You know how, sometimes, you get tired and cranky and cynical? The daily round is so…daily! Work, family, social obligations, deadlines, ringing cell phones, pinging emails… Here are four minutes guaranteed to shake the dust off your heart and fuel your hope for the future. Peek behind the magic green curtain at Evergreen’s Annual Fund and hear the voices of tomorrow.
Show your support for the next generation with your year end gift to Evergreen. Give now!
Patti Dobrowolski ’80, author, and founder of “Up Your Creative Genius”
Creativity consultant and author Patti Dobrowolski ’80 is now a TEDX alumna. Her presentation, part of TEDX Sacramento, provides an oasis for the busy mind and is great way to reclaim imagination from the mental whirlwind of life. Here’s an example of Patti’s positive view on thriving in the face of stress and strife:
“Fear is wonderful because it sparks your imagination. Fear forces you to pretend. We imagine our way out of disaster. … Imagination is the engine of our lives…”
Give yourself a break and, as Patti says, “Let imagination take it from here.”
See Patti’s listing in the Evergreen Writers Directory and take a peek at her her book, Drawing Solutions: How Visual Goal Setting Will Change Your Life.
Reprinted from Tikkun Daily, an article by Adam Sher ’02
Adam Sher ’02: I was getting into new possibilities for my work, my ideas, my spirituality, my social connections, and my life.
In the summer of 2006, I was teaching eighth-grade social studies in a Seattle public school. I was 26 years old, on a career path, in a long-term relationship, and a new homeowner. Life was good, and it was time for a summer vacation. So I signed up for a week-long retreat at the Elat Chayyim Jewish Retreat Center in Accord, New York. I thought I was getting away after a busy school year, going on vacation, learning a little, but basically relaxing and rejuvenating. All of that happened. But while I was getting away, I was getting into new possibilities for my work, my ideas, my spirituality, my social connections, and my life. Fast-forward seven years, and I’ve dedicated my work and life to the power and potential of Jewish retreats. I’ve connected with a sense of purpose within the Jewish community and the wider world that places the model of retreat – the temporary autonomous zone designed for transformation – at the center of a vision for how religion and society are evolving today.
The third place photograph, created by Andrew Chard, Dakota Barnard, and Stacie Feldman in the Color and Lighting class, winter 2013.
One of the best blogs on campus is Photoland’s Inside Evergreen. This issue features the winners of the first-ever photography competition for Evergreen students. Take a look, and while your at it, please note you can subscribe to Inside Evergreen and be visually delighted all year around.
Thomas Herndon ’07 on The Colbert Report
Editor’s Note: Thomas spent the first week of June on campus speaking to students in a variety of programs ranging from economics to social justice and literature. He reconnected with friends and former faculty members and bowled over a lot of students with his brains, broad interests, history of social activism and his warm, approachable personality.
The Dismal Science is a term coined by Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle to describe the discipline of economics. Many say the term was inspired by T. R. Malthus’ prediction that population would always outpace food production, dooming mankind to unending poverty. These days,”economics” often conjures images of puffed-up people opining abstrusely about unimaginable amounts of money within a governmental or political context. Here’s our prediction: Thomas Herndon ’07, is going to up-end these moldy stereotypes. He will convince us that the study of economics is fascinating, that it possesses mathematical elegance and beauty and that it is a powerful front for progressive activism.
Like syllogisms? Here’s one: Economists are geeks; geeks are cool, therefore economists are cool. Thomas is very cool.
Here are some links for Thomas:
The Evergreen Magazine, Spring 2013
The Paper That Almost Wasn’t
WSJ explanatory article
Flaws Found in Study Favored by Backers of Austerity
On National TV Last Night, The Austerity Movement Became A Laughingstock
Evergreen Animation Labs
Marina Gagarina ’12, former animation student of Ruth Hayes, now plies her artistry in Brooklyn, New York. Ruth recently posted Marina’s 5-minute animation about a dream, a tiny house, a tragedy, friendship, and hope restored.(Evergreen Animation Labs blog)
Ruth notes: Marina also studied with Don Morisato, Heather Heying and Bob Haft, among others. She is a great example of a student who links the arts and the sciences.
Steven M. Miller ’87
Perhaps to fully appreciate the artistic genius of Steven M. Miller ’87 one should be deeply educated in the theory, practice, science, history and technology of all things aural. But even a general music lover will get the gist by reading this Trebuchet Magazine interview, embellished by visits to his website, blog and Soundcloud page. Dive in. This is a quintessential Evergreen Mind at work and it is a beautiful thing.
Alumnus Andy Stewart, wooden boat builder
Andy Stewart is part of a wooden boat-building tradition stretching within his family, but he seems to connect with equal intimacy to another family, the human family of a boat-building past.
Listening to this almost hypnotic video interview, “Shaped on Six Sides,” one feels Andy’s organic connection to his materials, his tools, his craft, the sea, and the history of humanity as sea-going beings.
Warning: Watching this 7-minute documentary may cause flights of fancy and a lingering sense of longing.
Dana Simpson ’99
Gig Harbor, WA native Dana Simpson ’99 joins the Universal Press Syndicate family of comic artists with a new strip, provisionally titled Heavenly Nostrils.
For a decade, 1998 to 2008, she drew the internet comic strip “Ozy and Millie” for which she won the Comic Strip Superstar contest in 2009.
Quoting from ozyandmillie.org, Dana reflects on work, process and audience:
Like most artists, my old work makes me wince. I look at “Ozy and Millie” and I see its flaws vividly. But I also see thousands of little lessons learned. I started the strip in 1998, when I was 20 years old, and kept doing it for more than a decade. I often say it’s my graduate thesis in cartooning. It still seems to mean something to its readers. And, flaws aside, it still means something to me, too.
From “Girl,” by Dana Simpson ’99, Amazon’s first Comic Strip Superstar award winner
Faculty member Jose Gomez
Students in Jose Gomez’s Equality and the Constitution program will give oral arguments relating to six cases before The Evergreen Supreme Court this spring. Although not a public event, we thought alumni would like to know what issues are being critically examined on campus this spring.
The Court will hear oral arguments in the following six cases. Each case involves controversies that implicate equality, primarily equal protection under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. These are real cases recently decided by various circuits of the United States Courts of Appeals and one state supreme court. Three of the cases (two involving same-sex marriage and one involving affirmative action in higher education) were argued before the United States Supreme Court earlier this year, and decisions from that court are expected any day now.
1. Case No. S2013-05: United States and BLAG v. Edith Windsor, on a writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit – 9:40 to 10:40 a.m. Issue: Whether the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines the term “marriage” under federal law as a “legal union between one man and one woman” deprives same-sex couples who are legally married under state laws of their Fifth Amendment rights to equal protection under federal law.
2. Case No. S2013-04: Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, on a writ of certiorari to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit – 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Issue: Whether the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment permits the consideration of race in undergraduate admissions decisions.
3. Case No. S2013-02: City of Arlington v. Frame, on a writ of certiorari to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit – 12:20 to 1:20 p.m. Issue: Whether Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act and § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. (and their implied private right of action) extend to newly built and altered public sidewalks.
4. Case No. S2013-06: Hollingsworth v. Perry, on a writ of certiorari to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit – 9:40 to 10:40 a.m. Issue: Whether the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the state of California from defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
5. Case No. S2013-01: State of Iowa v. Mootz, on a writ of certiorari to the Iowa Supreme Court – 11:00 a.m. to 12:0 p.m. Issue: Whether a state district court erred when it denied a defendant a peremptory challenge during the jury selection process on the basis that he was using the strike to engage in purposeful racial discrimination.