know it’s my turn to speak, but I’m too busy trying to imagine tube feeding a squirming chicken. Newman fills in the silence, “My friends who are farmers look at me askance and say, ‘You do what!?’ Like I’m completely out of my mind. But I like to take care of my ani-mals.” As the footsteps in the background grow louder, New-man rushes off the phone, prom-ising to call again.

Twenty minutes later, she’s back, laughing that her friends also tell her they want to be reincarnated as one of her chickens. Birds have always been important to Newman, though mostly the birds she focused on were the kind that view chickens as, well, bird food. “When I was seven years old, I discovered that the peregrine falcon was going extinct due to DDT.” She went on to care for falcons, ferrets, dogs and other ani-mals, eventually becoming a falconer. Her most important schooling as a child seems to have been the Connecticut

forests she’d roam with her dogs, along with the streams she fished. Formal schooling was not so successful. As the daughter of actors Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Newman’s education was peripatetic. She’d be in Holly-wood one year and back at the family home in Connecti-cut the next. Knowing she’d be there only briefly, Newman says that her teachers let her slide. By the time she dropped out of high school she had been at a dozen schools. Eventu-ally, she got a GED at New York University. Then she tried out college: University of Bridgeport, Fairfield University, Boise State, Hampshire College. They were either too big or too unguided.

COA at the time was not just small, it was tiny. Newman trans-ferred to COA in 1983, just after a fire demolished the old Kaelber Hall which had been the central administrative and classroom building. Enrollment had plum-meted. For Newman, this was not a problem. COA was “small and manageable.”

“COA was probably the only school I could have graduated from,” she says. “I got such per-

sonalized attention to help me crawl through things I had no background in. I would have been lost at a big school; I needed more guidance. Butch Rommel and Bill Drury were my mentors, along with [faculty member in writing] Anne Kozak, who taught me how to write, bless her soul. They were incredible professors. Butch was difficult, a taskmas-ter, but he focused 110 percent. His office hours were at

Organics for the MassesNell Newman ’87By Donna Gold

Nell Newman, president of the nation’s most well-known and popular organic food company, Newman’s Own® Organics: The Second Generation®, still sounds like the quintessential College of the Atlantic student. Twenty-two years after graduation, she’s fun-ny, energetic, hugely enthusiastic—and very much an individual. It’s summer, and we are speaking coast-to-coast on the phone, just about to get down to the serious topics of organic food and socially responsible business—but having too great a time over stories about COA friends, especially John Long ’86, whom New-man describes as “utterly brilliant” (and the class clown—he’s now a professor of animal physiology at Vassar), Eddie Monat ’88 (a.k.a Diver Ed), as well as various mentors and professors, including former biology faculty members Sentiel “Butch” Rom-mel and the late Bill Drury. Then a bit of a racket crops up in the background and Newman stops the conversation.

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Thank you every-one, and my special thanks to the class of 2009 for inviting me to speak. I hope you know how deeply Susie and I appreci-ate your invitation.

I’m thrilled to be here today, to see

the college thriving and to help celebrate the class of 2009.

I have a wonderful story to tell, and hope I do it as well as it deserves and as well as the degree candidates told their stories during the presentation of senior projects yesterday.

Maverick cells

Five months after I retired from the college in 2006, I was diagnosed with leukemia. A genetic mutation in one of my immune system’s B-cells had ruined its control system, al-lowing it to reproduce endlessly and populate my immune system with white blood cells that didn’t do their jobs as well as normal cells and also were more liable to future mu-tations. What was I to think of these maverick cells? I didn’t hate them. How could I? They were genetically identical to the rest of me, except for one mutation. But they weren’t lovable either, since their selfishness threatened an early end to my days. So they had to go, and chemotherapy here at Mt. Desert Island Hospital during the first half of 2007 appeared to accomplish that.

Nevertheless, my physicians at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston thought that any cells missed by the chemother-apy would cause further trouble in several years and they suggested that the only chance for real cure was a stem cell transplant, a procedure itself not without risk. Susie and I elected to roll those dice, and the search began for a perfect donor—someone whose seven key genes of the major histo-compatability complex were identical to mine. Those genes make proteins displayed on the surfaces of all your cells that identify them as part of ‘self.’ T-cells of the immune system will attack and kill any cells whose surfaces display ‘nonself’ proteins, so the better the match, the higher the likelihood that the donee won’t reject the transplant and the lower the likelihood that T-cells produced by the donor’s stem cells will attack the donee.

The odds of finding a perfectly matched donor are about one in one hundred thousand—some five thousand times worse than the twenty-to-one odds against the worst horse in today’s Belmont Stakes winning the race, but about two hundred times better than for winning the Maine state lot-tery. Of the six million people listed in the national regis-try of bone marrow and stem cell donors, twenty-two were perfect matches for me, but twenty-one couldn’t be found or couldn’t donate. The remaining person, a 59-year-old woman, agreed to be a donor.

Transplants are highly choreographed. On my end, follow-ing four days of chemotherapy to kill the stem cells that made my blood and immune system, at 7 pm on January 30, 2008, a courier brought to my room at Brigham and Women’s Hospital a plastic bag filled with what looked like raspberry sorbet. By hour’s end, my donor’s cheerfully-col-ored stem cells had flowed by catheter into me, and my life as a chimera had begun. I can’t begin to thank all the people who helped Susie and me through the subsequent months of masks and gloves, avoidance of germs, dirt, sun, plants, animals and public places. But all has worked out happily. I feel great and am probably cured, though I’ll be on medica-tions for a long time to suppress my new immune system from attacking the rest of me as ‘nonself.’

Only after a year passes does the hospital facilitate commu-nication between donor and donee, and only if both parties want to make contact. We did. My donor told me that she gave a blood sample fifteen years ago during a donor drive for a member of her synagogue who was ill, but she wasn’t a match. Fourteen years later, the registry called her on my be-

Worms, Germs and Sperms: Celebrating Our Shared Past and Common Future

Commencement speech from Steven K. Katona, former COA president, June 6, 2009

Left: B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia; Below: Healthy white blood cells seen under a microscope, photo by Bob J. Galindo.

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half, and a good thing, too, as she was very near the 60-year age limit for donors. So during the four days while my stem cells were being killed, she received daily shots to stimulate her stem cell production, and then gave blood from which stem cells were harvested in a continuous flow process dur-ing two four-hour sessions. She reported no pain besides a mild rib ache caused by bone marrow stimulation from the shots. On May 13, 2009 Susie and I travelled to New York to meet her and attend services at her synagogue, where the rabbi introduced me to the congregation, acknowledged my donor’s contribution to keeping me alive, and quoted from the Talmud that he who saves a single life saves the entire world. President Obama quoted from the Koran dur-ing his speech in Cairo on Wednesday, that whoever saves a person it is as if he has saved all mankind. I don’t think I’m worth the accounting given in either scripture, but I’m glad to be saved anyway.

Capping all was the revelation that my donor’s name is Su-san Rose Newman. My wife, with whom I’ve shared the past forty-five years, is Susan. My mother was Rose. And my donor has made me a new man. I thank her for all she did. Her gift enabled me to be here today and helped inspire this talk.

Our enchantment with opposites

Four years ago at your convocation, on September 7, 2005, I welcomed the class of 2009 with a talk about the rhythms of our lives, finishing with the thought that our human lives are part of a giant chorus sung by countless singers, a huge, pulsing, polyrhythmic symphony connecting everything—the electromagnetic vibrations of atoms and photons, the precession of Earth’s axis, the slosh of tides and pounding of storm waves, the swoosh of charged particles down earth’s magnetic lines of force, the dance of the northern lights, the ponderous movements of crustal plates, the advance and retreat of glaciers and the more delicate rhythms of life: the calls of frogs and crickets, the flash rates of fireflies, the spawning of corals, the transoceanic calls of blue whales, the awful and wonderful noise of our own cultures… and the hope that by coming to know ourselves and some of our fellow choristers better we could improve the quality of our lines in this Earthsong.

Today, I’ll try to complete that talk, first highlighting a major obstacle frustrating that hope and then suggesting a better way to get where we need to go.

The obstacle stems from our enchantment with opposites. Maybe our bilateral symmetry is to blame, defining left and right, front and back, but leaving us mainly adjectives to de-scribe things in between. Whatever the reason, we like to po-

larize things like mass and energy, wave and particle, human and non-human, mind and body, self and non-self, each and oth-er, good and bad, male and female, black and white, strong and weak, and so on. In fact, few things are

entirely one or the other, and having some of both is a pretty good place to be.

I want to focus on the ‘self–nonself’ continuum that we re-fer to more commonly as ‘each’ and ‘other.’ Those words—‘each’ and ‘other’—contain a tension that both nourishes and confounds nearly every aspect of our lives. Indeed the meaning of human ecology is embedded in those two words and their implicit relationships.

Ancient cooperation

We’re here thanks to an ancient and strikingly creative resolution of the ‘each-other’ problem. Sometime between two billion and three and a half billion years ago a large, primitive bacterial cell engulfed a smaller type of bacteria as food. Or perhaps the smaller species had invaded the larger one as a parasite. Maybe that predation or parasit-ism had been going on for millions of years, but on this occasion the smaller cell stayed alive inside the larger one, probably because it happened to perform a useful function, such as metabolizing a waste product or generating oxy-gen, reproducing in synchrony with its host. Over time the two coevolved, became increasingly mutually dependent and eventually could not live apart. They had shed their ‘each–other’ distinction, gaining increased success by living together as one organism, though both retained their own DNA and continued to reproduce in synchrony.

It probably took a series of colonizations by different bac-teria to make the complex nucleated cells that form every plant, animal and fungus that has ever lived, including us. The ancient colonizers are still with us as organelles inside all our cells: mitochondria that provide chemical power

Purkinje neurons: These cells are some of the largest neurons in the human brain. In humans, Purkinje cells are affected in a variety of diseases ranging from toxic exposure (alcohol, lithium), to autoimmune diseases and to genetic mutations (spinocerebellar ataxias, autism) and neurodegenerative diseases that are not thought to have a known genetic basis (cerebellar type of multiple system atrophy, sporadic ataxias). Image courtesy of Annie Cavanagh, Wellcome Images.

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for all cell processes; chloroplasts that use sunlight to make the car-bohydrates that power nearly all the food webs in the biosphere and also produce the oxygen we breathe; centrioles, which form the filamentous skeletons of cells and the spindle that transports chromo-somes during cell division, thereby driving sexual recombination and genome diversity.

In any case, our earliest single-celled common ancestors, dumb as they were, quickly learned the advantages that come with taking care of both ‘each and other.’ That ancient cooperation underlies ev-erything we see today.

Now, billions of years later, we are still constantly engaged in each–other decisions at every level, starting from conception where each sperm competed against others to fertilize the egg. Yet under some conditions sperm seem to cooperate physiologically or behaviorally to increase the efficiency of fertilization or out-compete rival males. For example, sperms of the promiscuous European wood mouse hook together in little trains of five to one hundred sperms that swim faster than a single sperm could, probably to outrace sperms of ri-val males. Once conception occurs, the lucky sperm imme-diately begins cooperating with the egg, first by shedding its tail, which contains all its mitochondria, thereby ceding de-scent of all the embryo’s mitochondria to the maternal line. Once the sperm’s head penetrates the egg’s nucleus, the ‘each–other’ distinction between the two gametes dissolves; their separate sets of chromosomes and the genes they carry become part of an organized, collaborative, self-regulating genome, in our case a web of perhaps thirty thousand genes and a large, but still unknown number of control regions. But ‘each–other’ battles can still occur at the genetic level, for example if a mutation destroys a gene’s control region allowing that cell line to grow at the expense of other cells and the body as a whole, as happened in me. We call that condition ‘cancer.’ ‘Each–other’ mistakes at this level cause about two hundred different types of cancer in humans.

Cellular decisionmaking

At a slightly larger scale, the B-cells and T-cells of our im-mune system ceaselessly patrol our tissues to destroy any vi-rus, microbe or chemical recognized as ‘other.’ But immune cells make mistakes, too, sometimes attacking our own tis-

sues in one of the one hundred and forty or so autoimmune diseases that have been described.

The three trillion cells of our nervous system are also busy with ‘each–other’ decisions. Bathed at every moment with information from every sense, our neurons compete and ne-gotiate about what to notice and store, what associations to attach, what feelings or memories to inhibit and what to retrieve. Each helps form detailed tableaux of information, such that a sound, a breath of wind, a scent, or the taste of a petite madeleine dunked in tea might suddenly recreate a whole scene—or not. If certain neuronal pathways grow dominant, obsession, compulsion, tics or other deviations from harmonious nervous integration may ensue.

Other neurons effectively blur the distinction between each and other in a remarkable way. Mirror neu-rons are nerves that fire not only when we move, but also when we observe other people performing a movement. By mimicking the ner-vous activity ongoing in others, mir-ror neurons apparently help us imi-tate, learn and perfect the observed actions. Mirror neurons probably also stimulate the empathy we feel when we see people or animals in distress, essentially recreating their emotional state within us. Other

social facilitation that apparently does not involve mirror neurons may also merge feelings of each and other. The

English wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus)

Pyramidal neurons forming a network in the brain. Image courtesy of Dr. Jonathan Clarke, Wellcome Images.

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contagiousness of yawning and the tired feeling that accom-panies it is a familiar example.

The ‘each–other’ story gets even more interesting when or-ganisms interact. Commencement seemed like a good time to discuss this thanks to the similarity between the words ‘commencement’ and ‘commensal.’ Both share the Latin root com- ‘together,’ but our ceremony derives from L. co-minitiare ‘to initiate,’ and was originally for initiating priests; whereas commensal, which literally means ‘eating at the same table,’ derives from the Latin word for table, mensa. Commencements have so far only included our spe-cies, but com-mensalism typi-cally involves two or more species, for example bar-nacles that grow on whales, remo-ras that hitchhike on sharks and eat particles dropped from the sharks’ meals, or clown-fish like Nemo gaining protection by living among a sea anemone’s venomous tenta-cles. In commen-sal relationships one organism benefits and the other is neither significantly benefitted nor harmed. You might think of it as tolerance or even ecological welfare.

Evolutionary symbiosis

Over time, many relationships that likely began as commen-sal—or possibly predatory or parasitic—have evolved to be-come more mutually beneficial. Our growing awareness of that trend sheds refreshing light on the ‘each–other’ relation-ship, which Western society has usually interpreted as com-petitive. Thus competition between individuals was Dar-win’s mechanism for evolution through natural selection—the survival of the fittest. Even though Darwin included fas-cinating examples of coevolution, the competitive paradigm remained essentially unchallenged until some scientists in the 1950s and ’60s began to ask whether evolution might also work at the group level by favoring groups of individu-

als who cooperated over other less-cooperative groups. The idea went nowhere until the 1970s and ’80s when studies of social insects, especially ants and bees, as well as theo-retical advances in game theory, led the way to showing how important cooperation is throughout the animal, fun-gal, plant and microbial kingdoms, and also began to reveal some of its genetic, physiologic and behavioral bases. We learned that cooperation—whether unconsciously mediated by chemical communication or consciously nurtured—un-derlies countless interactions that enable life as we know it to exist. Mutualism between nitrogen-fixing bacteria and

legumes powers many of our food c r o p s — p e a s , beans, peanuts, lentils, carob and many others—as well as plants crucial to ecosys-tem function, en-hancing soil fer-tility at the same time. We’ve been amazed to learn that 90 percent of all plants obtain their mineral nu-trients from sym-biotic relation-ships with soil fungi. Ninety per-cent also depend on the insects and mammals that have coevolved

to pollinate them. Bacteria living in the intestines of earth-worms digest cellulose in the fragments of dead plants that the worms ingest, nourishing themselves, the worms and the soil that receives their rich castings. In the ocean, tropi-cal coral reefs—our planet’s most biodiverse ecosystems—would not exist without nourishment from their endosym-biotic algae.

So cooperation is key, and life slowly works toward achiev-ing it. Given time, even pathogens evolve to be less harmful to their hosts, working their way toward more commensal or even mutually beneficial relationships. The communities of bacteria, fungi and ciliate protozoans that digest cellulose in the rumens or intestines of cows, horses and every other animal that eats shoots and leaves likely made that journey, as did the bacteria that produce Vitamin K in our intestines.

Nurse shark with remora close to gills in Palau. Photo by David Burdick, courtesy of NOAA’s Coral Kingdom Collection.

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The process is at work in me, too, as my new immune system and the rest of my tissues get over their ‘each–other’ hang-ups and hopefully learn to play together as nicely as our ancient bacterial ancestors did several billion years ago.

When individuals interact, attention to both ‘each’ and ‘other’ can also accelerate the evolution of intelligence and consciousness. Any animal smart enough to recognize the individuals it frequently encounters, and to remember how they behave, has the potential to evolve mutualistic behav-ior based on reciprocal altruism—even when no genetic relationship exists. Encouragement of mutually beneficial (and perhaps physically enjoyable) acts enabled cleaning symbioses to evolve between different species of fish, or be-tween birds and turtles, iguanas, land tortoises, crocodiles and some mammals. Cleaners glean parasites from their clients; and clients presumably recognize and shun clean-ers who cheat by eating scales, tearing off skin or drinking blood. Reciprocal altruism occurs in mammals, too, espe-cially in bats, cetaceans, and primates. Who would have predicted that male vampire bats would be exemplars of

kindness, regurgitating blood to feed nearby, genetically un-related males, with good expectation that another day those males will feed them when they are hungry? Whales, dol-phins and primates not only demonstrate such direct reci-procity, but also indirect reciprocity, in which helpful acts are repaid not just by the direct recipient, but also by oth-ers. Frequent repetition of such behaviors strengthens the webs of reciprocity that bind these societies together to the point that pilot whales, white-sided dolphins, sperm whales and others routinely put themselves in harm’s way to assist schoolmates in difficulty, including genetically unrelated in-dividuals. Reciprocity is so strong in these species that they often extend help across species lines, including to humans in distress.

Of course the continuing dichotomy between ‘each’ and ‘other’ also ensures that the mental development supporting reciprocity has a darker side, stimulating increasingly sophis-

ticated ways to favor self over others. We and our primate relatives are astonishingly good at cheating and concealing our deceptions even from ourselves. We are also skilled at detecting and remembering cheating in others—you might even say too skilled, as we nurse grudges, prejudices, slights and offenses so long that we encumber many generations in antipathies and even blood feuds.

So for us as for all mammals, genetic relatedness and reci-procity are the two factors that have always been central to social organization, and both have fostered ‘eaches’ and ‘others’ of varying scale: nuclear family, extended family, matriarchy, patriarchy and tribe for kinship; gender, cohort, school, community, race, religion, class, caste and dozens of others for reciprocity. Both organize our personal behav-ior and that of our societies in powerful ways, involving us in numerous webs of mutual obligation and expectation, binding us together in some cases, while separating us in others.

Kinships

But a third factor offers nearly unlimited power to create and extend meaningful relationships between people of all kinds. In 1968, beautiful color photos of Earth taken from space united people everywhere by showing our shared home in its entirety for the first time. Those photos and Rachel Car-son’s writings gave birth to the environmental movement, and we’ve spent the following four decades studying our planet in ever greater detail. We still don’t know how many species live on earth—estimates range from five million to one hundred million—but since only two million have been described scientifically so far, it’s no surprise that new dis-coveries abound wherever we look closely: new species, genera, families and sometimes higher orders of life; com-plex communities of organisms living their entire lives hun-dreds of feet up in the canopy of redwood trees or thousands of feet under the sea where metallic, sulfurous brines spurt from Earth’s mantle into the ocean. We find organisms so bizarre that they might have sprung from pages written by Frank Herbert or William Kotzwinkle: luminescent vampire squids, sea squirts that trap fish, more than six hundred plants that attract and trap prey, gi-ant tube worms with no mouth, di-gestive system or anus whose bright red hemoglobin-filled plumes ab-

Long-finned pilot whales (Globicephala melas)

Adult Riftia pachyptila tube worms in situ. Image courtesy of Monika Bright.

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sorb hydrogen sulfide so that the billions of bacteria packed in their tissues can gain energy by oxidizing it to crystals of elemental sulfur while releasing carbon compounds to nourish the worms.

But despite such enormous diversity, we’ve discovered the remarkable genetic kinship we share not just with chimpan-zees, our closest relatives with whom we share some 98 percent of our genes, but with all of this remarkable life. It

is startling. Half of the meta-bolic enzymes found in the bacterium E. coli are present in all living organisms includ-ing us. The genes that regu-late patterns of body develop-ment and segmentation are identical in fruit flies, mice and people, and probably de-scended unchanged from our common ancestors in Precam-brian seas 590 million years ago or more.

What’s more, our relatives have a lot of practical things to teach us if we listen and look carefully. We’ve learned from bats how to echolocate; from barnacles and mussels how to make better glues for surgery, dentistry and industry; from cockleburs how to make Velcro; from desert beetles how to collect water from fog more efficiently; from sharks how to make swimsuits that win Olympic medals; from hump-back whale flippers how to build more efficient blades for wind turbines, and that’s just the short list. I can attest to the practical benefits of biodiversity as the two immunosuppres-sant medicines keeping me in good health both come from soil organisms, Tacrolimus from the bacterium Streptomy-ces tsukubaensis, isolated by Japanese scientists from soil in their country, Rapamune from the bacterium Streptomyces hygroscopicus, found in soil on one of the most isolated islands in the world, Rapa Nui (Easter Island).

Nature is learning a bit from watching us, too. YouTube is replete with dogs and cats that skateboard, dogs that surf, cats that take care of crows, chimps and gorillas that sign, parrots that talk, elephants that paint, a hippo who tries to save an impala from a crocodile and dolphins who blow and play with bubble rings. What might have been the role of such innovations in our own evolution and where might these novelties lead given enough space, time and relaxation from the everyday demands of survival? We don’t know, but in general all species deserve the time and space to achieve their own biological potential just as we have.

As we begin to understand how some of our fellow species tick, not just physiologically and ecologically, but also how they sense the world, what emotions they have, and what their intellectual life might be, we find still more commonal-ity. We find that feelings such as excitement, anticipation, fear, pain, joy, guilt and something that looks a lot like love appear to be more widespread in the animal kingdom than we previously wished to admit. We don’t yet know how many of our fellow species have enough brainpower and leisure to think in abstract terms about the world and their place in it—though we’re pretty sure some do—but we cer-tainly do it more frequently and deeply than any of our fel-low travelers, and with surprising results, too.

Travelers drifting in time

Coming from a naive past that was largely ethnocentric, an-thropocentric and terracentric, we’ve invented ever-more sophisticated instruments for looking outward. It has been humbling. Go count all the sand grains on all the beaches in our world (about 7.5 x 10E17 [quintillion]) and when you get through, the number of stars in the known universe will still be a hundred times larger. Think of it, one hundred stars for every grain of sand. And who knows how many planets circle them, and how many possibilities there are for life of some kind to have evolved. One can only marvel at the scope and grandeur of this celestial play and the likely insignificance of our role. Still, it’s the only role we get, so even if we are merely travelers drifting in time on a droplet from the most recent cosmic sneeze, and even if we never contact any of the other intelligent life forms that must exist somewhere out there, we still want to play our role well and get a good review for our performance, and that will require clearer understanding of our part, a lot more rehearsal time and far-seeing direction.

Even if you never felt particularly close to an E. coli, fruit fly or mouse, new insights show how closely each of us is related to every other human alive. If the single ori-gin theory is correct, and genetic evidence strongly supports it, all human mito-chondria descend from a single female, a Mitochondrial Eve, who lived about 160,000 years ago; and all men inherited our Y chromo-somes from a Y-chromosomal Adam who lived about sixty

E. coli bacteria

Normal male 46,XY human karyotype. Photo courtesy of Wessex Reg. Genet-ics Centre, Wellcome Images.

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thousand years ago. Our human ancestors all lived in Africa until approximately seventy thousand years ago, when about one hundred and fifty people are thought to have migrated from what is now Ethiopia, across the mouth of the Red Sea and onto the Arabian Peninsula. From there they gradually spread to populate the rest of the world. Think of it, the entire human population outside of Africa may originally have descended from one small, restless group of African wanderers, who must have been fairly closely related ge-netically and culturally. About three thousand generations have passed since then, and most of the human variety that we see today must have evolved during that time.

Those three thousand generations haven’t always been a smooth trip. Volcanoes, ice ages, droughts, plagues, lions, crocodiles and a thousand other extrinsic challenges, pests and annoyances challenged us, but altogether we’ve had the chance to grow up in a garden that is beautiful, prolific and for the most part hospitable.

Our journey has brought out the worst and best in us. Thanks to advances in technology, health and food production, the human population has increased very quickly during recent centuries and is now on the way to seven billion. Our world-wide activities and effects are so pervasive that the fate of nearly all species, domestic or wild, now depends on us. In essence, we’ve brought nearly every species from a state of wildness to commensalism—feeding at our table through our tolerance for them or whatever habitats we leave for them. But lately we’ve begun to feel the resulting ecological pushback and to realize its seriousness and extent: land-use changes and deforestation at a planetary scale, destruction of natural habitats, rivers that don’t carry water anymore, cli-mate change, ocean acidification, increasing sea level, mas-sive extinction of species, reduction of ecosystem services and the deterioration of human health as pathogens and parasites co-adapted with their wild hosts suddenly spread to a brand new host—us—causing zoonotic diseases such as AIDS, West Nile virus, Dengue fever, Ebola and many other hemorrhagic fevers. As a result of all this, we have become the major source of our own morbidity and mortal-ity, either directly by killing each other through fighting and wars or indirectly by failing to curb mortality attributable to poverty and ignorance, for example infant and maternal mortality, water-borne illness and malaria. Paraphrasing the Talking Heads, “You may ask yourself, well…. how did we get here?” How could we leave such a trail of carnage and destruction in our wake? It was easy. We only did it to oth-ers.

On the other hand, as advances allowed some of us to de-vote more time to study, play and experimentation, we’ve

developed a most astonishing range of skills and achieve-ments, pushing the envelope of what it means to be human. We’ve learned to fly, visit the moon and nearby planets, map the universe and see traces of its beginning, manipu-late individual photons and atoms, convert matter to energy through nuclear fission, share information and ideas instant-ly around the world, compute at blinding speed, help the blind to see, repair and transplant genes and organs, map genomes, and even create primitive life itself. This too is the short list.

Repairing Earth

And now it is time to put skills like these to use in the largest and most-far reaching human project ever intentionally under-taken: repairing Earth. It is time to put the garden back together again. It won’t be mitochondrial Eve’s or Y-chromosomal Adam’s garden, for it will lack the giant ground sloth, the moas (ten spe-cies of flightless birds en-demic to New Zealand, one of which weighed more than five hundred pounds), the dodo, Stellar’s sea cow, the great auk, the passenger pigeon, Tasmanian wolf, Yangtze River dolphin and other species of animals and plants whose ex-tinction at our hands cannot be reversed. But the sooner we start, the more complete the garden will be.

The project will require multi-generational dedication, pa-tience and a sense of collaboration with all our human and non-human partners, for they will also have lots of work to do. Among other things we will:

Reduce the human population down to perhaps three •billion people over the coming five to ten generations by benign and voluntary means, through education, empowerment of women and an appropriate system of incentives/disincentives and alternatives to personal reproduction. That number is one-half billion less than existed in 1968 when we first saw Earth from space and when Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb.

Reduce our individual and societal impacts on the en-•vironment by learning to use resources equitably and sustainably—or not at all.

The Great Auk (Alca impennis)

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Replace climate- and habitat-destructive methods of •power generation with renewable energy from the sun, wind, waves, geothermal and other sustainable sourc-es.

Retreat from areas that are not needed by our decreas-•ing population, thereby releasing large areas to nature. Areas of land and sea restored to wildness will repay our debt to the natural communities so fundamental to our own evolution and will guarantee a robust future for the ecosystem services on which we all depend.

Of course in the near-term we must also succeed with re-forms of health care, education, financial oversight, inter-national debt, arms control and environmental regulation, but failure to achieve the longer-term goals will overwhelm these gains with unthinkable consequences.

On the other hand, if we and generations to come focus steadfastly on rebuilding the garden, we will eliminate pov-erty, grow healthy people and communities, and eliminate war and all the waste it entails, as there will be much more to share and much less to fight about.

Competition, self defense and even aggression will always have their roles, but in the end, our individual and collec-tive success will depend on how well we share, whether it be space for nature, individual opportunity, information, en-ergy, water, or stem cells. And the key to sharing is cultivat-ing the sense of relationship and common purpose. We’ve routinely highlighted the differences that create cultural and biological diversity, but now we must also celebrate the in-terdependency and close relationships between all people and all life on earth. Honoring those relationships is the only path to a beneficial future.

Long ago in Vedic times, Indra ruled the gods. From his court in the clouds above Mt. Meru, he defended gods and men against the forces of evil, commanded thunder and storms and brought water to the earth. Atop his court, a marvelous net stretched to infinity in all directions. At each intersection of the net lay a brilliant jewel, and the infinity

of jewels sparkled like stars in the heavens, each jewel catching and reflecting the reflections of all the others—and the reflections of those reflections—merging each and other, past and present, here and there.

Indra’s net surely extends to Earth, where all living things are its jewels, endlessly re-flecting and echoing the shared history of all life and all people, not only those

alive today, but all who have gone before, because they still live in us—in our genes, cells, emotions, memories and cultures.

In that spirit, let congratulations shine on the class of 2009, from your many boosters here in the tent and those cheer-ing from afar, and also from countless long-dead ancestors of all kinds. Those ancestors could not have known that their efforts would ultimately produce you. Most weren’t put together in ways that enable such a concept—or any concept—but you, and all of us, are nonetheless in their debt, because though you worked hard for a quarter-century to get to this milestone, they’ve been working for you for several billion years. There is no better way to honor their contributions and our shared past than by creating a better common future. Your work toward that goal already spar-kles through Indra’s net.

Dr. Steven K. Katona was one of the four founding faculty members of College of the Atlantic, and the founder of Allied Whale. In 1993, he became COA’s fourth president, serving until his retirement in 2006. He is now a Senior Adjunct Scientist at the New England Aquarium and a consultant on ocean health, climate change and the marine environment.

Bronze statue of Indra, Vedic god of weather and war, and king of the Gods. Photo from New World Encyclopedia.

105 eden street bar harbor, me 04609 www.coa.edu

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a local diner from five or six until nine a.m. At the end of the term, we went to the Smithsonian for a month—it was an incredible opportunity. We did more as undergrads than other schools did—and never used pickled cats.” New-man barely takes a breath as she explains that most college classes dissect pre-killed animals such as frogs, fetal pigs and cats. COA wouldn’t do that—and still doesn’t. Instead, Newman and her classmates dissected roadkill, beached marine mammals and gulls. Because there weren’t always texts available for these animals, students learned by explor-ing, sometimes writing their own dissection manuals.

It was her fascination with birds—and the frustrations of conserving them—that drove Newman to Newman’s Own Organics. At the time, she had been working as fundraiser for the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group. The rap-tors she was helping to protect—bald eagles and peregrine falcons—had become endangered from the chemicals used by industrial agricul-ture, particularly the pesticide DDT. As Newman struggled to raise funds for the organization, she watched her father seemingly rake money into his Newman’s Own Founda-tion, simply by selling his line of foods. Aha, she thought, Why not try something similar? Similar, but organic.

There was her father to contend with, however. According to the Newman’s Own Organics legend, organic did not always equal deli-cious in the Newman household. It meant heavy, whole grain muffins and bland nut loaves—Woodward’s attempt to keep the family healthy. Just raising the concept of an organ-ic food line to her father required a bit of creativity.

And so, like a good COA graduate, Newman focused on the doing rather than the telling. She volunteered to make a Thanksgiving dinner, not mentioning that it was going to be entirely organic. The plan worked. Newman and her busi-ness partner, childhood friend Peter Meehan, were granted a year’s worth of seed money—to be repaid. This was 1993, just six years after Newman finished COA.

They decided to further woo her father with his favorite snack food, making an organic, white flour pretzel. “There was no way in hell my dad was going to eat a whole grain flour pretzel,” says Newman. Today, Newman’s Own pro-duces thirteen kinds of pretzels, from twisted to straight, white flour to whole grain. There are also chocolates that are not only organic but made with shade-grown cacao

beans. She buys her strawberries from the first unionized strawberry grower in California. But when she was looking to create organic Fig Newmans, she ran up against a quirk of the organic trade. It was the mid-1990s, and she was unable to find organic figs. Then she looked among conventional figs and found someone growing acres of them organically. Acres—but because no one was interested in organic figs, they were sold as conventional fruits.

Could organics feed the world? Yes, insists Newman, “or-ganic farms can produce the same amount as conventional farms—but how would you know for sure until you test it?” What she’d like to see is “equal funding over equal time for organic techniques.” So much money is put into chemicals and herbicides, she says, and hardly any funding goes into organic concepts such as crop rotation and buffer zones. At

the very least, more research would help people trust organic methods more. Newman herself has a staff person focused on food safety is-sues, such as E. coli runoff from cat-tle. That, she notes, “is a reflection of how cattle are farmed. Cattle raised on grass have acidic stomachs. They don’t get the E. coli bacteria,” and so their manure isn’t harmful to veg-etables.

Within a dozen years of grocery stores finding shelf space for New-man’s Own Organics, organic foods have driven a wedge into the mar-ketplace. Today, even rural Maine supermarkets carry their own or-ganic line, something unthinkable when Newman was shopping those stores as a COA student. “I’m glad to have been a part of that change,” she says. “What I wanted was for organic food to be more for the

masses, supporting an environmental concept and a form of agriculture, without asking people to change their whole perspective and the kinds of food they ate.”

Her business hunch has paid off. Royalties from Newman’s Own Organics go to the Newman’s Own Foundation, which to date has donated more than $265 million dollars to educational and charitable organizations worldwide (of which COA, gratefully, has been one).

Newman was in Maine just recently. She came to Portland to visit a McDonald’s restaurant. Yes, McDonald’s. New-man’s concept of organics for the masses has been accepted by some six hundred New England and northern New York golden-arch franchises, which now carry Newman’s Own Organics coffee. Fair Trade at McDonald’s: If that’s not or-ganics for all, what is?

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Planting Peace, Bringing it HomeNeil Oculi ’11, Zimmerman Cardona ’11 and Andrew Louw ’11 create an ambitious Davis Project for Peace: reforestation, community involvement, student leadership, media attention

June 17 dawns oddly cold and rainy for three COA third-year students who are in St. Lucia, a Caribbean Island just south of Martinique. Neil Oculi (whom you first read about in the Copenhagen article on page 12), Zimmerman Cardona and Andrew Louw think about staying in, but they have a schedule to keep—not to mention promises: to themselves, to the Kathryn W. Davis Projects for Peace and to various supporters in St. Lucia, Oculi’s home. The three are recipients of a $10,000 grant from Projects for Peace to plant a thousand trees along the banks of one of the island’s many rivers to prevent soil run-off in a heavily used agricultural area in the Fond D’Or watershed.

The trio, all United World College graduates and COA Da-vis Scholars, want to be certain their project, Propagating Peace, won’t just make a difference for the ten weeks of their grant; and they don’t just want to plant the thousand trees, or even the additional 2,500 they obtain thanks to the strength of their outreach. They want to plant firm roots in St. Lucian society to be sure that the work will be car-ried on by those who live in the region. So the group has planned numerous meetings with the farmers and youth who will be caring for the trees.

Oculi was born and raised in the Mabouya River Valley of eastern St. Lucia, where the project is centered. It’s a region that once belonged to a large agricultural corporation but is now divided into small banana-growing farms support-ing some thirteen communities and about 7,500 people. As they ready themselves for the meeting on this rainy day,

Cardona, who hails from Belize, Louw of South Africa and Oculi wonder how to frame the tree-planting re-quest. One official has already told them, “Farmers have caused the problem of reforestation,” so it’s the farmers who will need to resolve it. But Stephen Best, a farmer and chair of the Mabouya Valley Fair-Trade Farmer’s Association, warned them that it wouldn’t be easy to persuade farmers to plant trees—even though meeting a twenty-foot forested setback from the riverbank is a requirement for the fair trade certification most farmers work under.

Next to tourism, bananas are the largest contributor to St. Lucia’s gross national product. But the Lucian planta-tions are tiny compared to those in other nations that market to Chiquita, Dole and other large food produc-ers. With the entire island the size of just one banana plantation in Ecuador, fair trade offers a means of get-ting beyond economies of scale; yet Lucians are con-cerned about the restrictions, such as maintaining yields

if they reduce fertilizer use. Meanwhile, rich valley topsoil washes into the river during flash floods, pig waste upriver pollutes the wash water downriver, fertilizer contamina-tion decreases the biodiversity of river and coastal eco-systems—including coral reefs—and invasive plants, pests and diseases threaten economic productivity and public health.

And so, a bit wet, the trio meets with a group of farmers; Neil Oculi does the talking:

Neil: [Smiling] The reason we’re here is to work with you. We need to figure out ways to prevent you from losing soil. We know that every time there is heavy rain the river bank keeps eroding.

Farmer Joseph: That is true—I am losing my land every day. Look over there—

Neil: Yeah, I know. For this reason we will work with you to stabilize the river bank, we will also work with students and plant trees.

Farmer Joseph: What tree you planting?

Neil: Well we have to plant the best trees to do the job.

Farmer Joseph: What trees you planting?

Neil: We will be planting both tree crops and mahogany.

Farmer Joseph: I want mangoes. Breadfruit. Oranges. Not mahogany.

Neil Oculi ’11and Zimmerman Cardona ’11 plant the first tree. All photos courtesy of the Propagating Peace project.

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Neil: I see. But if we want to hold up the soil, we have to use mahogany too.

Farmer Joseph: OK, OK, OK. But I want more tree crops. Everyone will have to plant trees, man. I think it is a good idea and everyone will do it.

Farmer Joseph’s wife: You can only speak for yourself; you know how difficult some of these farmers are.

“She was right,” Oculi says later. “Our message had nothing to do with fair trade certification or even environmental degradation. We had to explain to the farmers that they are losing land which results in a loss of yields.”

Mahogany, while a good soil stabilizer, is not a farm crop. If the farmers are going to take the time to plant and care for trees, they want them to bear harvestable fruits like mango, wax apple or avocado—but these trees are more expen-sive. The COA students suggest a compromise: for every four fruit trees, they’ll supply one forest tree. That idea is well received.

In late June, a family emergency takes Louw back to South Africa, leaving Cardona and Oculi, both graduates of the Simon Bolivar agricultural UWC in Venezuela, with the day-to-day work. Through email and Skype, the three continue to meet. Louw drafts reports, adding input to the workshops and the blog. The others begin their quest for youth leaders to carry on the project after the students leave.

By early July, the St. Lucia Social Development Fund has stepped in as a partner, thanks in part to a proposal Louw drafts. Another organization offers funding for the group’s outreach efforts, allowing Cardona and Oculi to expand their student group to thirty-five, with seven youth facili-tators spread throughout the Mabouya Valley. “It is the ripple effect of education that can change behavior in a society,” says Cardona.

These facilitators, who receive expenses and a small sti-pend, are given a week’s training in food security, bio-diversity loss, environmental degradation, the impact of these issues on their communities—and what they can do locally to counter these global forces. Cardona offers an-other slogan: “If we think local and act locally, we may have a chance of fixing the global issues.”

Meanwhile the three add notes to their blog, Propagating Peace:

July 5Going through the valley to find our facilitators was like a breath of fresh air. The very diverse communities provide such a great classroom for both Zimm and I to learn: for me, catching up with old friends and using past experi-ence as my workbook. A lot of my learning is derived from explaining to Zimm as we cruise around the valley. It feels good to be home. I love the valley. It seems that I am almost at a stage of self actualization for a brief mo-ment.

But then I quickly get back to the reality that there is a lot more work to be done. So as we arrive home I tell Zimm, Oye Zimm, action points, man. At about six p.m. we take a walk down the road to Dernière Rivière with our little notebooks to continue planning.

More partners step in. The Ministry of Forestry decides to give the group its trees, freeing up money to purchase fruit trees at four dollars a piece. Then the Ministry of Agricul-ture reduces the price to $1.50: More trees, more river-bank protection, greater community outreach.

On July 11, the first four hundred trees come in and are distributed for planting among the farmers of the Grand Ravine River. Oculi and Cardona plant the first tree—an exciting moment after all their hard work. But Oculi is cau-

Crouched on the top of a riverbank eroded during a flash flood, Andrew Louw ’11 wonders how many tons of soil are washed to the ocean.

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Recent Alumni Global Food Work

tious: “The process of propagating peace requires partnerships among many stakeholders. Ownership of the project by the farmers and the rest of the community is vital to the success of the project.”

Over the next seven weeks, more trees are added, more farmers engaged. Oculi and Cardona appear on television and in the newspapers. The leverag-ing of Katherine W. Davis’ original $10,000 grant has multiplied the capacity far beyond the group’s expectations. As they get ready to leave St. Lucia, Cardona writes:

…The river is being stabilized, farmers are engaging and embracing the proj-ect, the youth are happy to have participated. We purchased five hundred more trees so that farmers can continue planting trees after we leave. A lot was achieved, but I can still see that more continuous work has to be done. The survival of the trees is important, and success can only be achieved in the long run. It is a race that has to be contin-ued to preserve soil, protect water resources and ensure the economic and social health of people in the valley.

Our project is not simply an environmental initiative: it is an endeavor in holistic implementation of applied human ecol-ogy. The project’s impact will be felt long after we’re gone: creating jobs, ensuring food security, improving education—all leading to happier, healthier communities in the valley.

To read more about Propagating Peace, visit http://propagatingpeace.wordpress.com, the project blog from which this article is drawn. ~ DG

In her introductory essay to this section, Heather Albert-Knopp ’99 writes that everywhere she goes in the world of food systems, she finds COA in-volvement. This is true both locally and globally. On this page and the next are recent alumni already applying their human ecological degrees to the wider world.

Ashlesha Khadse ’08 is working in India for La Via Campesina. This organi-zation is a large international grassroots movement of peasants, small- and medium-sized producers, landless people, rural women, indigenous people, rural youth and agricultural workers who are involved in creating a peasant and family farm based alternative food and agriculture model that respects cultural, ecological and social diversity. Writes Khadse, “My work here is to provide technical support to the grassroots movements in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka … that are already working to change the model of ag-riculture and development.

They get together to make the political decisions ... and then I work with them to make sure that their plans are being carried out.”

For his senior project, Bonface Omudi ’09 interviewed members of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, or MOFGA, to try to understand what elements of that organization could be applied in his homeland of western Kenya “to assist farmers in organizing themselves and making food production as equally successful there” as in Maine. Industrial agriculture, he writes, has “continuously undermined the poten-tial for agricultural self-sufficiency, especially the comparative advantage for food production in western Kenya.” A graduate of the Simon Bolivar United World College of Venezuela where he studied agricultural sci-ence, Omudi is pictured here working with a group of beekeepers in the Mexican town of Temax, Yucatan. These beekeepers, all women, are pro-moting apiculture as a technique of sustainable agriculture.

Proud planter.

Ashlesha Khadse ’08 kneels in the front row with a yellow shirt. Surrounding her are politi-cal leaders and staff from La Via Campesina at a meeting in Selingue, Mali.

Bonface Omudi ’09, left, stands with some of the beekeepers with whom he worked.

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Nanoparticles are beyond small. If you were a nanoparticle and happened to try to snuggle up to a red blood cell, that cell would be seven miles long. At least that’s what Ian Il-luminato ’06 says, and he might know. As a health and en-vironment campaigner at Friends of the Earth, his days are spent researching nanotechnology.

Despite their size—one-10,000th the diameter of a human hair—nanoparticles are extremely powerful. In foods, they can enhance flavor and color, or serve as potent nutritional additives. A chocolate nutritional drink mix created for tod-dlers, for instance, uses a nano additive to make the iron more available to small bodies. Nanoparticles are adver-tised as having the potential to reduce fat, carbohydrates and calories and increase fiber, protein and vitamins—turn-ing junk foods into veritable health options.

In this brave new world of food processing, there’s no tell-ing what such particles can’t do, at least according to their promoters. In agriculture, nanoparticles in soil additives can make fertilizers more potent and alter pesticides to respond to specific conditions or targets. In packaging, antibodies at-tached to fluorescent nanoparticles can detect chemicals or food-borne pathogens, or coat surfaces with antimicrobial and antifungal properties.

At a time when every public doorway is adorned with hand sanitizers, when obesity has become rampant, couldn’t this be a good thing?

Ah, but how much do we know? That’s the question Illumi-nato asks. Nanoparticles can also be more chemically reac-tive and bioactive than other particles. Their very small size allows nanoparticles increased access to our bodies, so they are more likely than larger particles to enter cells, tissues and organs and may present great toxicity risks for human health and the environment. Because the immune system also operates at the nanoscale, these particles might also compromise our immune system response, Illuminato says.

And the use of nanoparticles is not limited to food products. According to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars nanotechnology inventory database, there are more than a thousand products on the market, employing different types of nanoparticles, including common house-hold products such as refrigerators, water filters, make-up and toys impregnated with antimicrobial nanosilver. Since what goes into our food and household products also goes into the environment, these potent antibacterial nanomate-rials could disrupt the functioning of beneficial bacteria in our bodies and beyond. Illuminato worries that they can in-advertently cause the development of more virulent harm-ful bacteria.

In researching the presence of nanoparticles in food, Il-luminato found that at least one hundred food products—possibly as many as six hundred—contain nanoparticles. By next year, researchers estimate that sales of nano foods will be worth almost six billion dollars. Currently, the United States does not regulate nanotechnology and manufacturers are still not required to identify nanoparticle ingredients on product labels, conduct nano-specific safety tests, or submit their products for approval prior to sale.

The issue has not been lost on the Obama administration. In September, thanks to a legal petition submitted by Friends of the Earth and the International Center for Technology Assessment, the Environmental Protection Agency agreed to look into the possible health and environmental risks of some nanomaterials, realizing that we still know too little about whether such particles may persist and accumulate in unusual and potentially harmful ways.

For more information about Ian’s nanotechnology cam-paign, visit http://www.foe.org/healthy-people/nanotech-nology-campaign.

Technology’s Trojan HorseIan Illuminato ’06 researches nanoparticles in our foods

During his internship with Greenpeace Italy, Ian Illuminato ’06 helped lead a movement against genetically engineered crops in Europe. His se-nior project, “Liberated Activism: Emerging New Directions,” focused on less traditional means of activism, such as eco-art and radical performance. He also has worked for Greenpeace International and the United Nations Environmental Program in Italy and currently works closely with the Cam-paign for Safe Cosmetics. His published reports include “Nano and Biocid-al Silver: Extreme Germ Killers Present a Growing Threat to Public Health,” “Nanotechnology in Food and Agriculture: Out of the Laboratory and On To Our Plates” and “Human Ecology and Childhood: An Adult Connec-tion.” His writing has appeared in the Journal of Nanoparticle Research and the European Journal of Oncology and he has been quoted in numer-ous media outlets including The New York Times, Scientific American, BusinessWeek and Reuters. Ian Illuminato ’06.

Photo by Nick Berning of Friends of the Earth.

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COA Celebrates 10 Years of FarmingBy Eliza Worrick, COA intern

In the spring of 1999, alumni Barbarina Heyerdahl ’88 and Aaron Heyerdahl ’87 moved to Vermont, selling to COA the farm that had formed Barbarina’s senior project. During the decade since, Beech Hill Farm has been shaped into a place where COA students pursue academic endeavors, and the college, the island’s public schools, local residents, visitors—and even some users of the island’s food pan-tries—obtain organic food. With the installation of a wind turbine by the Practicum in Residential Windpower class last spring, the farm is also something of a showcase for alternative energy.

From local to global

Thanks to a grant that supported Alyson Harris ’09 in build-ing a greenhouse for her senior project, the farm is expand-ing its greens and cold-hardy produce. Paired with the pur-chase of a walk-in cooler on campus, the college can now serve farm produce into November and as early as March. “In terms of financial sustainability, that could be a big help,” says farm manager Alyssa Mack, who started at the farm last February.

Beech Hill Farm has also built strong relationships with the local public school system. When Heather Albert-Knopp ’99 served as the farm-to-school coordinator for Healthy Acadia, she helped to connect Beech Hill with local schools. This continuing connection was featured on The Martha Stewart Show last January.

The importance of buying local can’t be stressed enough, says Albert-Knopp (see page 25). “Local foods are often fresher and better tasting, and we can use our dollars to directly support farmers and keep money circulating in the local community.”

Working with the United Kingdom’s Organic Research Centre-Elm Farm and the University of Kassel’s Faculty of Organic Agricultural Sciences in Germany as part of COA’s new Trans-Atlantic Partnership in Sustainable Food Systems, the three institutions hope to strengthen education and un-derstanding of global food systems.

Sharing the harvest

Local food is celebrated—but costly. The farm’s Share the Harvest program extends high-quality, organic produce to those struggling to make ends meet. Coordinated by Healthy Acadia and COA, and supported by the Bingham Program, Share the Harvest offers vouchers to twenty income-eligible individuals each growing season. These work like gift cer-tificates, encouraging folks to come to the farm where they can see firsthand where their food is grown. (Donations to the program can be made payable to Beech Hill Farm, with Share the Harvest in the memo line and mailed to COA).

Eliza Worrick, a communications student at Clark Univer-sity in Worcester, Massachusetts, interned last summer in COA’s public relations department.

COA’s wind turbine, product of Practicum in Wind Energy class from last spring, can be seen through a field of flowers at Beech Hill Farm. Photo by Eliza Worrick.

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CLASS NOTES

1975In August, Bar-bara Dole Acos-ta (’75) was on Mount Desert Is-land and offered COA a New Eng-land premiere of

Guazapa: Yesterday’s Enemies, a film about the change in El Salvador, where a member of the revolutionary party, the Farabundo Martí National Libera-tion Front, or FMLN, is now president. Acosta’s husband, Francisco Acosta, a native of Guazapa, which suffered heavy bombings during the civil war against the FMLN, is featured in the film. Their children helped with trans-lations.

1977Hugh MacArthur re-turned to campus in June to celebrate the graduation of his daughter Maggie Mac-Arthur-McKay ’09.

1985“I dropped out of the nine-to-five work world five years ago to figure out how to live in a different way. Still working on it!” writes Peter Heller. “This has been a very busy year as my non-profit consulting and film producing busi-nesses have grown a bit more success-

ful, while at the same time my daughter graduated from high school and is start-ing at Green Mountain College. Most importantly, I continue to dance, play and meditate as much as possible.”

1988Kim (Robertson) Chater illus-trated A World Without Ice, No-bel Peace Prize winner Henry

Pollock’s latest book, introduced by Al Gore. The book is published by Pen-guin Group.

1989Valerie Giles had a gallery showing this fall of drawings at Danese on West 24th Street in New York City.

1990This June, Peter Moon returned to campus to celebrate the graduation of stepdaughter Lauren Broomall ’09.

Susi Newborn is currently working as Climate Change Campaign coordinator in New Zealand with Oxfam. This past year she produced and directed Kit & Maynie: Tea, Scones & Nuclear Dis-armament (www.kitandmaynie.com), a documentary about two ninety-year-

old New Zealand peace activists. Film rights to her book, A Bonfire in My Mouth, were bought by an American producer. She is active in local politics and serves on the board of trustees of a local high school, the board of the Coconut Free Press Trust, and as a di-rector of the Awaawaroa Bay Eco-Vil-lage. She says, “My greatest joy still is to walk on our local palm beach with my children and my Swedish vallhund and give thanks that we live in such a beautiful part of the world. Kia ora!”

1991Louise Tremblay and Neil Anderson welcomed Karl Embden Anderson-Tremblay, born on February 25. They soon hope to have him accompanying them on their North Carolina country bike rambles. Wherever he treks, Karl carries a bit of Maine because his mid-dle name is that of the pond where his family has a cottage. Louise has started a new job at the art center in Carrboro, North Carolina, coordinating programs for children and families. She would enjoy hearing from COA types who are visiting or wishing to perform in the area.

In July, Josh Winer was awarded a Mas-sachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fel-lowship. Examples of his photographic work and current projects are available at www.joshwiner.com. On August 6, he and Dawn Lamendola (’92) had their first child, Griffin Maxwell Winer. Weighing in at 6 pounds, 12 ounces and 21 inches long, Griffin is happy, healthy and growing like a weed!

1992Mark Tully has joined a Playback Theatre troupe in Providence, Rhode Island. Playback Theatre is a global network of troupes that use improvi-sational forms to “play back” stories told from the audience, depicting the salient psychic and emotional content of the tales. It is employed to help se-niors, immigrants, prisoners, youth and the general public explore deeply personal and social dynamics. Mark thanks all of his human ecologist peers

Alumni Association

Update Your Info »

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Contact Dianne Clendaniel at 207-288-2944, ext. 268 or dclendaniel@coa.edu

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Career Information »

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Contact Jill Barlow-Kelley at 207-288-2944, ext. 236 or jbk@coa.edu

Alumni Resources: www.coa.edu/alumni

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for the many years of tolerating, affirm-ing, insisting, threatening and pleading with him to Just join a damn theater troupe already!

1993Dan Farrenkopf and Eamonn Hutton ’05 returned to campus last spring to install a memorial to Jesse Tucker ’95 in the

Turrets Seaside Garden. The planting beds of the garden were designed and reconstructed by Hutton as his senior project; the concrete garden fountain was refinished by Lunaform, the com-pany Farrenkopf cofounded with Phid Lawless. Jesse, a landscape architect, died in a car accident in 2006. He had worked on the garden and especially the fountain area as a student.

Sarah (Cole) McDaniel is happy to an-nounce the opening of her solo law practice, Maine Land Law, LLC, PA in Gorham, Maine. She’d love to hear from other COA alumni lawyers who have taken a similar path. If you have legal questions about land you own in Maine (boundary disputes, rights-of-way, permitting issues, etc.) she en-courages you to contact her at Sarah.McDaniel@MaineLandLaw.com.

1994Nishanta Rajakaruna, former and in-coming faculty member in botany at COA, currently assistant professor at San Jose State University in the De-partment of Biological Sciences, is first author with R.S. Boyd, on “Advances in serpentine geoecology: A retrospec-tive” published this year in Northeast-ern Naturalist 16 (5): 1-7. For a second publication see Tanner Harris ’06.

1999Calamity, a po-etry chapbook written by Josie Sigler was pub-lished by Proem Press and Uni-versity of South-

ern California. It is part of a longer collection called The Cowgirl Letters, a series of letters between Calamity Jane and Annie Oakley. It is available from Proem Press’s website, proem-press.com/publications.htm. A second book, Living Must Bury, is the winner of the 2010 Motherwell Prize, and is forthcoming from Fence Books. Josie is currently a Wallis Annenberg Fellow at USC and at work on her disserta-tion, “Toward a Queer Narratology of Trauma.” Josie and her partner Jennifer got hitched this year—about four hours after it became illegal in California. She writes: “We still feel enormous resis-tance to an institution founded on in-equality, one that awards privileges to some while denying rights to the most vulnerable members of our communi-ties. But we figured that since the state was no longer sponsoring our mar-

riage, we could be another thorn in its side. And there’s nothing we love more than that. Except each other.”

2000Chelsea Mooser completed her PhD in biological chemistry at the Univer-sity of California Los Angeles. She is researching breast cancer and recently wrote for The Women’s International Perspective, www.thewip.net: “Weigh-ing the Risks and Benefits of Hormone Replacement Therapy.”

2001In October, Ben Macko married Kate Caivano, daughter of Helen ’80 and former faculty member Roc Caivano. A week later, Kate started at COA as Sustainable Business Program adminis-trator (see page 3).

Leah Stetson ’01, MPhil ’06 recently bought her first home in Raymond, Maine, surrounded by ponds and lakes. In addition to her continued work

in wetland science and policy with the nonprofit organization, Association of State Wetland Managers, Leah volun-teers with local land trusts and is con-structing a vernal pool mapping study for the Town of Windham. In early June she taught fourth graders how to build eco-friendly fairy houses at Black Brook Preserve in Windham. She writes “strange wetlands” for the ASWM blog, www.aswm.org/wordpress.

On September 4, in the presence of fam-ily and friends, Jor-dan Posamentier and Maria Skorobogatov ’03 tied the knot in

Lafayette, California.

2002“Things are as crazy and hectic as ever, but proceeding forward nonetheless,” writes Nicole D’Avis. “I was promoted

Inspired by Alumni

Franklin Jacoby ’12Interested in the limitations of science

Studies biology, philosophy »of nature and Wittgenstein

Spent the summer »cataloguing nesting patterns of gulls on Great Duck Island

Writing tutor »

Currently conducting an »independent study on the history of the philosophy of science

Wrote a profile of COA for »Sierra Magazine

Franklin says that COA alumnae Margaret Youngs ’96, Alana Beard ’03 and Marjo Whittlesey ’05 were all instrumental in his decision to apply to COA.

Our alumni are our best resource for identifying prospective stu-dents.

Who are you inspiring? Let me know.

Sarah Haughn, Office of Admission, 207-288-2944, ext. 330, shaughn@coa.edu

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CLASS NOTESin July to program director at a youth development non-profit in Boston, So-ciedad Latina, where I’ve been work-ing for the past six years (and hosted

Tom Rush ’07 as an in-tern a few years back—more COA interns are always welcome). This February, Mark Ander-son and I were married in Oaxaca, Mexico. Thanks to COA for start-

ing my appreciation of Mexico! Now we’re trying our best to buy a house around Roslindale, Boston. Guests are always welcome; hopefully by the time this prints we’ll be living in our new home!”

Large-scale, ocean-inspired installation sculptures are the latest art world niche

of Blakeney Sanford. Her three Southern California shows this past summer consisted of pieces created using epoxy resin, fiberglass, and rebar. You can see more of her work at

www.blakeneysanford.com.

2003Erin Enberg came back to campus to celebrate the graduation of sister Kelly Enberg ’09.

Tim Fuller recently moved to Belfast, Maine to build membership and coor-dinate public affairs for Maine Farm-land Trust, a statewide organization working to keep Maine’s farms farm-ing. Tim is also working with Maine Farmland Trust’s art gallery which cu-rated the Food For Thought, Time for Action exhibit in COA’s Blum Gallery this fall.

2004In April, Dustin Eirdosh moved off Mount Desert Island and across the country to southwestern Washing-ton State to be the creamery manager at Willapa Hills, where he is making mold-ripened (blue) cheeses from a flock of eighty dairy sheep and a neigh-

boring cow dairy. Growing fungi inside cheese has become an obsession!

In late February, Allison Rogers Furbish and husband, Shawn, expect their first child. “We’re very excited and a little terrified, but looking forward to bring-ing a new little human ecologist into the world in 2010!” she says. Mean-while, Allison continues managing me-dia relations and traveling around the country for King Arthur Flour in Nor-wich, Vermont, and writing for the lo-cal Upper Valley Life magazine.

Nathaniel Keller re-turned to campus this June to celebrate the graduation of his brother Michael

Keller ’09. Like Nat, Michael went from graduation to a year abroad on a Watson Fellowship. Nat is in his sec-ond year at University of Maryland School of Law.

2006Tanner Harris is first author on an ar-ticle he published with Nishanta Ra-jakaruna ’94, “Adiantum viridimon-tanum, Aspidotis densa, Minuartia marcescens, and Symphyotrichum Rhiannon: Additional Serpentine En-demics from Eastern North America” in Northeastern Naturalist 16 (5): 111-120 published by Humboldt Field Re-search Institute.

Jessica Glynn gradu-ated from City Uni-versity of New York School of Law on May 15; she took the New York Bar Exam at the end of July. (Also in the photo-

graph is Santiago Salinas ’05.)

2007In June, Maria Lis Baiocchi presented a paper at the Fifth Central European University Graduate Conference in So-cial Sciences. “My paper was based on my master’s thesis work; it was titled ‘The Activist Self: Collective Identity in

Anti-nationalist, Anti-militarist, Femi-nist Mobilization in Serbia.’” The pre-sentation was part of a panel on Civil Society, Social Movements and Politics of Discontent. Conference participants included CEU graduates and current students, and scholars from other uni-versities in North America and Europe.

2008Chris Aaront is serving as a coastal re-source management Peace Corps vol-unteer in the Philippines.

On June 7 Sarah Helene Barrett and Jose Juan Perez Orozco ’09 were mar-ried in COA’s Beatrix Farrand Gardens by faculty member in biology Suzanne Morse, Jose’s academic advisor (who threatened that there would be no wedding without a senior project!). The two are now heading to Gainesville,

Florida where Jose has taken a posi-tion as an Organic Certification Coor-dinator at Florida Certified Organic Growers, a non-

profit that helps certify small organic farmers throughout the region. Sarah writes that she will continue to study and work in alternative healing and ed-ucation as she and Jose “work together to build strong, healthy communities.”

2009“I’ve been monitoring water quality, grant writing, filling out permit applica-tions, organizing and conducting sur-veys of local flora and fauna,” writes Sarah Drerup. She is excited to have started her AmeriCorps position with the Monday Creek Restoration Project in New Straitsville, Ohio. “It’s been a great experience so far and I think it’s going to be a great year!”

Virve Hirsmaki and Ben Smith (’07) have announced their engagement. The two are plan-ning on a January

wedding.(Class years in parentheses refer to alumni who did not graduate from COA.)

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Our grants manager, Tom Adelman, reports that COA recently re-ceived a $10,000 grant from the Quimby Family Foundation to support scholarships for the col-

lege’s high school introduction pro-gram, Islands Through Time. COA and other Maine colleges will be receiving a portion of a $20 million grant for work on sustainability that the Univer-sity of Maine Orono received from the National Science Foundation’s Experi-mental Program to Stimulate Competi-tive Research, the EPSCoR program. COA is in its second year of funding from the Long Cove Foundation for a collaborative program between COA and the Penobscot East Research Cen-ter. Additionally, the first installment of a five-year grant from the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation will be used to help send COA students to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen in De-cember (see page 12).

Judy Allen, former director of informa-tion services, is now COA’s registrar. She took the position upon the retire-ment of former registrar David Bald-win. Judy began working at COA in 1978 as a research assistant to former President Steve Katona, who was then director of Allied Whale. In 1988, she became the first director of computer services at the college. The new direc-tor of information services is Pamela Mitchell, our longtime phone, network and email guru.

Allied Whale recently received the fol-lowing grants: $15,500 from the Ces-tone Foundation for the marine mam-mal stranding program, and nearly $100,000 from the John H. Prescott Marine Mammal Stranding and Health Grant Program for the maintenance and enhancement of the Marine Mammal Stranding Response Program (MMSRP) of Maine’s Mid-Coast/Downeast re-gion. The grant helps COA run the na-tionally recognized stranding response program.

John Anderson, the William H. Drury Chair in Evolution, Ecology and Natural

History, presented a paper on the His-tory of Natural History at the second meeting of the Human Ecology Section of the Ecological Society of America in Albuquerque, New Mexico. At the meetings, Jacqueline Gill ’05, who is finishing her PhD in paleoecology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, presented a paper in the section on paleoecology, debunking the idea that the Pleistocene extinctions were due to a comet strike and Yasmin Lucero ’99, who is doing post-doctoral work at NOAA/NMFS in Seattle, presented on her work in fisheries. With John at those meetings were Rich Borden, faculty member in psychology and the Rachel Carson Chair in Human Ecol-ogy, Stephen Ressel, faculty mem-ber in biology and Don Cass, faculty member in chemistry. Rich and John were members of the founding group of ESA’s Human Ecology Section at last year’s annual meeting. Also, John was elected to the Board of the Natu-ral History Network. While out west, John, Rich and Steve attended a three-day meeting of the Eco League col-lege consortium in La Plata, Colorado with faculty representatives of all five Eco League colleges (the others are Northland, Prescott, Alaska Pacific and Green Mountain). Plans were made to

offer a joint field-oriented course next summer, based at COA.

Nancy Andrews and Dru Colbert vis-ited Clark Lawrence ’92 at Galezza Castle in Bologna, Italy where he of-fers reading retreats, with the hopes of bringing future COA classes to this magical place. They are looking to cre-ate a class in museum study, art his-tory and contemporary art. Nancy was also busy screening her new film, On a Phantom Limb, at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Maine In-ternational Film Festival (both in Wa-terville and Bar Harbor), the 14 Karat Cabaret at the Evergreen House in Bal-timore, Maryland and at COA. She has begun work on her next film, which has the working title The Eyes are Be-hind the Ears.

After learning about i n t e r c o n n e c t i o n s among biogeochemi-cal cycles at the Eco-logical Society of America meetings in August, Don Cass

writes, “Did you know that it may have been a nickel deficiency which limited methane production and allowed oxy-gen to build up on earth? That people are trying to figure out if there will be enough nitrogen around to absorb our increasing CO2? That the nitrogen cycle may respond to warmer temperatures? Or that as northern snows melt due to planetary warming, the ground may ac-tually get colder?” He spent some time exploring Albuquerque with architect Sue Freed ’80 and then headed to San-ta Fe to catch up with Larry Clendenin, former COA admissions director, and his wife Casey.

Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Sala-zar and Senator Susan Collins met at the college’s Straus Seminar Room, on the second floor of Turrets along with the acting head of the National Park Service and Maine conservation lead-ers working on creative ways to protect the Maine Woods, including Ken Cline, Associate Dean for Faculty and faculty member in public policy and envi-ronmental law, Sherry Huber, COA trustee and Ted Koffman, former long-

Have you seen COA’s new website?Those who aren’t able to come to campus on a regular basis may appreciate viewing many of the lectures and presentations made by students, faculty and guest speakers.

Thanks to Zach Soares ’00, COA’s site provides access to recorded lectures and events through Vim-eo, YouTube and iTunesU. Zach’s

talents as an audio and video editor extend to the student video spot-lights on the

homepage of the new website.

Go to www.coa.edu/videos to learn more.

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FACULTY & COMMUNITY NOTES

time staff member, now head of Maine Audubon. Ken was invited because of his work with the Sierra Club and Keeping Maine’s Forests as Forests task force. Writes Ken, “I chose the room so that the Secretary could look out on Frenchman Bay during the meeting and see that Maine is a national treasure.”

From left to right in the photo are Alec Giffen, director of Maine State Forest Service, Alan Hutchinson of Forest Society of Maine, Woolfe Tone of the Trust for Public Land, Karen Woodsum of the Maine Sierra Club, United States Senator Susan Collins, Eleanor Kinney, president of the National Resources Council of Maine, Kenneth Salazar, Secretary of the Interior, Rosaire Pel-letier, liaison to Gov. John Baldacci of Maine, Ted Koffman, former Summer Programs director at COA, now head of Maine Audubon, Eric Stirling, owner of West Branch Pond Camps, Sherry Huber of the Maine Tree Foundation and COA trustee, and Ken Cline.

During her spring 2009 sabbatical, Dru Col-bert, faculty member in art and design, com-pleted research and de-velopment on Flotsam, a performance instal-lation piece that pre-

miered October 17. The piece includes sculptural objects and a shadow play. It is part of a series of site-specific per-formance/installation events focused on the landscape, history and folklore of Mount Desert Island which began with Graupel, a visual opera on ice that premiered on frozen Somes Pond. Her interest in these works, she writes, “is to create situations that respond to the ephemeral passing of seasons, call attention to the phenomenal, invoke a sense of mystery,” and involve local community members at all stages. “Be-

cause the event is ephemeral, I plan to direct video and photographic docu-mentation that can become lasting works in their own right.” This piece explores themes of the human connec-tion to the sea.

John Cooper, faculty member in music, was a guest artist at Univer-sity of Maine Farming-ton and guest speaker at the Bagaduce Mu-sic Youth Composer’s

Competition Awards Ceremony, and performed at the Bar Harbor Jazz Fes-tival in August. He also taught at the Jazz Intensives Summer Camp held at COA in August.

Following the successful erection of a wind turbine at Beech Hill Farm, Anna Demeo, lecturer in physics and engi-neering, spoke about “Wind Power for Your Home or Business” at the Green & Lean Lecture Series in Southwest Harbor.

Dave Feldman, faculty member in math and physics, served on the sci-entific committee of the International Conference on Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents 2009 (ESHIA/WEHIA 2009) in Beijing, China in June. He co-organized the weeklong Beijing Workshop on Fron-tiers in Complex Systems: Complex So-cial Networks and Urban Dynamics in July, sponsored by the Institute of Theo-retical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Santa Fe Institute, where he delivered a lecture titled “In-troduction to Analysis of Complex Net-works: Challenges and Opportunities.” Feldman also wrote a review of the text Complex and Adaptive Dynamical Systems: A Primer by Claudius Gros for the July issue of Physics Today.

The Sustainable Business Program re-ceived an important endorsement this summer, says Jay Friedlander, Sharpe-McNally Chair in Green and Socially Responsible Business: a Davis Founda-tion grant of $144,000 over two years. Jay was also interviewed for an article in Newsweek, and was instrumental

in getting COA into the Ashoka U pro-gram (see page 3).

Carrie Graham, who served as the interpreter at the George B. Dorr Mu-seum of Natural History last summer and is now acting facilities manager, reports on the great success of the mu-seum. “We kicked off the season with the opening of the Grierson exhibit on June 28, which included live music and wonderful stories about Stan Grierson told by his friends and family. Interim director Scott Swann ’86, MPhil ’93 and summer staff Addams Samuel ’11 and I have worked hard to enhance and promote the museum with improve-ments to exhibits and signage, reorgani-zation of the gift shop, new educational programs and improved community visibility. With a bit of help from the summer’s bad weather, we had more than 3,300 visitors in July and August.”

In addition to being a keynote presenter at the Society of Human Ecology con-ference in Manchester, England, last July, David Hales, COA president, was a panelist at the President’s Roundtable at Greening Higher Education: Saving the Planet and Saving Money: A New England Leadership Forum sponsored by the New England Board of Higher Education in Boston last May. He also was a panelist on Providing Actionable Foresight in an Age of Irreversible “Tip-ping Points” at the Energy and Environ-ment Strategic Foresight Laboratory: Turbulence and Systemic Vulnerabili-ties in Washington, D.C. last April. In October he participated in a Water Planet Dialog sponsored by The As-pen Institute’s Energy and Environment Program in partnership with Alexan-dra Cousteau and Blue Legacy Inter-national. David is now also a “Planet Panelist” for the Washington Post. He joins other national experts in an ongo-ing conversation about climate issues on the paper’s website: http://views.washingtonpost.com/climate-change/panelists/david_hales/

Dean of Student Life Sarah Luke and former Coordinator of International Student Services Rae Barter have had their proposal approved to present at

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the NAFSA Associa-tion of International Educators bi-regional conference in Spring-field, Massachusetts this November. Their talk is titled “Aren’t In-

ternational Students Already Studying Abroad? Thoughts on Home Context and Third Country Experiences” focus-ing on the benefits and challenges of international students studying abroad while at colleges in the United States. Rae has moved on to a job as Interna-tional Advisor at the University of Con-necticut and Kylee Allen now holds her position at COA.

To inaugurate the college’s Trans-Atlantic Partnership, Suzanne Morse, fac-ulty member in biol-ogy and the Elizabeth Battles Newlin Chair in Botany, guided an intense four-week

course, Our Daily Bread: Following Grains through the Food System, in collaboration with Roger Hitchings and other staff at the Organic Research Centre, Elm Farm, United Kingdom. The first part of the course focused on wheat production and use in the UK, with comparisons to Germany and the United States. The course included seven students from COA and four students from the University of Kassel, located in Witzenhausen, Germany. With four to six hours of class work, field trips to local organic farms and research centers, ending with a one-week intensive on food quality assess-ment with Professor Angelika Ploeger of Kassel, the group barely had time to break bread. Says Suzanne, “the stu-dents have had amazing endurance in and outside of the classroom, and continue to cook and bake with great enthusiasm and talent!”

Bonnie Tai, faculty member in educa-tional studies, missed commencement for the first time in a decade to pres-ent at the annual meeting of the Jean Piaget Society in Park City, Utah as part of a symposium on the development of the teaching-research methodology based on critical exploration, a clini-

cal interviewing method pioneered by Bärbel Inhelder, Jean Piaget and their collaborators. The method, honoring the individual and social construction of understanding through facilitated interactions between the learner and the phenomenon under study, was ap-plied as a teaching approach by Bon-nie’s mentor, Eleanor Duckworth. Bon-nie also convened the second annual meeting of the Critical Exploration in Teacher Education group at Harvard. This was followed by an end-of-grant celebration in Portland with other members of the local school union’s service-learning leadership team. As evaluation consultant to Healthy Aca-dia in partnership with the Child and Family Opportunities and Union River Healthy Communities, Bonnie also presented the findings of a Food Stamp (now Supplemental Nutrition Assis-tance Program) Nutrition Education project. This year’s common theme is “Grow Food Everywhere!”—at child-care centers, in schools or in ornamen-tal planters.

Davis Taylor, faculty member in eco-nomics, joined with Sean Todd faculty mem-ber in biology, Associ-ate Dean for Advanced Studies and the Steven K. Katona Chair in Ma-rine Studies and Natalie

Springuel ’91, marine extension asso-ciate of Maine Sea Grant, on a fifteen-day trip to Newfoundland and Labra-dor, the culmination of the course This Marvelous, Terrible Place: the Human Ecology of Newfoundland. Students studied the ecological, economic, so-cial and cultural implications of dra-matic changes in Newfoundland’s fish-eries. Always emphasizing experiential education, Davis joined the students in the traditional “swim with the ’bergs” in the chilly waters of Labrador.

Taking a break from sustainability, Craig Ten Broeck, COA’s sustainabil-ity consultant, thru-hiked the 483-mile Colorado Trail that runs through the Colorado Rocky Mountains from Den-ver to Durango. That’s thirty-eight days of almost endless mountain scenery. Water was never in short supply as

Colorado had heavy rainfall in June—a record amount since sometime in the 1880s. Much of the hiking was above 12,000 feet elevation where the air is “thin.” Craig, too is now thin, having lost ten pounds!

International HumanEcology Conference in Manchester, UK

Rich Borden served as cochair dur-ing this multi-organization conference sponsored by the Society for Human Ecology, the Commonwealth Human Ecology Council, the German Society for Human Ecology, the Scientific Com-mittee on Problems of the Environment and other professional associations. The theme of the conference, held June 29 through July 3, was Human Ecology for an Urbanising World.

Rich gave a keynote address on “The Future of Human Ecology” and another presentation in the Human Ecology and Philosophy symposium on “Metaphors of change: the ecology of figurative language.” David Hales’ keynote pre-sentation was titled “The Importance of Human Ecology Education.” Among the other COA participants were Jay Friedlander, who presented three talks and chaired a session.

In a special session on Applied Human Ecology, Rich, Ken Cline, Jay Fried-lander and Samantha Haskell ’10 of-fered an hour-long historical overview of the activities of COA’s Center for Applied Human Ecology, or CAHE, and how it is now moving in the direc-tion of green and sustainable business: “College-Community Collaboration as a Model for Applied Human Ecology.”

The photo above shows Ian Douglas, of the University of Manchester, a co-convener of the meeting, along with Rich, Samantha, Ken and Jay.

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In MemoriamPh

oto

by Je

n H

ughe

s.

Rashmi Sharad Bhure ’09January 8, 1987– August 2009

Like many COA students, Rashmi Bhure arrived on campus with a vision for

a better world, and was exploring paths to conceptualize and realize that world. Her professors praised her curiosity and sincerity, her thoughtful comments and interactions in class. Her friends were cheered by her smile, her warmth, her caring. I got to know Rashmi directly as a student when she took my calculus class in her second year. She spent several terms in India, beginning with a residency she called “Approaches to Emotion in Ancient Indian and Western Psychology,” seeking to understand and synthesize Eastern and Western approaches to emotion, the mind, and the self. This was a transformative experience that helped her make sense of her COA education. After interning with various self-help and microfinance organizations, she com-pleted her senior project, “The Microfinance movement: Studies in India,” and received her BA in July.

Rashmi was a kind and gentle student who was acutely aware that she straddled religious and cultural worlds. She patiently lived in this superposition: humble, curious and delicate. Rashmi had remarkable grace, not only in her physical comportment but in the way she strove to make a path through a world that for her was too often difficult and frightening. It is impossible to make sense of Rashmi’s un-timely death. We cannot fully know the forces that breathe life and love into an otherwise still earth. But we do know that it is right to dedicate our time on earth to nourish those forces so that their light burns a little more brightly.

Dave Feldman Faculty member in math and physics

Marion Stocking June 4, 1922– May 12, 2009

Marion Stocking was a renowned professor of English at Beloit College specializing in the Romantic Movement with great expertise on Byron and Shelley. She was also a longtime faculty associate and a great friend and supporter of COA. A Mainer at heart, she began her teaching career at the University of Maine Orono, became a registered Maine guide and finally settled in Lamoine for her retire-ment. She was the editor of the Beloit Poetry Journal for its entire existence. Her exquisite judge of emergent talent supported the early careers of a good number of American poets. The loss makes me think of Yeats’ lines in “To a Child Dancing in the Wind”: ...the best labourer dead / and all the sheaves to bind.

Bill Carpenter Faculty member in literature and creative writing

Shane Wyatt Davis (’93)May 14, 1970–April 16, 2009

Shane Davis was an unusually gifted writer who attended COA in the early nineties. I worked with Shane closely and I remember being frequently astonished at the precocity of his talent and his sheer personal intensity. I looked back over my narrative evaluations and found these sentences:

His poems find their way immediately into the darkest cor-ner around and illuminate it with an extraordinary frank-ness and clarity, never forgetting the linguistic and musical excitement that poetry must have. His work communicates like a superconductor, without any loss in the transmission between experience and artifact.

Rereading these narratives brings back the meetings I’d have with Shane. Though not a large person physically, his intellectual presence would more than fill my tiny office of the time. We are made better teachers by students like Shane, who place such demands on themselves that our own standards must be sharpened in response. We all saw more clearly in the light of his ferocious self-examination.

Bill Carpenter Faculty member in literature and creative writing

Theodore SizerJune 23, 1932–October 21, 2009

In the winter of 1970, when we were plotting, scheming, dreaming about what COA might be, we called on Ted Sizer, the brilliant young man who was dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and later formed the Coali-tion of Essential Schools. Several of us would make visits to Ted in his office at Harvard, to get his reactions to our plans for COA. Ted later joined the board of trustees.

From the beginning we thought that each student at COA should play an active role in shaping her/his program. And we also felt that students should be actively involved in the decision-making process affecting the directions the col-lege would take. But as we grew closer to actually opening our doors to the initial class, I began to wonder if such student involvement would work. Was it a naïve notion? It certainly didn’t reflect my own experiences at Harvard, where I had been a student, and later Ted’s associate dean. At one of our meetings I expressed some doubts. Ted Sizer looked over at me and said, quite gently, “What’s the mat-ter Kaelber, are you losing your nerve?” That did it! And we didn’t.

Though several years my junior, Ted Sizer was/is one of my heroes. He had an abundance of good sense, integrity, compassion and humor.

Ed Kaelber College of the Atlantic founding president

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Horace “Hoddy” Hildreth, Jr. is known in Maine for his conservation leadership, his love of islands and his deep interest in alternative sources of energy. What may not be as well known is his connection to College of the Atlan-tic. Though he and his wife, the artist Alison “Wooly” Hil-dreth, spend their summers on the island of Vinalhaven, in Penobscot Bay, and live three hours from the college, in Falmouth, Maine, Hildreth served on COA’s board of trustees for seven years.

That was between 1994 and 2001. But as is the case with so many COA trustees, stepping off the board did not mean stepping away from the college. This spring, when COA students—with the help of a couple of faculty members—raised a wind turbine at Beech Hill Farm, Hildreth was one of the three donors (with former board chair and cur-rent trustee Sam Hamill, Jr. and social and environmental investor William Osborn) who made it possible.

A year before that, when COA hired Jay Friedlander as the Sharpe-McNally Chair in Green and Socially Responsible Business, the college got a substantial boost from the Hil-dreth Family Fund.

“Ed Kaelber got me involved,” says Hildreth. Though they didn’t know each other, “he knew of me, and just called up and said he wanted to come see me.” Not long after, Hildreth’s name was added to COA’s board of trustees. Hildreth smiles at the impact of COA founding president Kaelber’s persuasiveness, but in many ways Kaelber just opened a door that the longtime environmentalist easily walked through.

“The concept of the college interested me a lot, it was cer-tainly unique,” says Hildreth. “The education that was of-fered struck me as being more imaginative and creative than I was aware of being offered at other colleges—I really liked COA’s approach to food, to all the little things that are not generally part of an education in another kind of a college. And at that time I was not aware of any other col-lege that had the same kind of attitude toward education and the environment—the atmosphere seemed different to me than what you’d find in other small New England col-leges.”

The timing was good, too. Hildreth had just stepped down as president and chief executive officer of the media-fo-

cused Diversified Communications. Recently, with Hil-dreth remaining as board chair, the company has taken an interest in alternative energy.

The son of the late Gov. Horace Hildreth, Hoddy Hil-dreth’s service on boards looks like a comprehensive list of regional environmental organizations: Conservation Law Foundation, Davis Conservation Foundation, Maine Coast Heritage Trust, Maine Community Foundation, Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund, the Nature Conservancy’s Maine chapter, not to mention his extensive board leadership of the Island Institute.

While a lifelong love of Maine and its woods and oceans set the stage for Hildreth’s environmentalism, it was a first-hand view of what can happen without regulation that brought him into environmental law before the field was even known. As a prominent Portland lawyer, he found himself lobbying in Augusta for Maine’s paper companies. “It got to be obvious that they were playing fast and loose with the environment—with the woods,” Hildreth says. He stopped lobbying on those issues and soon ran for a seat in the Maine State Senate. In just two short years, from 1966-1968, he chaired the Natural Resources and the Leg-islative Research committees and wrote the first wetlands control law, the Site Location of Development law, and the legislation that—despite the flood of paper company lob-byists attempting to prevent it—in 1971 became the Land Use Regulatory Commission, or LURC, to oversee devel-opment in Maine’s unorganized townships.

Hildreth’s interest in wind power connects his environ-mentalism, love of islands and dedication to island com-munities. To support affordable electricity costs on Vinal-haven and North Haven, Diversified Communications helped fund the Fox Islands Wind Project. About a month after COA’s turbine was raised at Beech Hill Farm, ground was broken for the first of three turbines on Vinalhaven. Wielding a shovel along with Hildreth, Maine Gov. John Baldacci and a half dozen or so others was Maine Con-gresswoman Chellie Pingree ’77. Somehow, this shared ef-fort with a COA alumna, whose home lies just across the Fox Island Thorofare from his beloved Vinalhaven, brings Hildreth’s interests full circle.

Donor Profile: Environmentalist Horace “Hoddy” Hildreth, Jr.By Donna Gold

Phot

o co

urte

sy o

f Hor

ace

Hild

reth

, Jr.

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Despite the global financial crisis, College of the Atlantic was able to achieve a balanced operating budget for the second year in a row. Considering the larger conditions of the world, COA currently is in a healthy fiscal state with many positive indicators for the coming year.

As the economic crisis loomed last year, COA, like most of the nation’s colleges and universities, began to make adjust-ments to both short- and longer-term financial plans. Our endowment did drop, although less precipitously than most. With the general sense of concern across the nation, we experienced a dramatic slowdown in our annual giving. While we were worried about the economic plight of many of our students and their families, few of them left school or sought additional financial aid; that concern is a lingering one as unemployment has continued to rise and can be expected to last for some time.

In response to these issues, we engaged the college community in open discussions about the budget. With already tight budgets, we cut back discretionary spending even further. We suspended the search for three new faculty members, and we left open a few positions as vacancies arose. We realized that short-term measures were important, but that the effects of the economic slowdown would be felt for several years. Most importantly, we felt that we could not cut back on current programs and services. Unlike many other colleges, we did not have layoffs, furloughs, or cuts in programs, and we have filled one faculty position and are currently engaged in the searches for three other faculty members (see page 3).

Because of the belt-tightening measures that we did adopt, we ended last fiscal year (FY09) with an operating surplus, as shown in the accompanying table. We also had sav-ings in the construction projects, as we completed the new student housing without dip-ping into its contingency. In planning the current fiscal year (FY10), we are anticipating another balanced budget, but only with allocations of the prior year surplus and keeping a portion of the construction savings as an operating contingency.

Our overall fund balances remain healthy. Our net assets totaled $37 million on June 30, 2009, the end of last fiscal year. While our endowment had dropped from $17 million to $14 million with the stock market decline, it has recovered over $2 million in the fall of 2009. Audited financial statements are available upon request.

From the Administrative Dean

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Andy Griffiths, Administrative Dean

COllEgE OF thE AtlAntIC AnnuAl rEpOrtFISCAL YEAR 2008–2009

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Financial Summary(Rounded to the nearest $1,000)

Operating Revenues FY 2008–2009 Actual FY 2009–2010 Budgeted

MAKE A DIFFERENCE. College of the Atlantic welcomes gifts of all kinds to support our work of educating students to make a difference throughout the world. Please consider including the college in your annual giving. Equally important, to ensure COA’s future, consider becoming part of our planned giving program. Bequests, chari-table gift annuities, charitable remainder trusts and other similar programs help the college while also offering you income tax benefits. Visit www.coa.edu/support or call the development office at 207-288-5015.

Tuition and FeesLess COA Student Financial AidLess Davis Foundation Financial AidNet Tuition After Financial AidAnnual Fund ContributionsEndowment Allocation to OperationsGovernment GrantsOther Restricted Gifts and GrantsStudent Housing and DiningSummer ProgramsBeech Hill FarmOtherLess Contingencies

Total Revenues

Operating Expenses

Instruction and Student ActivityStudent Housing and DiningSummer Programs and MuseumGeneral AdministrationPayroll Taxes and Fringe BenefitsDevelopment and AdmissionsBuildings and GroundsInterestGrants, Research and ProjectsBeech Hill FarmCapital Activity

Total Expenditures

Net Operating Surplus Before Transfers (loss)Transfer from FY09 to FY10Net Operating Surplus After Transfers (loss)

Fund Balances (end of year)

UnrestrictedPlant and EquipmentEndowmentRestricted Gifts Invested with the EndowmentOther Temporarily Restricted

Total Fund Balances

9,331,000(3,307,000)(1,725,000)

4,299,000990,000700,000414,000

2,633,0001,137,000

466,000217,000265,000

n/a

11,121,000

3,180,000464,000468,000

1,132,0001,702,0001,161,000

729,000402,000964,000212,000389,000

10,803,000

318,000(300,000)

18,000

Actual

1,212,00011,788,00014,292,000

2,968,0006,638,000

36,898,000

9,410,000(3,760,000)(1,890,000)

3,760,0001,100,000

875,000391,000

3,120,0001,165,000

380,000200,000230,000

(250,000)

10,971,000

3,473,000530,000360,000

1,172,0001,709,0001,080,000

685,000420,000

1,200,000205,000437,000

11,271,000

(300,000)300,000

—

Projected

1,212,00011,300,00016,000,000

3,200,0006,000,000

37,712,000

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COA | 47

ANNUAL REPORT

Part of my job—the most meaningful part—requires me to bear witness to some remarkable moments in the lives of stu-dents and donors.

This week, I had the poignant pleasure to give the “report” included below to a friend of the college.

First, a little background. The author of the report is Gloria Kahamba, a second-year student from Tanzania. The “Sam” to whom her letter is addressed is Sam Hamill, Jr., a life trustee and a warm and deeply caring man. He started a scholarship to support a full COA education for one student from Africa’s Great Lakes (that’s Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Kenya).

He decided to do this for at least two reasons. The two I am aware of are: 1) He has long been inspired by the Davis United World College Scholarship Program that Shelby and Gale Davis created (davisuwcscholars.org); and 2) He is a close friend of Davis Scholar Patrick Uwihoreye ’06, who walked out of Rwanda alone when he was thirteen, believing his entire village and family were killed in the ethnic fighting.

Patrick helped Sam set up the scholarship, worked with schools in the region to identify potential recruits, helped develop the criteria for selection, personally read the applications and interviewed candidates. Gloria Kahamba was chosen. Glo-ria just finished her first year, and sent this letter to her benefactor.

Hello Sam,

It’s my hope that you are fine.

I am good and had a wonderful summer. I was at home for two months and was so happy to see my family and friends again. They were really excited to hear about my life and studies at COA, and were glad that my first year went well.

So far, I have enjoyed COA and I don’t regret being here. It’s not easy to find a school with a commu-nity as caring and kind as that of COA. I am also happy that I gained more knowledge from the classes I have taken during my first year and have been able to maintain good grades throughout the year.

I am planning to focus on science and health courses because I am interested in pursuing medicine as my future field of career. There are also classes in other areas of study that really interest me like piano which I took in the spring. It felt so good to know that I could also play a piano! I hope that I will work even harder in my second year and the years to come.

I am so grateful for your generosity and the step that you took to provide a student from the Great Lakes of Africa with this scholarship. I pray that God may fill you with more kindness, happiness, and good health.

I wish you a happy and wonderful fall.

Thank you, Gloria.

In the pages that follow you’ll find our annual report, with giving for the year. You will read lists of names of individuals, corporations and foundations that have donated time and talent, made a planned gift, established endowment accounts, supported the annual fund. Behind every name is a story. That story is their relationship with COA. It’s my joy and privilege to honor them all. And thank each and every one. We hold your story dear. Your story makes ours possible.

From the Dean of Development

Photo by Donna Gold.

Lynn Boulger, Dean of Development

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48 | COA

Annual Giving for fiscal year July 1, 2008 through June 30, 2009. With deep gratitude and appreciation we acknowledge the generosity of our alumni, trustees, staff, faculty and friends.

THE CHAMPLAIN SOCIETY (TCS)PRESIDENT’S CIRCLE: $25,000+AnonymousMr. Edward McC. BlairT. A. Cox*Mrs. Philip GeyelinMr. Samuel Hamill, Jr.Rebecca and Steve MillikenMr. and Mrs. Hamilton Robinson, Jr.Ms. Abby Rowe (’98)/Rowe Family Fndn

FOUNDER (TCS): $10,000–24,999Mr. and Mrs. Robert M. BassEstate of Amos and Alice EnoFidelity Charitable Gift FundBarbara McLeod and David HalesMr. and Mrs. Horace Hildreth/Seal Bay II Fund of the Maine Community FndnMr. and Mrs. Melville HodderMrs. Marcia MacKinnonMaine Community FoundationMargaret A. Cargill FoundationJennifer Reynolds and Jay McNally ’84Mr. and Mrs. Daniel PierceJames Dyke and Helen PorterMr. and Mrs. George PutnamElwood R. Quesada Educational FoundationMr. and Mrs. Clyde E. Shorey, Jr.Mr. William P. StewartMrs. Donald B. StrausMr. and Mrs. William N. Thorndike, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. William Wister, Jr./ Margaret Dorrance Strawbridge Fndn

PATHFINDER (TCS): $5,000–9,999Anonymous (five)Mrs. Charlotte BordeauxEstate of Alida D. M. CampMr. William P. CareyMrs. Bernard CoughMr. and Mrs. David H. FischerMr. and Mrs. William G. Foulke, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. Richard HabermannMr. and Mrs. John N. KellyMr. and Mrs. Peter LoringMrs. Louis C. MadeiraMs. Casey MallinckrodtMr. and Mrs. Clement E. McGillicuddy/ The Fiddlehead FundMr. and Mrs. Gerrish Milliken/ The Gerrish Milliken FoundationMr. Roger MillikenMr. and Mrs. Philip S. J. MoriartyMr. and Mrs. William V. P. NewlinMr. and Mrs. C. W. Eliot Paine/The Puffin Fund of Maine Community FoundationMr. and Mrs. John P. ReevesMr. David Rockefeller, Sr./ David Rockefeller Fund, Inc.Amy and Hartley Rogers/Rogers Family FndnJulia Merck and Hans Utsch

DISCOVERER (TCS): $2,000–4,999Mr. and Mrs. William BartovicsRon Beard and Sandi ReadJoan S. BlaineMr. and Mrs. Leslie C. Brewer/ ABL Fund of the Maine Community FndnMr. Frederick Cabot/ Paul & Virginia Cabot Charitable Trust

Linda K. and John H. CarmanMs. Sally CrockMr. and Mrs. Charles Dickey, Jr.Drs. Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis and Merton FlemingsJane and Philip H. Grantham, Sr./ Curtis Hall FoundationSusan Dowling and Andrew GriffithsMr. and Mrs. Paul J. Growald/ Growald Community Fund Mr. and Mrs. George B. E. HambletonLynn and Jeff Horowitz/ Rosengarten-Horowitz FundMs. Sherry HuberSonja Johanson ’95 and Richard GordetMs. Leslie Jones ’91Mr. and Mrs. Grant G. McCullaghLaura Ellis and David MillikenMr. and Mrs. G. Marshall MoriartyMr. and Mrs. Benjamin R. Neilson/ The Cressida FundMr. and Mrs. Peter A. NitzeMrs. Patricia G. NorrisRenaissance Charitable Foundation, Inc.Mr. and Mrs. John R. Robinson/ The Widgeon Point Charitable FndnDr. Richard G. Rockefeller/ The Philanthropic CollaborativePeter and Lucy Bell SellersMr. and Mrs. John P. Grace ShetharMr. and Mrs. Winthrop ShortState Street CorporationThe Swan Agency – InsuranceNick and Joan ThorndikeKathy Bonk and Marc S. TuckerMr. and Mrs. Kenneth WegMs. Katherine Weinstock ’81The Winky Foundation

EXPLORER (TCS): $1,500–1,999Bar Harbor Bank & TrustMr. and Mrs. Peter Blanchard IIILynn Boulger and Tim GarrityMr. Charles ButtMr. and Mrs. Louis W. CabotSusanna Porter and James ClarkBarbara Damrosch and Eliot ColemanRuth M. and Tristram C. ColketPhilip and Tina DeNormandieMrs. F. Eugene DixonMr. and Mrs. William DohmenMrs. George DwightMr. and Mrs. William C. Eacho III/ The Eacho Family Foundation*Mrs. Ellen H. EmeryDianna and Ben Emory/Ocean Ledges Fund of Maine Community FoundationMr. David FoggMr. and Mrs. Will GardinerDr. and Mrs. Philip GeierPatricia and Cyrus HaggeMrs. Penelope HarrisMr. and Mrs. Robert HinckleyMr. and Mrs. Edward C. Johnson IIISusan Lerner and Steven KatonaMr. Arthur J. Keller/Schwab Charitable FundMs. Joanne Kemmerer ’02Mr. and Mrs. Robert P. KogodMargi and Philip Kunhardt III ’77Mrs. Anthony Lapham

Mr. and Mrs. Edward LipkinMs. Pamela ManiceSarah A. McDaniel ’93Mrs. John P. McGrathMr. Charles E. Merrill, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. A. Fenner MiltonMr. and Mrs. Ferguson E. PetersMr. and Mrs. Richard PiersonMrs. Eben W. PyneMr. and Mrs. Mitchell P. Rales/ The Mitchell P. Rales Family FoundationMr. and Mrs. William M. RudolfMr. and Mrs. Robert L. Shafer/ Ayco Charitable FoundationMrs. Nina StrawbridgeMs. Caren SturgesJack Ledbetter and Helen TysonCody and Christiaan van Heerden ’09Rodman and Susan WardMr. and Mrs. Joseph Wishcamper/ Joe & Carol Wishcamper Fund of Maine Community FoundationMs. Christine Witham

FRIENDS: $1–1,499AnonymousMr. Christopher AberleDr. and Mrs. Murray AbramskyAcadia Senior CollegeMr. and Mrs. Thomas AdelmanBarbara Clark and Charles AdlerAIG Matching Grants ProgramMs. Heather Albert-Knopp ’99Dr. and Mrs. Raymond AlieMs. Judith AllenCarolyn Snell ’06 and Victor Amarilla ’05Heather and Richard AmesMrs. Diane AndersonJohn and Karen AndersonMr. John K. AndersonMr. and Mrs. Schofield Andrews IIIKristofer and Genevieve Angle ’00Ms. Jennifer L. Atkinson ’03 Atwater Kent Foundation, Inc.Ms. Rosemarie Avenia ’86Wendy Knickerbocker and David Avery ’84Ms. Lelania Prior Avila ’92 Ms. Jennifer Aylesworth ’94 Mary Dohna ’80 and Wells Bacon ’80Mr. Alan L. Baker/The Ellsworth AmericanSarah and David BakerTina and Bill BakerBridgette Chace Kelly BallBar Harbor Lobster BakesBar Harbor MotelBar Harbor Savings & LoanSteven Barkan and Barbara TennentRichard and Rosemary BarnhartMr. H. B. BeachAllison Martin ’88 and Elmer Beal, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. Elmer Beal, Sr.Drs. Wesley and Terrie BeamerMs. Katie M. BellMr. and Mrs. William E. Benjamin II/ William E. II and Maura Benjamin Fund of Maine Community FoundationSean ’08 and Heather ’08 BergJason Bernad, MD ’94Ms. Lyn BerzinisMs. Nancy Marshall Bickel

* Those donors with asterisks have since passed on; ( ) Donors with parenthesis around their years are alumni who are not COA graduates.

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ANNUAL REPORT

Mr. John O. Biderman ’77Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. BirdMr. Edward McC. Blair, Jr.Hon. and Mrs. Robert O. BlakeMr. Jerry Bley (’78)Ms. Edith BlombergSharon Teitelbaum & Jonathan BockianMs. Sally Boisvert ’04Dierdre Swords and Michael Boland ’94Mr. Dennis Bracale ’88Ms. Virginia BrennanMs. Teisha Broetzman ’88Mr. and Mrs. Ordway P. Burden/ The Florence V. Burden FoundationCharles and Barbara Burton IIBecky ’81 and Skip ’83 Buyers-BassoMr. Henry Cabot III ’97Roc and Helen Caivano ’80Ms. Julie MacLeod Cameron ’78Margaret A. Cargill FoundationMs. Frances CarlinBill Carpenter and Donna GoldBarbara and Vinson CarterSuzanne Taylor and Don CassMr. and Mrs. Robert CawleyMr. Erin Chalmers ’00Lucy Hull and E. Barton ChapinMr. David ChiangMs. Taj Chibnik ’95Ms. Diana Choksey ’05Mrs. Katherine Kaufer ChristoffelMs. Cecily ClarkMs. Katherine Clark ’91Ms. Kim ClarkHannah S. Sistare and Timothy B. ClarkSteve Redgate and Dianne ClendanielJan CoatesMs. Tammis Coffin ’87Mr. and Mrs. Elliot CohenMs. Barbara ColePancho Cole ’81Ms. Nancy ColemanDr. Darron Collins ’92Mr. and Mrs. Gerald ColsonDick Atlee and Sarah CorsonSean and Georgia CosgroveMs. Judith CoxJennifer ’93 and Kevin ’93 CrandallMr. Stefan CushmanMrs. Rose CutlerMs. Patricia D’Angelo ’92Mr. Adam Dau ’01Jane and Stan DavisMs. Norah DavisMs. E. Nicole D’Avis ’02Mrs. Edwin DeansMr. John Deans ’07Rose and Steve Demers ’80Anthony and Milja DeMuroHolly Devaul ’84Mrs. Joanne DevlinMr. Robert DickJanet Redfield and Scott Dickerson ’95Whit and Closey Dickey Fund of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, Upper Valley RegionGeorge and Kelly Dickson, MPhil ’97Angela DiPerri ’01Prof. and Mrs. Arthur DoleMartha and Stephen DolleyMargaret DonnellonJanet Anker and Charles DonnellyMr. Millard DorityWendy and Michael Downey

Mr. and Mrs. Alexander DreierMr. and Mrs. John DreierMrs. Mary DruryJay and Mary DurostMr. Alden EatonMr. Joseph Edes ’83Ms. Carol EmmonsCarol and Jackson EnoJoel and Arline EpsteinMr. Richard Epstein ’84Mrs. Bertha ErbMr. and Mrs. Charles ErhartJohn and Therese ErianneGordon Iver and Dorothy Brewer Erikson Fund of the Greater Worcester Community FoundationDeb Evans ’82 and Ron SchaafMrs. Lucretia EvansTony and Sarah EverdellMorris Feibusch and Ann HugheyMr. and Mrs. Edgar FeltonSam and Elise FeltonMr. and Mrs. Nathaniel FentonThomas and Carroll FernaldMr. Gabriel Finkelstein ’07The FirstMs. Cynthia Jordan Fisher ’80John and Marie FitzgeraldRep. Elsie Flemings ’07Mr. and Mrs. William M.G. FletcherMs. Hannah Fogg ’99Mrs. Margery ForbesCherie and Chad FordMs. Arianne Fosdick ’00Dr. and Mrs. Richard FoxMr. and Mrs. Thomas FoxMrs. Ruth FraleyMs. Jamie Frank ’04Mr. and Mrs. W. West Frazier IVMs. Susan Freed ’80Ms. Glenon Friedmann ’86Mr. David FurholmenGalyn’s GalleyMs. Carla GanielMr. and Mrs. Jon GeigerMs. Laurie GeigerMs. Helen GeilsSteve and Katie GeorgeMs. Nadine Gerdts (’76)Ms. Susan GetzeMs. Anne GiardinaMr. Jackson Gillman ’78Ms. Lauren Gilson ’88Dr. and Mrs. Donald GlotzerMrs. Hope GoddardMr. and Mrs. Paul GolasGerda Paumgarten and Larry GoldfarbMrs. Laura Arm Goldstein Mr. and Mrs. John GoodMr. and Mrs. Robert GoodmanBruce Mazlish and Neva GoodwinMs. Abigail Goodyear ’81Ms. Elizabeth GorerNina ’78 and Jonathan ’78 GormleyDr. and Mrs. Robert GossartFr. James GowerMr. and Mrs. John GowerMr. P. Heeth Grantham ’94Graycote InnMs. Linda Gregory ’89Ms. Katherine Griffin ’00Ms. Mary Griffin ’97Mr. Joseph GrigasMs. Nikole Grimes ’96

Ms. Grace Christina Grinager ’07Emma Rearick ’08 and Jay Guarneri ’06Mr. and Mrs. Michael GumpertMs. Elizabeth Gustavson ’94Therese Caffery and Laurence GuttmacherMs. Elizabeth Gwinn ’01Mr. and Mrs. Theodore HailperinBarney and Christie HallowellMargaret Justice and William HammerMs. M. Rebecca Hancock ’97Mr. and Mrs. Edson HarrisMr. Tanner Brook Harris ’06Ms. Holly HartleyMs. Sonja Hartmann ’88Mr. and Mrs. Charles HarwoodAnn and John HassettCharlie and Nancy HatfieldLarry and Patty HayesMs. Lois Hayes ’79Atsuko Watabe ’93 and Bruce Hazam ’92Ms. Katherine Hazard ’76Michael Zwirko ’01 and Erin Heacock ’04Ms. Mary HeffernonEric (’74) and Kate Henry Mr. Jim HergetKatie J. Hester ’98Dr. Josephine Todrank Heth ’76Charles and Jackie HewettIngrid and Ken HillMs. Barbara HilliDr. Leonard HirshRobert Thomson and Lucy HodderMs. Margaret Hoffman ’97Tom and Eda Holl ’05Mr. and Mrs. David HollenbeckLisa ’80 and Bob ’79 HolleyMs. Betsey HoltzmannHomewood BenefitsMs. Rosamond Hooper-HamersleyDr. and Mrs. William HornerMs. Kathryn Hough ’95Ms. Jean HowellMs. Jennifer HughesMs. Jane HultbergMs. Kathryn Hunninen ’03Mr. and Mrs. Charles HuntingtonMs. Evelyn Mae Hurwich ’80Mr. and Mrs. John Inch, Jr.Ms. Susan B. Inches ’79Island RealtyMr. Orton Jackson, Jr.Mr. John Jacob ’81Alison and Joplin James ’84Mr. William JanesMargaret and Peter Jeffery ’84Mr. Andres Jennings ’08Ms. Catherine Johnson ’74Ms. Laura JohnsonChris and Kitty JonesMs. Constance JordanJordan-FernaldMr. and Mrs. H. Lee JuddAnn Sewall and Edward KaelberMr. and Mrs. William KalesMr. and Mrs. David KaneMs. Esther Karkal ’83Steve and Ali KasselsBob and Ellie KatesMr. Michael Kattner ’95Mr. John KauffmannMr. and Mrs. Dennis KellerJill and Bobby KelleyMr. and Mrs. James KelloggKent-Lucas Foundation, Incorporated

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David and Dawn KersulaMr. Michael Kersula ’09Mr. David KessnerCarl Ketchum and Lorraine StratisBarbara and Steven KielNeil King and Diana KingMs. Tonia KittelsonBethany and Zack Klyver (’05)Ms. Aleda KoehnMr. and Mrs. Ted KoffmanMs. Anne KozakMr. and Mrs. Michael KreminJeffrey A. Kugel, PhD, MDMrs. Philip Kunhardt, Jr.Mr. Ross La HayeMs. Jude Lamb ’00Dr. and Mrs. David LebwohlKathryn Harmon ’94 and Rob Ledo ’91Dr. and Mrs. Leung LeeMs. Alice Leeds ’76Ms. Caroline Leonard ’01Ms. Alice Levey ’81Mr. Aaron Jonah Lewis ’05Larry and Lois LibbyJessie Greenbaum ’89 and Philip Lichtenstein ’92Mr. James LindenthalMs. Abigail Littlefield ’83Dr. John Long, Jr. ’86Ms. Maria Vanegas Long ’84Dr. and Mrs. Ralph LongsworthMr. and Mrs. William Lord IIReba and Wendell Luke, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. Lewis LukensMs. Mayo LynamMachias Savings BankMr. James MacLeodMeg and Miles Maiden ’86Ms. Marion Layton MannMr. and Mrs. George MarcusRob Marshall ’87Mr. Erik Hilson Martin ’98Steven Callahan and Kathleen Massimini ’82Mrs. Anne Mazlish

Ms. Donna McFarlandMr. J. R. McGregorMs. Lauren McKean ’83Ms. Lenorah McKee*Mrs. Donald McLeanMr. Clifton McPherson III ’84Ms. Jeanne McPhersonMDI YMCARobert J. and Jane H. MeadeMarvin and Jean MessexMs. Pamela MeyerMr. Jeffrey Miller ’92Mr. and Mrs. Keith MillerSen. and Mrs. George MitchellMr. Frank MocejunasMr. Peter Moon ’90Mr. and Mrs. David MooreMrs. Lorraine MorongChase ’00 and Sarah ’02 MorrillDiane Blum and Bud MotzkinMr. Andrew Moulton ’04Dr. Frank MoyaMr. and Mrs. John MoyerMs. Anne MulhollandMs. Anna MurphyMr. Sean MurphyDr. Victoria MurphyDave and Mary NahsMr. and Mrs. Robert Nathane, Jr.Rolando and Alexandra NegoitaMr. John NewhallMr. and Mrs. Robert Nicholas IIIMrs. A. Corkran NimickMs. Elizabeth Nixon ’99Merideth C. Norris, D.O. and FamilyMrs. Elizabeth Higgins NullMr. and Mrs. J.D. NyhartMs. Hope OlmsteadHannah and Judd Olshan ’92Mr. W. Kent OlsonMr. Benoni Outerbridge ’84Ms. Rosetta PackerCarey Donovan and Arthur PaineMs. Kaitlin Palmer ’08

Ms. Pamela Parvin ’93Dr. and Mrs. Lewis PatrieMr. Robert Patterson, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth PaulMr. Peter Pavicevic ’07Tobin ’95 and Valerie (’96) PeacockMr. and Mrs. Robert PenningtonRichard and Elizabeth PerezShoshana Perry ’83Mr. Gordon PetersMs. Meghan Pew ’99Susan Erickson and Bruce Phillips ’78Mr. Chester PierceEdward and Frances PinkhamThomas and Patricia PinkhamMr. Andrew Pixley ’01Ms. Carole PlentyShiva Polefka ’01Ms. Frances Pollitt ’77Ms. Brianne Press Jordan ’02Ms. Susan Priest-Pierce ’77Ms. Sheila Sonne PullingMs. Quintana Ramirez ’03Ms. Cathy Ramsdell ’78Mr. and Mrs. Raymond RappaportMr. and Mrs. Fred C. ReaMr. and Mrs. Peter H. ReckseitDoug and Anita ReppMr. Andrew RiceStephen and Emmie RickJohn and Carol RiversDr. Jennifer Roberts ’94Drs. Paul and Ann RochmisMr. and Mrs. David Rockefeller, Jr.Dr. and Mrs. Steven C. RockefellerMs. Sydney Roberts RockefellerHilda and Thomas RoderickRonald and Patricia RogersAllison Rogers Furbish ’04Eric ’87 and Kelly Roos Mr. W. David Rosenmiller ’84Dr. and Mrs. Richard R. RosenthalDrs. Pamela Jensen and Stephen RossMr. and Mrs. Max Rothal

The Northern Lights Society celebrates the philanthropists who have offered planned gifts to COA. Though the most well-known planned gift is a bequest, others choose charitable gift annuities, remainder trusts, or gifts of real estate or other personal property.

George Hambleton has made a planned gift through a life insurance policy. “I wish I could give even more to this wonderful organization which has given me so much through partici-pation with its great board of trustees, enthusiastic and gifted faculty and staff, and inspiring

students. An insurance policy gift to College of the Atlantic is a convenient way to give a little more than might otherwise be convenient,” says George. Thank you to George and thanks to all the members of the Northern Lights Society!

*Mr. and Mrs. Sidney BahrtMr. Edward McC. BlairMr. Robert BlumLynn Boulger and Tim GarrityLeslie and Barbara Brewer*Mrs. Frederic E. CampKer Cleary ’84 Mrs. Shelby Cullom DavisNorah D. DavisFran DayIlene F. Elowitch*Mrs. Amos EnoGordon J. and Dorothy B. Erikson

Vicki Evers*Sherry P. Geyelin*Henry and Sunny GuthrieBarbara E. McLeod and David F. HalesGeorge B.E. HambletonSamuel Hamill, Jr.*Mr. and Mrs. John HowardDrs. Pamela Jensen and Stephen RossAnn Sewall and Edward KaelberJohn M. KauffmannSarah A. McDaniel ’93 *Mr. David McGiffertMr. and Mrs. Philip S. J. Moriarty

*Mrs. Barbara PielMr. and Mrs. Hamilton Robinson, Jr.*Dr. Elizabeth Russell*Mrs. Robert Ryle*Mr. Charles SawyerMr. and Mrs. Clyde E. Shorey, Jr.*Mr. and Mrs. Henry H. Smith*Mr. Donald StrausStuart Dickey Summer*Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Thomas*Mr. Charles Tyson*Mr. and Mrs. James H. Wakelin III

nothern lights Society

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COA | 51

ANNUAL REPORT

Mr. and Mrs. Joseph RothsteinMs. Elizabeth Rousek Ayers ’95Mr. and Mrs. William RussellMr. and Mrs. William B. RussellMs. Kerri Sands ’02Mr. Daniel Sangeap ’90Dave and Mary SavidgeMs. Margaret Scheid ’85Ms. Judith Schenk ’80Cynthia Livingston and Henry SchmelzerRyder ’97 and Amy ’97 ScottMr. and Mrs. Hans SeebergerMs. Ellen Seh (’76)Tim and Frances SellersRoland and Dottie SeymourMs. Kate Sheely ’07Dr. and Mrs. Dennis ShubertMs. Carol SilvermanRichard ’88 and Lilea ’90 SimisMr. Mark Simonds ’81John and Fran SimsKatharine Homans and Patterson SimsMr. and Mrs. Stephen SmithMr. and Mrs. R. Charles SnyderMs. Harriet SoaresMs. Amanda Spector ’08Lynne and Mike Staggs ’97Bruce and Susan StedmanAndrea Perry ’95 and Toby Stephenson ’98Ms. Leah C. Stetson, BA ’01, MPhil ’06Stewart Brecher ArchitectsMs. Marie Stivers*Ms. Marion StockingMs. Dorie Stolley ’88Carol and Sid StricklandSusan Shaw and Cynthia StroudMrs. Kathryn SuminsbyMs. Joan SwannMr. Gilbert SwardSweatt FoundationDr. Davis TaylorMs. Katrin Hyman Tchana ’83Ms. Karla TegzesMr. Craig Ten BroeckMr. John ThorndikeMrs. Day ThorpeMs. Ellen Reid ThurmanT. Michael TooleElena Tuhy-Walters ’90 and Carl WaltersMs. Katharine TurokMr. Frank Twohill ’80Patrick and Mary Ann TynanSarah Tyson ’96Mr. and Mrs. David VailMs. Katrina Van DusenTony and Mandie VictorMr. John Viele (’77)Abbe F. Vogels ’01Elizabeth and Tom Volkmann ’90/ United Way of Central New MexicoMrs. Jeptha WadeRichard Hilliard and Karen WaldronStacy Hankin and Ben Walters ’81Lee and Laurie WardMrs. Cecile WatsonMs. Joan WeberMrs. Constance WeeksDiane Metzger and Edward WeisbergMs. Maria Weisenberg ’81Ms. Jean McHugh Weiss ’81Mary E. WelchBradford and Alice WellmanMr. and Mrs. Scott WeymouthMr. and Mrs. Harold White IIIMr. Douglas Williams

Raymond and Laurie WilliamsWilliams Family FoundationMs. Nellie Wilson ’04Janey Winchell ’82Dawn Lamendola (’92) and Josh Winer ’91Mr. David Winship ’77Ms. Betsy Wisch ’83Tom and Loretta WittSue Woehrlin ’80Ms. Rebecca Hope WoodsMs. Jingran Xiao (’86)Mr. Robert Young (’86)Mr. and Mrs. Louis ZawislakMrs. Jane ZirnkiltonLori Hunt and Mark Zuckerman

GIFTS IN MEMORIAMFor Peter G. Barton Ms. Patricia Barton

For Mary Cantwell Mr. Chris Aaront ’08

For Rebecca Clark ’96 See Scholarship Gifts

For Herbert M. Elliott Wendy Rodger and Henry Elliott (’73)

For Craig Greene Allison Martin ’88 and Elmer BealPatricia Honea-Fleming & Richard Borden Dr. James Kellam ’96

For James Ripley Hooper Ms. Rosamond Hooper-Hamersley

For John A. Hultberg Ms. Anne M. Kozak

For Catherine Keras Mr. and Mrs. Michael Kremin

For James J. Keras, Sr. Lynn Boulger and Tim Garrity

For Alfred Spiller Kidwell Mr. and Mrs. John Merrill

For Philip Levin Ms. Isobel Bertman Mr. and Mrs. E. James Cole Ms. Marlene Dickinson Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Mayer Mrs. Ruth Salinger

For Dr. Edward J. Meade, Jr. Robert J. and Jane H. Meade

For Donald B. Straus Allison Martin ’88 and Elmer Beal, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. John Cooper Todd and Christa Little-Siebold T.F. Gregg Charitable Fund

For Jeff Weisbruch Ms. Caroline Leonard ’01

GIFTS IN HONORARIUMFor Foster Bartovics Ms. Marion Layton Mann

For Edward McC. Blair Mr. Edward McC. Blair, Jr. Ms. Pamela G. Meyer

For Lynn Boulger & Tim Garrity Merideth C. Norris, D.O. and Family

For Leslie C. Brewer Gordon Iver and Dorothy Brewer Erikson Fund of the Greater Worcester Community Foundation

For Colin Capers Ms. Mary Heffernon

For Sally Morong Chetwynd Mrs. Lorraine Morong

For William G. Foulke, Jr. Dr. and Mrs. Philip Geier

For Rowen Gorman ’07 Mrs. Constance Weeks

For George B.E. Hambleton Mr. William Carey

For Samuel M. Hamill, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Wishcamper

For Elizabeth Hodder Dr. and Mrs. Philip Geier

For Russell Holway Anonymous

For Steven K. Katona John and Karen Anderson Dr. and Mrs. Melville P. Cote George and Kelly Dickson, MPhil ’97 Mr. Millard Dority Mr. and Mrs. David Fischer Jonathan ’78 and Nina ’78 Gormley Mr. and Mrs. George B. E. Hambleton Charles and Jackie Hewett Ms. Jean Hoekwater ’80 Mrs. Michael Huber Jordan’s Restaurant Ann Sewall and Edward G. Kaelber Shawn ’00 and Sarah ’05 Keeley Ms. Casey Mallinckrodt Sarah A. McDaniel ’93 Mr. and Mrs. Gerrish Milliken Michael (’93) and Mollie ’92 Phemister Susan Erickson and Bruce Phillips ’78 Ms. Cathy L. Ramsdell ’78 Dr. Jennifer Rock ’93 Cynthia Livingston and Henry Schmelzer Mr. and Mrs. Richard F. Sullivan Elena Tuhy-Walters ’90 and Carl Walters

For Pat Krevans Ms. Rachel Krevans

For Stephen Milliken Mr. Orton Jackson, Jr.

For Philip and Meredith Moriarty Dave and Mary Nahs

For Helen L. Porter Mr. and Mrs. Charles Davis

For Hamilton Robinson, Jr. Ms. Nancy Marshall Bickel

For Fae Silverman Ms. Carol Silverman

MATCHING GIFTSAIG Matching Grants ProgramCharles Schwab FoundationFidelity FoundationFreeport-McMoRan FoundationGE FoundationMicrosoft Matching Gifts ProgramMilliken & CompanyThe Boeing CompanyVerizon Foundation

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GIFTS TO THORNDIKE LIBRARYMs. Patricia BartonMr. and Mrs. Harold G. BrackThe Camden ConferenceMs. Jane HultbergCarol ’93 and Jacob ’93 Null

GIFTS TO GEORGE B. DORR MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORYMrs. Bernard K. CoughJonathan ’78 and Nina ’78 GormleyMr. and Mrs. John GuthJames Dyke and Helen Porter

GIFTS TO SUMMER FIELD STUDIES PROGRAMBar Harbor Garden ClubMr. and Mrs. Peter Blanchard IIIMs. Trisha Cantwell-KeeneDouglas Michael and Kimberly ChildsMr. and Mrs. Gary ChurchillMs. Alison ColuccioMs. Angela Delvecchio ’92Mr. and Mrs. Douglass EberhardtDaniel Bunker and Deborah ElmanMelisa Rowland and Scott HenggelerPeter Allen and Sarah HodderJames Hanscom and Erika JeffersAntony Detre and Yvette KovatsMs. Susan Flynn Maristany ’82Ms. Eileen Rosen MillerSteve and Donna MooreSuzanne MorseNicole Theodosiou Napier and Mark NapierMs. Caroline PryorMr. David RockefellerJoel Graber and Lindsay ShoplandShow Stoppers, UnlimitedMr. and Mrs. Christopher SmithZach ’00 and Autumn ’01 SoaresCharles Target and Lisa StewartMs. Kirsten Stockman ’91Shirng-Wern Tsaih

GIFTS TO BEECH HILL FARMMr. and Mrs. Mark CampbellDouglas Legg and Nina M. GoldmanHealthy Acadia CoalitionMs. Casey MallinckrodtLinzee Weld and Peter Milliken ’76Rebecca and Steve MillikenSuzanne MorseThe Partridge FoundationMr. Shamsher Virk ’07

GIFTS TO UNION RIVER WATERSHED COALITIONMs. Nancy AlexanderDr. & Mrs. Robert BeekmanMr. Kenneth ClineMr. Robert DeSimoneDr. Jane DisneyDrs. Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis and Merton FlemingsDr. and Mrs. John FurthMr. Donald GagnerMs. Carol Tweedie KortyMs. Susan LelandMr. and Mrs. Samuel MorseJim and Suzanne OwenMr. James PendletonMs. Bonnie PrestonMr. William RiceJane Rosinski and Gordon Russell

Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth SmithSouthern Maine Wetlands ConservancyMr. Edward P. SteenstraDan Thomassen and Bonnie TaiMs. Barbara Witham

SCHOLARSHIP GIFTSHarold Alfond FoundationBangor Hydro-Electric CompanyMs. Isobel BertmanMr. and Mrs. E. James ColeMr. and Mrs. Shelby M.C. DavisMs. Marlene DickinsonFisher Charitable FoundationEdward G. Kaelber Scholarship Fund of the Maine Community FoundationMr. Nishad Jayasundara ’05The Agnes M. Lindsay TrustMaine Space Grant ConsortiumMr. and Mrs. Robert L. MayerMr. William B. McDowell ’80Ms. Meghan Piercy ’91S&G FoundationMrs. Ruth SalingerAlice Blum Yoakum Scholarship Fund of the Maine Community Foundation

The Great Lakes of Africa Scholarship Mr. Samuel M. Hamill, Jr.

Rebecca Clark ’96 Memorial Scholarship Fund Bar Harbor Whale Watch Mr. Kenneth Cline Ms. Sally Crock

GRANTS FOR SPECIAL PROJECTSCommunity Based Fisheries Management Long Cove Foundation, Inc.

Comprehensive Academic Management System (CAMS) Davis Educational Foundation

IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) National Center for Research Resources, NIH

Maine Sea Grant Program University of Maine Sea Grant Program

Research Fellowships Maine Space Grant Consortium

Restricted Grant Margaret A. Cargill Foundation

Supporting Early Success in College MELMAC Education Foundation

Trans-Atlantic Partnership for Sustainable Food Systems Partridge Foundation

GIFTS TO SPECIAL PROJECTSAnonymousBarrick Gold CorporationRon Beard and Sandi ReadCalifornia Native Plant SocietyMr. and Mrs. John CooperT. A. Cox James Deering Danielson FoundationMr. and Mrs. Shelby M.C. DavisWendy Rodger and Henry Elliott (’73)Mr. and Mrs. William Foulke, Jr.Mr. Samuel Hamill, Jr.Hancock County Fund of the Maine Community Foundation

Mr. and Mrs. Horace HildrethMr. and Mrs. Melville HodderMs. Anne KozakMs. Rachel KrevansMr. and Mrs. Edward LeisenringTodd and Christa Little-SieboldMr. Samuel Joseph Lord (’01)Machias Savings BankMs. Casey MallinckrodtJennifer Reynolds and Jay McNally ’84Mr. and Mrs. John MerrillMr. and Mrs. G. Marshall MoriartySuzanne MorseMr. and Mrs. William V. P. NewlinLynn and Willy OsbornMs. Cathy Ramsdell ’78Peter and Lucy Bell SellersMr. Michael SenkMr. Henry Steinberg ’06Mrs. Donald StrausMs. Nina Therkildsen ’05U.S. Forest ServicePeter Wayne ’83

Campus LandscapeLynn Boulger and Tim GarrityMr. Caleb Fuller Davis ’02Mr. and Mrs. Charles DavisGarden Club of Mount DesertHelen Porter and James DykeReel Pizza

Kathryn W. Davis Student Residence VillageMr. and Mrs. Robert BassRon Beard and Sandi ReadMr. and Mrs. Leslie C. BrewerLynn Boulger and Tim GarrityMr. and Mrs. Roderick CushmanMargi and Philip Kunhardt III ’77Ms. Casey MallinckrodtSarah A. McDaniel ’93Rebecca and Steve MillikenDr. Walter RobinsonMr. and Mrs. Clyde E. Shorey, Jr.Mr. John Wilmerding

GIFTS TO THE SENIOR CLASSMs. Ashley Adler ’09Lynn Boulger and Tim GarrityMs. Heather Candon ’99Mr. Colin Capers ’95Barbara and Vinson CarterMr. Brett Ciccotelli ’09Steve Redgate and Dianne ClendanielMr. Kenneth ClineMs. Sarah Drerup ’09Ms. Donna GoldMs. Toria Harr ’09Ken and Ingrid HillMs. Jennifer HughesMs. Sarah Jackson ’09Mr. Peter Jenkins ’09Ms. Laura JohnsonMs. Linda Mejia ’09Mr Samuel Miller-McDonald ’09Ms. Anna MurphyMs. Laura Pohjola ’09Sean and Carolyn ToddMr. Christiaan van Heerden ’09

GIFTS TO THE ENDOWMENTAcadia Lobster Bakes LLC John and Karen AndersonMr. and Mrs. Francis I. Blair

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Allan Stone Chair in the Visual Arts Carolyn Snell ’06 and Victor Amarilla ’05 Mr. and Mrs. Graham Berwind, Jr. Mr. Charles Butt Mr. and Mrs. Robert Kogod Mr. and Mrs. Edward Lipkin Mr. and Mrs. Gerrish Milliken Mrs. Allan Stone Mr. and Mrs. John Sullivan, Jr.

Craig Greene Memorial Fund Allison Martin ’88 and Elmer Beal Patricia Honea-Fleming & Richard Borden

Doug Rose GIS Enhancement Fund Mr. and Mrs. Clayton D. Rose

William Drury Memorial Research Fund Mr. and Mrs. Robert G. Goelet Dr. Ellen Spain

President’s Discretionary Benefit and Compensation Fund Anonymous Ms. Maria Lis Baiocchi ’07 Mr. Charles Fischer ’07 Dr. James Kellam ’96

Steven K. Katona Chair in Marine Studies John and Karen Anderson Dr. and Mrs. Melville P. Cote George and Kelly Dickson, MPhil ’97 Mr. Millard Dority Mr. and Mrs. David Fischer Jonathan ’78 and Nina ’78 Gormley Mr. and Mrs. George B. E. Hambleton Charles and Jackie Hewett Ms. Jean Hoekwater ’80 Mrs. Michael Huber Jordan’s Restaurant Ann Sewall and Edward G. Kaelber Shawn ’00 and Sarah ’05 Keeley Ms. Casey Mallinckrodt Sarah A. McDaniel ’93 Mr. and Mrs. Gerrish Milliken Michael (’93) and Mollie ’92 Phemister Susan Erickson and Bruce Phillips ’78 Ms. Cathy L. Ramsdell ’78 Dr. Jennifer Rock ’93 Cynthia Livingston and Henry Schmelzer Mr. and Mrs. Richard F. Sullivan Elena Tuhy-Walters ’90 and Carl Walters

GIFTS TO ALLIED WHALEAbercrombie & Kent, Inc.Siobhan AgababianSteven Barkan and Barbara TennentMs. Jean D. BeckleyMs. Marie BerlinMs. Gail BrahierMr. Mark S. BrownMichele and Agnese Cestone FoundationMr. Michael DemasiMr. and Mrs. Kenneth DewGeorge Gerliczy and Katherine DonaldsonMs. Shantelle DunlapMr. and Mrs. Richard EnstromMs. Julie FeldmanMr. and Mrs. Bruce FeldsteinMs. Carla GanielMr. Walter H. GoodnowMr. and Mrs. Sean HennesseyMs. Deborah L. JacksonDylan and Mitch Kinsella AldenMs. Carolyn KrippenMs. Elizabeth C. Mackey

Maine Coast Sea VegetablesMs. Sarah MathisMs. Elizabeth McRoyMs. Pamela G. MeyerMr. Thomas J. MiltonMs. Nancy RidenourClaire and Donald RileyMr. and Mrs. Dennis M. Robinson, Jr.Ms. Abby Rowe (’98)/Rowe Family FndnMr. and Mrs. Douglas SewallMs. Donna SeymourAndrew and Sylvia ShatzErik Tryggestad and Angela SmithStarline Dept. of EducationMr. and Mrs. Richard TolarU.S. Department of Commerce/NOAAMr. William R. Warner

GIFTS IN KINDAnonymousAquatic AdventuresRon Beard and Sandi ReadMr. Ashley BryanDrs. Doreen Stabinsky and David FeldmanDr. and Mrs. Richard R. FoxMr. and Mrs. Paul Fremont-Smith, Jr.Jay and Ursula Friedlander*Mrs. Philip P. GeyelinKatahdin PhotogallerySusan Lerner and Steven KatonaMs. Anne M. KozakReba and Wendell Luke, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. James MahoneyAmy and Michael ReismanJames Senter ‘88Mr. Tom Zivkovich

GIFTS OF TIME AND TALENTMukhtar Amin ’04Glen Berkowitz ’82Eugenio Bertin ’97 and Sara Faull ’97Yaniv Brandvain ’04Ms. Pamela BushTawanda Chabikwa ’07Taj Chibnik ’95Rohan ’04 and April Mauro ’04 ChitrakarMs. Stephanie ClementLaura Cohn ’88Dr. Darron Collins ’92Benjamin Cowie-Haskell ’84Anne Czechanski ’06Mr. Bob DeForrest ’94Angela Delvecchio ’92Jen DesMaisons ’93Cerissa Desrosiers ’00Heather Dority ’96Nikhit D’Sa ’06Edenbrook MotelAlex Fletcher ’07Timothy Fuller ’03Mr. Jon GeigerMatthew Gerald ’83Jackson Gillman ’78Jessica Glynn ’06Elizabeth Gustavson ’94Kate Hassett ’08Ms. Susan HerseyJuan Hoffmaister ’07Margaret Hoffman ’97Amy Hoffmaster ’06Noreen Hogan ’91Mr. Charlie JacobiAlexandra Karkruff ’06Julianne Kearney ’06

Shawn ’00 and Sarah ’05 KeeleyMr. John Kelly Todd Kitchens ’06Mr. R. Zackary Klyver (’05)Noah Krell ’01Philip Kunhardt III ’77Jeanne Lambert ’06Virginie Lavallee-Picard ’07Jessie Greenbaum ’89 and Phil Lichtenstein ’92Abigail Littlefield ’83Benjamin Macko ’01Miles Maiden ’86Maine Cheese MakersMr. Michael Martin-Zboray ’95Sarah A. McDaniel ’93William B. McDowell ’80Megan McOsker ’90Greg Milne ’91Edward Monat ’88Peter Moon ’90Dominic Muntanga ’04Carol Null ’93Rachel O’Reilly (’98)Alexa Pezzano ’00Abbie Plaskov ’03Jennifer Prediger ’00Dr. Nishanta Rajakaruna ’94Chris Read ’03Mrs. Roxana RobinsonDr. Jennifer Rock ’93Santiago Salinas ’05Ms. Kerri Sands ’02 Jennifer Schroth ’84 and Jonathan Ellsworth ’87Mihaela Senek ’05Kate Sheely ’07Mark Simonds ’81Carolyn Snell ’06 Natalie Springuel ’91St. Saviors ChoirMichael Staggs ’96Mr. William P. Stewart and FamilyTreenen Sturman ’02Kate Tompkins ’08Erik Torbeck ’94Elena Tuhy-Walters ’90Joanna Walls (’07)Marjolaine Whittlesey ’05Holly Zak ’94

SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR ALUMNI DONORSMr. Chris Aaront ’08Ms. Ashley Adler ’09Ms. Heather Albert-Knopp ’99Carolyn Snell ’06 and Victor Amarilla ’05Mukhtar Amin ’04 Kristofer and Genevieve Angle ’00Ms. Jennifer Atkinson ’03Ms. Rosemarie Avenia ’86Wendy Knickerbocker and David Avery ’84Ms. Lelania Prior Avila ’92Ms. Jennifer Aylesworth ’94Mary Dohna ’80 and Wells Bacon ’80Ms. Maria Lis Baiocchi ’07Sean ’08 and Heather ’08 Berg Mr. Glen Berkowitz ’82Jason Bernad, MD ’94Eugenio Bertin ’97 and Sara Faull ’97 Mr. John Biderman ’77Mr. Jerry Bley (’78) Ms. Sally Boisvert ’04Michael Boland ’94

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Mr. Dennis Bracale ’88Mr. Yaniv Brandvain ’04Ms. Teisha Broetzman ’88Becky ’81 and Skip ’83 Buyers-Basso Mr. Henry Cabot III ’97Helen Caivano ’80Ms. Julie MacLeod Cameron ’78Ms. Heather Candon ’99Mr. Colin Capers ’95Mr. Tawanda Chabikwa ’07Mr. Erin Chalmers ’00Ms. Taj Chibnik ’95Rohan ’04 and April Mauro ’04 ChitrakarMs. Diana Choksey ’05Mr. Brett Ciccotelli ’09Ms. Katherine Clark ’91Ms. Tammis Coffin ’87Laura Cohn ’88Pancho Cole ’81Dr. Darron Collins ’92Benjamin Cowie-Haskell ’84Kevin ’93 and Jennifer ’93 Crandall Anne Czechanski ’06Ms. Patricia D’Angelo ’92Mr. Adam Dau ’01Mr. Caleb Fuller Davis ’02Ms. E. Nicole D’Avis ’02Mr. John Deans ’07Mr. Bob DeForrest ’94Ms. Angela Delvecchio ’92Rose and Steve Demers ’80Jen DesMaisons ’93Cerissa Desrosiers ’00Holly Devaul ’84Scott Dickerson ’95George and Kelly Dickson, MPhil ’97Angela DiPerri ’01Heather Dority ’96Mary Dohna ’80 and Wells Bacon ’80Ms. Sarah Drerup ’09Nikhit D’Sa ’06Mr. Joseph Edes ’83Henry Elliott (’73) Mr. Richard Epstein ’84Ms. Julie Erb ’83Deb Evans ’82 Mr. Gabriel Finkelstein ’07Mr. Charles Fischer ’07Ms. Cynthia Jordan Fisher ’80Rep. Elsie Flemings ’07Alex Fletcher ’07Ms. Hannah Fogg ’99Ms. Arianne Fosdick ’00Ms. Jamie Frank ’04Ms. Susan Freed ’80Ms. Glenon Friedmann ’86Timothy Fuller ’03Mr. Matthew Gerald ’83Ms. Nadine Gerdts (’76)Mr. Jackson Gillman ’78Ms. Lauren Gilson ’88Jessica Glynn ’06Ms. Abigail Goodyear ’81Jonathan ’78 and Nina ’78 Gormley Mr. P. Heeth Grantham ’94Ms. Linda Gregory ’89Ms. Katherine Griffin ’00Ms. Mary Griffin ’97Ms. Nikole Grimes ’96Ms. Grace Christina Grinager ’07Emma Rearick ’07 and Jay Guarneri ’06Ms. Elizabeth Gustavson ’94Ms. Elizabeth Gwinn ’01Ms. M. Rebecca Hancock ’97

Ms. Toria Harr ’09Mr. Tanner Brook Harris ’06Ms. Sonja Hartmann ’88Ms. Kate Hassett ’08Ms. Lois Hayes ’79Ms. Katherine Hazard ’76Michael Zwirko ’01 and Erin Heacock ’04Eric Henry (’74) Ms. Katie Hester ’98Dr. Josephine Todrank Heth ’76Ms. Jean Hoekwater ’80Juan Hoffmaister ’07Ms. Margaret Hoffman ’97Ms. Amy Hoffmaster ’06Noreen Hogan ’91Eda Holl ’05Lisa ’80 and Bob ’79 HolleyMs. Kathryn Hough ’95Ms. Kathryn Hunninen ’03Ms. Evelyn Mae Hurwich ’80Ms. Susan B. Inches ’79Ms. Sarah Jackson ’09Mr. John Jacob ’81Joplin James ’84Mr. Nishad Jayasundara ’05Peter Jeffery ’84Mr. Peter Jenkins ’09Mr. Andres Jennings ’08Sonja Johanson ’95 Ms. Catherine Johnson ’74Ms. Leslie Jones ’91Ms. Esther Karkal ’83Ms. Alexandra Karkruff ’06Mr. Michael Kattner ’95Julianne Kearney ’06 Shawn ’00 and Sarah ’05 KeeleyDr. James Kellam ’96Ms. Joanne Kemmerer ’02Mr. Michael Kersula ’09Mr. Todd Kitchens ’06Zack Klyver (’05) Mr. Noah Krell ’01 Margi and Philip Kunhardt III ’77Ms. Jude Lamb ’00Jeanne Lambert ’06Virginie Lavallee-Picard ’07Kathryn Harmon ’94 and Rob Ledo ’91Ms. Alice Leeds ’76Ms. Caroline Leonard ’01Ms. Alice Levey ’81Mr. Aaron Jonah Lewis ’05Jessie Greenbaum ’89

and Philip Lichtenstein ’92Ms. Abigail Littlefield ’83Dr. John Long, Jr. ’86Ms. Maria Vanegas Long ’84Mr. Samuel Joseph Lord (’01) Benjamin Macko ’01Miles Maiden ’86Ms. Susan Flynn Maristany ’82Rob Marshall ’87Mr. Erik Hilson Martin ’98Mr. Michael Martin-Zboray ’95Kathleen Massimini ’82Sarah A. McDaniel ’93Mr. William B. McDowell ’80Ms. Lauren McKean ’83Jay McNally ’84Ms. Megan McOsker ’90Mr. Clifton McPherson III ’84Ms. Linda Mejia ’09Mr. Jeffrey Miller ’92Mr Samuel Miller-McDonald ’09Peter Milliken ’76Mr. Greg Milne ’91Mr. Edward Monat ’88Mr. Peter Moon ’90Chase ’00 and Sarah ’02 Morrill Mr. Andrew Moulton ’04Dominic Muntanga ’04Ms. Elizabeth Nixon ’99Carol ’93 and Jacob Null ’93 Hannah Olshan ’92Ms. Rachel O’Reilly (’98)Mr. Benoni Outerbridge ’84Ms. Kaitlin Palmer ’08Ms. Pamela Parvin ’93Mr. Peter Pavicevic ’07 Tobin ’95 and Valerie (’96) PeacockShoshana Perry ’83Ms. Meghan Pew ’99Ms. Alexa Pezzano ’00Michael (’93) and Mollie ’92 Phemister Bruce Phillips ’78Ms. Meghan Piercy ’91Mr. Andrew Pixley ’01Ms. Abbie Plaskov ’03Ms. Laura Pohjola ’09Shiva Polefka ’01Ms. Frances Pollitt ’77Ms. Jennifer Prediger ’00Ms. Brianne Press Jordan ’02Ms. Susan Priest-Pierce ’77Dr. Nishanta Rajakaruna ’94

I give to COA because my experiences and education at COA prepared me for the challenges of my work and personal life. A COA education creates critical thinkers, adaptable and accepting minds open to others’ needs and beliefs, the need to work with intensity and a sense of purpose, and a desire to make a contribution to the world we live in. I give to COA because I am grateful for the opportunities my education has given me and because I believe that all those who desire a COA edu-cation should be able to attend regardless of their fi-nancial situation.

Margaret Hoffman ’97Director of Marketing and Visitor Services, Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens,

Boothbay, Maine

Why I give

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Year After YearProfile: Jeanne McPherson

I was talking to Jeanne McPherson the other day. She has made a gift to COA year after year and I called to see why. I knew she was not a past parent, nor a graduate. She lives in mid-coast Maine, not exactly right around the corner. She does not come to lectures or gallery shows to see our amazing students’ work. How did she come to be such a loyal supporter of COA?

Here’s the story she told me: “Years ago, you had an Elderhostel there. My room was on the third floor of The Turrets. While we were there, a great fire broke out on the campus. It is such a tribute to the people that make up COA, the care that they took making sure we were safe. Everyone went to such an extent to make us comfortable ... even though the place was on fire! I have never forgotten your kindness.”

The fire that burned the old Kaelber Hall happened twenty-six years ago. Today, Jeanne is eighty-eight years old!

A graduate of Bucknell University, Jeanne’s gift to us is particularly meaningful. She says, “My fifty dollars is not going to make a make a great deal of difference ... but I feel this is what I can do and I want to support you. COA is one of the places I feel deserves my support. I get a lot out of it!”

She keeps tabs on the work that’s made possible by her giving. “Whenever I get the magazine, I am so impressed! It’s not just the writing. It tells you so much about the graduates and the undergraduates and the work you do.”

Thank you, Jeanne! And thanks to all of those listed below who year after year give to COA.

Lynn Boulger, Dean of Development

25 Years or More!

Bar Harbor Bank & TrustMr. Edward McC. BlairMr. and Mrs. Leslie C. Brewer*Mrs. Alida D. M. Camp*Mr. and Mrs. Amos EnoMrs. Lucretia W. EvansThe First Mrs. Ruth B. FraleyMr. and Mrs. John M. GoodFr. James Gower

Ms. Catherine B. Johnson ’74Ann Sewall and Edward KaelberMrs. Louis C. MadeiraMr. Charles E. Merrill, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. Gerrish MillikenMr. and Mrs. Benjamin R. NeilsonMr. and Mrs. William V. P. NewlinMr. and Mrs. C. W. Eliot PaineMrs. Eben W. Pyne

Mr. and Mrs. John P. ReevesMr. David RockefellerPeter and Lucy Bell SellersMr. and Mrs. Clyde E. Shorey, Jr.*Ms. Marion StockingMrs. Donald B. StrausMs. Joan H. SwannMs. Katherine Weinstock ’81Mr. Douglas Williams

Ms. Quintana Ramirez ’03Ms. Cathy Ramsdell ’78Mr. Chris Read ’03Dr. Jennifer Roberts ’94Dr. Jennifer Rock ’93Allison Rogers Furbish ’04Eric Roos ’87 Mr. W. David Rosenmiller ’84Ms. Elizabeth Rousek Ayers ’95Ms. Abby Rowe (’98) Santiago Salinas ’05Ms. Kerri Sands ’02Mr. Daniel Sangeap ’90Ms. Margaret Scheid ’85Ms. Judith Schenk ’80Jennifer Schroth ’84 and Jonathan Ellsworth ’87Ryder ’97 and Amy ’97 ScottMs. Ellen Seh (’76) Ms. Mihaela Senek ’05James Senter ‘88Ms. Kate Sheely ’07Richard ’88 and Lilea ’90 Simis Mr. Mark Simonds ’81

Zach ’00 and Autumn ’01 SoaresMs. Amanda Spector ’08 Ms. Natalie Springuel ’91Michael Staggs ’97Mr. Henry Steinberg ’06Andrea Perry ’95 and Toby Stephenson ’98 Ms. Leah C. Stetson, BA ’01, MPhil ’06Ms. Kirsten Stockman ’91Ms. Dorie Stolley ’88Mr. Treenen Sturman ’02Ms. Katrin Hyman Tchana ’83Ms. Nina Therkildsen ’05Ms. Kate Tompkins ’08Mr. Erik Torbeck ’94Elena Tuhy-Walters ’90 Mr. Frank Twohill ’80Sarah Tyson ’96Christiaan van Heerden ’09Mr. John Viele (’77) Mr. Shamsher Virk ’07Abbe F. Vogels ’01Tom Volkmann ’90Joanna Walls (’07)Ben Walters ’81

Peter Wayne ’83Ms. Katherine Weinstock ’81Ms. Maria Weisenberg ’81Ms. Jean McHugh Weiss ’81Marjolaine Whittlesey ’05Ms. Nellie Wilson ’04Janey Winchell ’82Josh Winer ’91Mr. David Winship ’77Ms. Betsy Wisch ’83Sue Woehrlin ’80Ms. Jingran Xiao (’86) Mr. Robert Young (’86) Holly Zak ’94

OUR FRIENDS WHO PASSED AWAY SINCE JULY 1, 2008Mrs. Ellen H. EmeryMrs. Philip (Sherry) GeyelinMr. Michael HuberMr. Philip LevinMrs. Donald (Mona) McLeanMs. Marion Stocking

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20–24 YearsMrs. Diane H. AndersonMr. and Mrs. Robert M. BassMr. H. B. BeachMr. and Mrs. Elmer L. Beal, Sr.Mr. John O. Biderman ’77Hon. and Mrs. Robert O. BlakeMr. and Mrs. Peter P. Blanchard IIIMr. Jerry Bley (’78)Charles and Barbara Burton IIRoc and Helen Caivano ’80Ms. Julie MacLeod Cameron ’78Donna Gold and William CarpenterMr. and Mrs. Elliot CohenMr. and Mrs. Gerald E. ColsonDick Atlee and Sarah CorsonDr. and Mrs. Melville P. CoteMs. Sally CrockMr. and Mrs. Roderick H. CushmanMs. Norah D. DavisMr. and Mrs. Charles Dickey, Jr.Prof. and Mrs. Arthur A. DoleCarol and Jackson EnoMr. and Mrs. Gordon I. EriksonMs. Cynthia Jordan Fisher ’80Dr. and Mrs. Richard R. FoxMr. and Mrs. W. West Frazier, IVMr. Jackson Gillman ’78Dr. and Mrs. Donald J. GlotzerBruce Mazlish and Neva GoodwinJonathan ’78 and Nina ’78 GormleyMr. and Mrs. Paul J. GrowaldMs. Katherine W. Hazard ’76Eric (’74)and Kate HenryMr. and Mrs. Horace A. Hildreth, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. Melville HodderLisa ’80 and Bob ’79 HolleyMs. Betsey HoltzmannMrs. Michael HuberMs. Susan B. Inches ’79Susan Lerner and Steven KatonaMr. John M. KauffmannMr. and Mrs. John N. KellyNeil King and Diana KingMr. and Mrs. Robert P. KogodMs. Anne M. KozakMargi and Philip Kunhardt III ’77Dr. Eugene A. Lesser ’78Mrs. Marcia MacKinnonMr. J. R. McGregorMrs. Donald McLeanMr. Roger MillikenMr. and Mrs. G. Marshall MoriartyMrs. Lorraine B. MorongMrs. A. Corkran NimickMs. Sandra NowickiMrs. Elizabeth Higgins NullMr. Benoni Outerbridge ’84Susan Erickson and Bruce Phillips ’78Mona and Louis RabineauMs. Cathy L. Ramsdell ’78Mr. and Mrs. Owen W. RobertsMr. and Mrs. David Rockefeller, Jr.Hilda and Thomas RoderickMs. Ellen Seh (’76)Mr. and Mrs. Winthrop A. ShortMs. Dorie S. Stolley ’88Mrs. Kathryn SuminsbyMr. John L. Thorndike

Mr. John Van DewaterMr. John E. Viele (’77)Mrs. Jeptha WadeStacy Hankin and Ben Walters ’81Bradford and Alice WellmanMs. Janey Winchell ’82Mr. and Mrs. William Wister, Jr.Mr. David J. WithamMs. Sue Woehrlin ’80Mrs. Jane S. Zirnkilton

15–19 YearsDr. and Mrs. Murray AbramskyMr. John K. AndersonAtwater Kent Foundation, IncorporatedMary Dohna ’80 and Wells ’80 BaconBar Harbor MotelBar Harbor Savings & LoanMr. and Mrs. Francis I. BlairMs. Edith BlombergMs. Pamela L. Bolton ’79Mrs. Charlotte T. BordeauxMs. Virginia BrennanBecky ’81 and Skip ’83 Buyers-BassoMs. Tammis Coffin ’87Ms. Barbara C. ColeRuth M. and Tristram C. ColketMr. and Mrs. S. Whitney DickeyMrs. F. Eugene DixonMrs. Mary Drury*Mrs. Ellen H. EmeryMrs. Bertha E. ErbMr. and Mrs. Charles ErhartMr. and Mrs. William Foulke, Jr.Ms. Susan E. Freed ’80Galyn’s GalleyMs. Laurie Geiger*Mr. and Mrs. Philip GeyelinMrs. Hope GoddardMr. and Mrs. Paul M. GolasPatricia and Cyrus HaggeMr. and Mrs. Theodore HailperinMr. and Mrs. George B. E. HambletonMr. Samuel M. Hamill, Jr.Ms. Lois Hayes ’79Mr. and Mrs. Robert HinckleyMr. and Mrs. David M. HollenbeckMs. Sherry F. HuberMr. Peter HuntMr. and Mrs. Charles E. HuntingtonAlison and Joplin James ’84Ms. Esther R. Karkal ’83Bob and Ellie KatesMr. and Mrs. James M. KelloggCarl Ketchum and Lorraine StratisMs. Alice J. Leeds ’76Ms. Alice Levey ’81Mr. James R. LindenthalDr. John H. Long, Jr. ’86Dr. and Mrs. Ralph C. LongsworthMr. and Mrs. William G. Lord IIMiles ’86 and Meg MaidenMaine Community FoundationMs. Susan Flynn Maristany ’82Steven Callahan and Kathleen Massimini ’82Mrs. Anne A. MazlishMr. William B. McDowell ’80Jennifer Reynolds and Jay McNally ’84Ms. Jeanne McPherson

Marvin and Jean MessexMr. and Mrs. Keith MillerMr. Peter W. Moon ’90Dr. Victoria T. MurphyMr. John H. NewhallMr. and Mrs. J.D. NyhartDr. and Mrs. Lewis E. PatrieMr. Robert W. Patterson, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. Robert PenningtonShoshana Perry ’83Mr. and Mrs. Daniel PierceMr. and Mrs. George PutnamMr. and Mrs. Raymond RappaportDr. Richard G. RockefellerDr. and Mrs. Steven C. RockefellerRonald and Patricia RogersMr. W. David Rosenmiller ’84Dr. Pamela Jensen and Dr. Stephen RossMr. and Mrs. Max RothalMr. Daniel Sangeap ’90Ms. Margaret Scheid ’85Mr. and Mrs. Henry D. Sharpe, Jr.Mr. Mark E. Simonds ’81Mrs. Allan StoneElena V. Tuhy-Walters ’90 and Carl WaltersRodman and Susan WardMrs. Cecile WatsonMs. Jean McHugh Weiss ’81Mr. John WilmerdingMs. Betsy Wisch ’83Ms. Jingran Xiao (’86)

10–14 YearsDr. and Mrs. Raymond E. AlieMs. Judith M. AllenJohn and Karen AndersonBar Harbor Lobster BakesRichard and Rosemary BarnhartAllison Martin ’88 and Elmer Beal, Jr.Ron Beard and Sandi ReadMr. Dennis R. Bracale ’88Mr. and Mrs. Harold G. BrackMs. Teisha Broetzman ’88Ms. Frances S. CarlinSuzanne Taylor and Don CassMr. and Mrs. Robert W. CawleyMrs. Katherine Kaufer ChristoffelMrs. Bernard CoughPhilip and Tina DeNormandieMrs. Joanne R. DevlinGeorge and Kelly, MPhil ’97 DicksonMartha and Stephen DolleyMrs. George DwightDianna and Ben EmoryMs. Julie A. Erb ’83Ms. Deborah Evans ’82Thomas and Carroll FernaldMr. and Mrs. William M.G. FletcherMs. Glenon Friedmann ’86Mr. David FurholmenGarden Club of Mount DesertSteve and Katie GeorgeMs. Nadine Gerdts (’76)Ms. Lauren N. Gilson ’88Drs. Alan and Wendy GladstoneMr. and Mrs. Robert M. GoodmanMr. Walter H. GoodnowJohn Allgood and Abigal Goodyear ’81Ms. Elizabeth K. Gorer

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Jane and Philip H. Grantham, Sr.Ms. Linda Gregory ’89Mr. and Mrs. John GuthMr. and Mrs. John Michael HancockMrs. Penelope HarrisMs. Mary HeffernonDr. Josephine Todrank Heth ’76Ms. Barbara HilliDr. Leonard F. HirshMs. Evelyn Mae Hurwich ’80Mr. and Mrs. John J. Inch, Jr.Mr. Orton P. Jackson, Jr.Mr. William JanesMs. Leslie L. Jones ’91Jordan-FernaldMr. and Mrs. William R. KalesDr. James Kellam ’96Ms. Aleda KoehnMr. and Mrs. Ted KoffmanDr. and Mrs. David LebwohlKathryn Harmon ’94 and Rob Ledo ’91The Agnes M. Lindsay TrustMr. and Mrs. Edward LipkinMs. Abigail Littlefield ’83Ms. Mayo LynamMr. James MacLeodMaine Coast Sea VegetablesMs. Casey MallinckrodtRob Marshall ’87Sarah ’93 and Jon McDanielMs. Donna McFarlandMr. and Mrs. Clement E. McGillicuddyMr. Clifton McPherson III ’84Robert J. and Jane H. MeadeMr. Jeffrey Miller ’92Linzee Weld and Peter Milliken ’76Mr. Frank MocejunasDr. Frank MoyaMr. and Mrs. John R. MoyerMr. and Mrs. Robert C. Nicholas IIIMs. Hope OlmsteadLynn and Willy OsbornDr. and Mrs. Richard N. PiersonMs. Frances L. Pollitt ’77Mr. and Mrs. Fred C. ReaDrs. Paul and Ann RochmisMs. Sydney Roberts RockefellerEric ’87 and Kelly RoosMr. and Mrs. Clayton D. RoseMr. and Mrs. Joseph RothsteinRoland and Dottie SeymourDr. and Mrs. Dennis L. ShubertMr. and Mrs. Stephen R. SmithMs. Harriet H. SoaresMike ’97 and Lynne StaggsMr. W. P. StewartStewart Brecher ArchitectsCarol and Sid StricklandMr. and Mrs. Richard F. SullivanSwan Agency - InsuranceDr. Davis TaylorMs. Katrin Hyman Tchana ’83Nick and Joan ThorndikeMs. Ellen Reid ThurmanMr. Frank Twohill ’80Jack Ledbetter and Helen TysonMs. Katrina Van DusenMr. and Mrs. Christiaan ’09 van HeerdenTom and Elizabeth Volkmann ’90

Richard Hilliard and Karen WaldronDr. Peter Wayne ’83Ms. Maria T. Weisenberg ’81Ms. Mary E. WelchRaymond and Laurie WilliamsMr. and Mrs. Joseph WishcamperTom and Loretta Witt

5–9 YearsAcadia Senior CollegeMs. Heather M. Albert-Knopp ’99Mr. and Mrs. Schofield Andrews IIIWendy Knickerbocker and David Avery ’84Ms. Lelania Prior Avila ’92Ms. Jennifer L. Aylesworth ’94Sarah and David BakerMr. Alan L. Baker / The Ellsworth AmericanBar Harbor Garden ClubBar Harbor Whale WatchSteven Barkan and Barbara TennentDrs. Wesley and Terrie BeamerDr. and Mrs. Robert A. BeekmanMs. Katie M. BellMr. and Mrs. William E. Benjamin IIMr. Glen A. Berkowitz ’82Ms. Marie BerlinMs. Lyn BerzinisMr. and Mrs. Robert J. BirdMrs. Joan S. BlaineMr. Edward McC. Blair, Jr.Dierdre Swords and Michael Boland ’94Patricia Honea-Fleming and Richard BordenMr. Charles ButtMr. and Mrs. Louis CabotMr. Henry B. Cabot III ’97Mr. Colin Capers ’95Mr. William P. CareyLinda K. and John H. CarmanBarbara and Vinson CarterMichele and Agnese Cestone FoundationMr. Erin B. Chalmers ’00Mr. David ChiangMs. Taj Chibnik ’95Ms. Cecily G. ClarkMs. Katherine D. Clark ’91Susanna Porter and James ClarkMs. Kim ClarkHannah S. Sistare and Timothy B. ClarkSteve Redgate and Dianne ClendanielMr. Kenneth ClineMs. Jan CoatesMr. Pancho Cole ’81Dr. Darron Collins ’92The Combs FamilyMr. and Mrs. John CooperMs. Judith CoxT. A. CoxKevin ’93 and Jennifer ’93 CrandallMrs. Rose CutlerJane and Stan DavisMr. and Mrs. Shelby M.C. DavisDavis Educational FoundationSteve ’80 and Rose DemersMr. Robert DeSimoneMs. Holly Devaul ’84Janet Redfield and Scott Dickerson ’95Ms. Angela DiPerri ’01Mr. and Mrs. William DohmenJanet Anker and Charles Donnelly

Mr. Millard DorityWendy and Michael DowneyMr. and Mrs. William C. Eacho IIIThe Eacho Family FoundationMr. Alden EatonMr. Joseph Edes ’83Wendy Rodger and Henry Elliott (’73)Ms. Carol B. EmmonsMr. Richard H. Epstein ’84Sam and Elise FeltonMr. and Mrs. David FischerMrs. Margery ForbesCherie and Chad FordMs. Carla GanielMr. and Mrs. Will GardinerMr. and Mrs. Jon GeigerMr. Matthew Gerald ’83Ms. Susan GetzeMs. Anne GiardinaMr. and Mrs. Robert G. GoeletMrs. Laura Arm GoldsteinDr. and Mrs. Robert GossartMr. and Mrs. John P. GowerMs. Mary K. Griffin ’97Susan Dowling and Andrew GriffithsMr. and Mrs. Michael GumpertMs. Elizabeth Gwinn ’01Mr. and Mrs. Richard HabermannMs. M. Rebecca Hancock ’97Ms. Holly HartleyMs. Sonja Hartmann ’88Larry and Patty HayesAtsuko Watabe ’93 and Bruce Hazam ’92Michael Zwirko ’01 and Erin Heacock ’04Healthy Acadia CoalitionMs. Katie J. Hester ’98Charles and Jackie HewettMs. Jean Hoekwater ’80Ms. Margaret A. Hoffman ’97Homewood BenefitsDr. and Mrs. William HornerMr. and Mrs. Jeffrey HorowitzMs. Jen HughesMs. Jane HultbergMr. John P. Jacob ’81Peter ’84 and Margaret JefferyMs. Laura JohnsonMr. and Mrs. Edward C. Johnson IIIMs. Constance JordanJordan’s RestaurantMr. and Mrs. H. Lee JuddMr. and Mrs. David H. KaneMr. Michael Kattner ’95Shawn ’00 and Sarah ’05 KeeleyMr. Arthur J. KellerJill and Bobby KelleyMs. Joanne S. Kemmerer ’02Kent-Lucas Foundation, IncorporatedBarbara and Steven KielBethany and Zack Klyver (’05)Mrs. Philip Kunhardt, Jr.Mrs. Anthony LaphamDr. and Mrs. Leung LeeMr. and Mrs. Edward B. LeisenringJessie Greenbaum ’89 and Philip Lichtenstein ’92Ms. Maria Vanegas Long ’84Mr. and Mrs. Peter LoringMr.and Mrs. Lewis Lukens

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Machias Savings BankMaine Space Grant ConsortiumMs. Pamela ManiceMr. and Mrs. Grant G. McCullaghMs. Lauren McKean ’83Ms. Lenorah McKeeMs. Pamela G. MeyerLaura Ellis and David MillikenRebecca and Steve MillikenMr. and Mrs. A. Fenner MiltonSen. and Mrs. George J. MitchellMr. and Mrs. David E. MooreMr. and Mrs. Philip S. J. MoriartyMr. and Mrs. I. Wistar Morris IIISuzanne MorseMs. Anne M. MulhollandMs. Anna MurphyMr. and Mrs. Robert A. Nathane, Jr.Patricia G. NorrisCarol ’93 and Jacob Null ’93Judd and Hannah Olshan ’92Mr. W. Kent OlsonJim and Suzanne OwenMs. Pamela Parvin ’93Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth PaulMr. and Mrs. Malcolm E. Peabody

Tobin ’95 and Valerie Peacock (’96)Mr. and Mrs. Ferguson E. PetersMr. and Mrs. Jay PierrepontThomas and Patricia PinkhamMs. Carole PlentyShiva Polefka ’01James Dyke and Helen PorterMs. Susan Priest-Pierce ’77Ms. Sheila Sonne PullingMr. and Mrs. Peter H. ReckseitAmb. and Mrs. Joseph Verner ReedMrs. Dora L. RichardsonJohn and Carol RiversDr. Jennifer Roberts ’94Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton Robinson, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. John R. RobinsonDr. Walter RobinsonDr. Jennifer Rock ’93Ms. Allison E. Rogers Furbish ’04Ms. Elizabeth Rousek Ayers ’95Mr. and Mrs. William M. RudolfMs. Kerri Sands ’02David and Mary SavidgeMs. Judith Schenk ’80Cynthia Livingston and Henry Schmelzer

Mr. and Mrs. John P. Grace ShetharRichard ’88 and Lilea ’90 SimisJohn and Fran SimsState Street CorporationBruce and Susan StedmanAndrea Perry ’95 and Toby Stephenson ’98Ms. Marie StiversMr. George Strawbridge, Jr.Ms. Caren SturgesMr. Gilbert L. SwardDan Thomassen and Bonnie TaiMr. and Mrs. William Thorndike, Jr.Sean and Carolyn ToddKathy Bonk and Marc TuckerUniversity of Maine Sea Grant ProgramUS Department of CommerceJulia Merck and Hans UtschMr. and Mrs. David VailMs. Joan WeberMr. and Mrs. Kenneth WegMr. and Mrs. Harold White IIIDawn Lamendola ('92) and Josh Winer ’91Mr. David B. Winship ’77Mr. and Mrs. Louis Zawislak

Awards

The Sidney and Hazel DeMott Bahrt Scholarship honors the legacy of long-time COA friends and supporters of environ-mental, educational and cultural organizations. The first Bahrt Scholar is Gabby Roos ’13, who received a full, four-year scholarship to COA.

The Rebecca Clark ’96 Memorial Scholarship in Marine Sciences honors the memory of our alumna who was killed by the 2005 tusnami while conducting research on sea turtle conservation in Southeast Asia. This year’s scholarship goes to Emily Argo ’10 in recognition of her enthusiasm and scholarship in the marine sciences, and for her dedication to sea turtle conservation.

The Richard Slaton Davis and Norah Deakin Davis Scholarship celebrates COA’s first philoso-pher, Richard Slaton (“Dick”) Davis who worked on the philosophical underpinnings of human ecology until his untimely death in 1982. This year’s recipient is Franklin Jacoby ’12, who has shown an unusual ability in philosophy and its application to other areas of human ecology.

COA awards the John C. Dreier Scholarship, honoring our former trustee and diplomat, to juniors who have shown leadership in building community spirit between COA and our surrounding communities. This year’s recipients, Le-land Moore ’10 and Lauren Nutter ’10 are energetic, en-gaged students who inspire others with their leadership in building community spirit on campus and in connecting COA to the broader community.

The Louisa R. Dreier Scholarship is given to a junior who shares Isa Dreier’s talent and joy in the arts. Sinda Karklina ’10 has ability in many areas, including drawing, video, animation, fabric arts, installation, writing and film, and has immersed herself in studies of art, exploring ideas as complex as gender and death with compassion and humor.

Each May, College of the Atlantic chooses students to receive an array of awards and scholarships that honor dear friends and former faculty members. The 2009 awards are listed in alphabetical order according to the person for whom the honor is named.

Lauren Nutter ’10. Photo by Rogier van Bakel.

Leland Moore ’10. Photo by Donna Gold.

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The W.H. Drury, Jr. Prize in Natural History honors the late ornithologist, naturalist and COA faculty member Bill Drury. It is awarded to students of field ecology, especially those who are able to incorporate the visual arts into their study of plants and animals. Andrew “Bik” Wheeler ’09, a born naturalist and conservationist who cares deeply about the Maine coast and its fauna, is this year’s recipient.

The Craig Greene Memorial Scholarship is given to rising juniors or seniors who have excelled in botany and general biology, and who share our late faculty member’s passion for the world of flora. This year’s winner, Luka Negoita ’11, is irrepressibly interested in plants, committed to plant conservation, and a great field botanist.

The August Heckscher Scholarship is given to two juniors whose work focuses on public lands, government or the arts in honor of the late artist, author and public servant. This year, the scholar-ships were given to Noah Hodgetts ’10 and Samantha Haskell ’10, both of whom have devoted great effort to working with local communities on planning and zoning committees.

The Daniel H. Kane Award honors our late founding faculty member in law. It is given to a graduating senior for outstand-ing work in conservation and conservation law. Iris Lowery ’09, this year’s recipient, did exceptional work in environmen-tal law and policy courses and shares Dan’s deep commitment to conservation.

The Edward G. Kaelber Scholarship for Maine Students of Outstanding Promise honors COA’s first president by awarding an incoming freshman from Maine with a four-year scholar-ship. Fiona Hunter ’11, the first recipient, continues to demonstrate a high level of achievement in academic and community work.

The Agnes M. Lindsay Trust Scholarship is awarded to new COA students from New England towns with fewer than five thousand residents. This year’s Lindsay Scholars are Ayla Yandow ’13 from St. George, Vermont and Terra van de Sande ’13 from Columbia, Maine. Ayla found-ed the environmental club at her high school and plans to pursue environmental studies. Terra worked on her high school’s organic farm and led wilderness trips in Maine’s north woods. She plans to study creative and environmental writing.

The Eleanor Scott Mallinckrodt Prize was created by Casey Mallinckrodt to honor her mother, a landscape designer. It recognizes a student who excels in landscape architecture, and went to Andrew Louw ’11 who is passionate about landscape architecture and has the potential to become a talented designer.

The Edward J. Meade, Jr. Educational Studies Award goes to students who demonstrate innovative teaching practices and make significant contributions to education on and off campus. It was given to Jasmine Smith ’09 who has significant experience in teaching and leading activities outdoors and a deep commitment to meaningful learning in all settings.

Sponsored by COA friend Charles Merrill, the annual Merrill Scholarship offers a student from the Czech Republic’s Palacky University the opportunity to spend a year at COA. This year’s Merrill Scholar is Lenka Šprtová, a second-year student in Palacky’s Ecology and Environmental Protection program.

The Maurine and Robert Rothschild Scholarship Award for graduate stu-dents honors our former board members. Graduate student Jack Rodolico, who is studying local marine conservation issues and environmental jour-nalism, received this award.

The Alice Blum Yoakum Scholarship was established by our late trustee Robert Blum for students with plans to work for biodiversity and especial-ly for the preservation of underwater species in various parts of the world. It was awarded to Sasha Paris ’10, who is committed to environmental stewardship and the preservation of marine biodiversity, and passionate about marine biology.

Jasmine Smith ’09. Photo by Rogier van Bakel.

Fiona Hunter ’11. Photo by Tony Hollis.

Noah Hodgetts ’10

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How do you describe what you do?

I’m still really figuring it out; I think of myself primarily as an artist, but also a writer and photographer—there’s no really succinct way to describe this work—some call it journalism, but because of the creative component, artist feels right.

How did you create the United Nations video?

I really thought a long time about what I wanted to say when I decided to respond to the question. I had just come back from the Congo. And that week, my friends had lost their baby and their house had been robbed. I wanted to transform my anger into something that was powerful and important. I found myself writing this letter about how we can connect more with people, and with ourselves as individuals, and acknowledge our own dreams and passions—and through that engage and transform. It was a personal message, not a policy statement. What do we do with what we know? Also, I had just had the experience of producing the video Why Congo Matters, and I had been looking at the photos I took there for a long time, looking into the eyes of the people.

Did COA prepare you for this work?

Having the idea that the answer can be a question—I really feel that I learned that at COA. There are so many intractable problems, and COA offers this gift of letting you

recognize that there’s room for open space in an intellectual conversation—and for moving parts. Academically, I studied text and photo with (former arts faculty member) Doug Barkey and performance art with Nancy Andrews and literature with Karen Waldron and Bill Carpenter. I worked on poetry and how to create an emotional message. There’s such a need to not just be open-minded, but to take on open-mindedness as a useful tool of study; not to be a relativist.

What’s your next step?

Over the next few years I will be working with the UN to create more messages from people on the ground. I am specifically interested in talking about the Millennium Development Goals. This will be something that I revisit over time—one person at a time.

Q&AEmily Troutman’01

The United Nations recently sponsored a contest in which it asked world citizens—youth in particular—to create a video answer to this question: “If you had the opportunity to speak to world leaders, what would you say?”

The video created by Emily Troutman ’01 offers this message: “Every day I want you to wake up and know that you work for 6.7 billion real people, one person at a time. People with children, and dreams, and stories.” With that request, Troutman became one of five winners, the only one from the United States. She is now officially a UN Citizen Ambassador.

Troutman holds a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Minnesota, but she feels her most useful work is the writing, photographs and videos she creates as a social documentarian. She currently has three videos on her website, each one focused on images of individual people. The first is the very popular President Obama Inauguration: Words for How We Feel Now. The second, Why Congo Matters, was created after a month-long visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The third is the UN video. These can be found on her blog: http://emilytroutman.blogspot.com.

Photos by Emily Troutman ’01.

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RevisitedThe Human Ecology Essay

I have always felt a deep con-nection with the woods and coast of Maine and be-lieve it is among the most amaz-ing places in the world, like a gi-ant Zen garden. I grew up as the

oldest of five children in a family that has lived on the coast for at least eight generations, clinging doggedly to the tradi-tions of rural New England. A born naturalist, I spent my summers looking for critters under logs and rocks, in tidal pools and seaweed. I learned to use a chainsaw and an axe when I was young and helped manage a small woodlot for firewood to heat our home through the long winters. This unique upbringing in the salt air, and the deciduous and ev-ergreen forests of Maine’s rocky coast, made me fall madly in love with nature.

As I transitioned roughly into adulthood, I witnessed a lot of development. Many of the coastal spaces where nature had been disappeared: fields and forests gave way to wid-ened roads and housing. Reading E.O. Wilson and Aldo Leopold, I became explicitly aware of the failing relation-ship between the human-mediated and nonhuman-mediat-ed world. It became painfully clear to me that we need to make a conscious effort as a whole earth community to heal this relationship. I transferred to College of the Atlantic in 2001 to study human ecology and get the tools necessary to help create a world where natural resources are fairly al-located and conserved.

After graduating, I followed the footsteps of my forefathers and spent a few years at sea. I worked with nonprofit or-ganizations teaching marine sciences and adventure-based outdoor education on the floating classrooms of traditional sailing vessels. I worked my way up “through the scuppers” from deckhand to captain and grew immensely from the influence of excellent shipmates, hard work, long hours and the intensity of the programs. Living at sea on traditional sailing vessels satisfied my admittedly Luddite and anti-tech ideologies. My ecological footprint was sufficiently small and I could see that my enthusiasm for life was rubbing off on my students. And yet, I felt I needed to find a way to di-

rectly work toward a more sustainable relationship between people and nature. Between watches, I read to inform and feed my vision. Books by Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry and Jared Diamond, among others, influenced me to return to the land. And so I moved from San Francisco to France two years ago to work on a small organic seed-saving farm in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Having almost no knowl-edge of French, I spent a lot of time in silence until I learned to speak.

Contemplating that small farm under this enforced silence gave me insights into my ideal land-based life. Working in the soil and greenhouses with the plants and animals that produced my sustenance felt right. As I slowly picked up French, I talked with the farmer and his family about the challenges facing small farmers and the need for more sup-port. Small farmers around the world are losing their land as more and more of our food is being produced in factory-like settings.

With the aim to change the course of things for small farm-ers, I took up a role with the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) in Germany, sup-porting organic agriculture through capacity building and advocacy. I am now beginning a master’s course in Interna-tional Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Kassel in Witzenhausen, Germany.

My love affair is still strong with nature in general and partic-ularly with Maine. I see this as a time of great consequence. On that small seed-saving farm in southern France I experi-enced what a harmonious relationship between people and nature looks like. We can and should realize this as a global community, but we’ll need to make some adjustments. I would like to participate in altering the paradigm under which we live as a global human community; to extend the moral community, as it were, to include other species, as it has so recently expanded to include most of us. I look for-ward to watching this world transform to a world in which humans truly share the planet with other species.

Gesundheit.

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A Human Ecologist’s JourneyCory Whitney ’03

Cory Whitney ’03 works as an ambassador between COA and the University of Kassel as part of the college’s Trans-Atlantic Partnership (whitney.cory@gmail.com).

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