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Editor’s Note: Amazing to say, but the whole Evergreen campus community is reading the same book this year. It’s part of a new, faculty-led project called the Academic Statement Initiative. Each summer, new students will be sent, and asked to … Continue reading
Editor’s Note: Cara Maldonado ’09 posts from NYC in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy:
Greetings from NY! Luckily I made it through the hurricane. “Sandy” hit about a day and a half after my dance company [Creative Outlet Dance Theatre of Brooklyn] got back from Mexico. It was a bit disorienting to go from eighty degree weather to such a big storm. Some of my friends are still without power. For a time, some were essentially couch surfing in order to get a hot shower, food and heat (which we just got back a week ago). Always the adventure here!
Happy Solstice!
Readers: Enjoy a bit of Cara’s work as she and fellow dancers honor the re-election of our President: Cara is stage left/your right in the capri tights as the video begins. Later she is in black/grey tights.
Alumni in the area should visit the Evergreen Library lobby before January 11, 2013 to see this display of students’ illuminated manuscripts from the program Religion, Society and Change.
Rebecca Chamberlain (right), students and selected images from her program Religion, Society and Change. In February, Rebecca will facilitate an Evergreen Traveling Seminar on storytelling for Greeners and friends in Los Angeles.
Illuminated manuscripts: the tactile relationship between word and image; the ways in which manuscripts mirror the self. We explore manuscripts through the lenses of interpretation, religion, art history; we draw upon manuscript traditions — Jewish, Muslim, and Christian, the ancient, medieval, modern. Continue reading
MTV blogger Eddie Wright posts:
This Sunday, December 9 at 8pm on FOX, “The Simpsons” hometown of Springfield collides with Portland in “The Day the Earth Stood Cool.” Fittingly, the episode, guest-stars “Portlandia” creators Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein ’98 as hip parents who move in next door to The Simpsons, causing all sorts of “we’re not cool enough” chaos for the classic TV family.
Portlandia’s hip vibe collides with ’77 grad Matt Groening’s The Simpsons in upcoming episode
Read more on the MTV blog.
No, this is not a Greener version of Jack and the Beanstalk. It’s better.
Jackie Heinricher ’86 and her team of scientists at Booshoot Gardens in Mount Vernon, Washington have cracked the code for large scale cultivation of giant bamboo through a secret process that doesn’t use genetic modification. The technology can create forests of 100-foot bamboo trees in an astonishing 45 days. Scientists call them “dream trees.”
Scientists call giant bamboo “dream trees.” With her company, Booshoot, Jackie Heinricher ’86 turns these dreams into a greener future.
The harvests can be turned into anything from hard lumber to clothing to toilet paper. With this biotech breakthrough, the Booshoot team is poised to infiltrate the paper products market, help protect threatened natural forests and start rebuilding a healthy planet.
Recently, Booshoot signed a contract with world’s largest tissue manufacturer, Kimberly-Clark , to explore replacing 20% of traditional forest products used in toilet paper with fiber from giant bamboo. Jackie and her team were featured over the summer on several news outlets including the Seattle Times, Greenbiz and King 5.
Happy dreams.
Nancy Koppelman ’88
guest blogger
Editor’s Note: Nancy Koppelman ’88, Member of the Faculty provides this guest blog about a new program on campus.
The new faculty-led project called the Academic Statement Initiative begins during Orientation Week. New students meet in seminars to learn about Evergreen’s philosophy and think together about a common reading. This year’s book was Carlotta Walls LaNier’s A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School.
A Mighty Long Way, Evergreen’s common reading for 2012
The campus thought deeply about LaNier’s experiences as one of the “Little Rock Nine”—students who made the first brave step to integrate Arkansas’ public schools in 1957. During Convocation, Ms. LaNier urged us to appreciate the opportunity that a college education represents. During the school year, sustained faculty-led activities will help students nurture that appreciation, culminating in each graduate’s transcript-ready Academic Statement. This Initiative continues Evergreen’s history of innovation, and of trusting students to invent their own paths toward graduation.
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Photos by: Shauna Bittle. You can find more photos in Photoland’s Archives
A few weeks ago, there was a black bear sighted on campus. As with any safety issue, Police Services sent word of the animal’s presence via email to the campus community. It was an irresistibly delicious distraction. Here are some of the comments, cautions and reminiscences exchanged in honor of our distinguished guest:
Russ Fox :
In the late 1970’s and most of the 1980’s, there was a “summer resident” male black bear who used the TESC campus as his summer habitat. He was often seem browsing along the edge of the forest along the parkway between the campus entrance and Kaiser Road. In spring he meandered across lower Mud Bay from his winter habitat in the Black Hills across some of our lower Eld Inlet properties to his summer estate. In the fall, he retraced his trail back to the Black Hills. One year, he overturned and feasted on our neighbor’s bee hive. He never bothered our hives, although he also crossed our property to and from his winter and summer environments. It’s wonderful to hear that one of his (her?) offsrping is now once again enjoying our 1000 acre sanctuary.
Betty Kutter:
Thanks for this reminder of the “wild old days”, Russ — and then there was the time when Linda Kahan’s dogs treed cubs outside her house, just there by where Marshal jr high is now — a bit of excitement, but even that one ended peacefully …
Sylvie McGee:
I’m delighted to hear that the bear is perhaps using Evergreen’s campus as a comfortable sanctuary. Of course, I’m safely over here in Tumwater 😉
It might not be a bad idea for faculty to mention this to students, and to stress basic bear safety precautions, particularly about giving them a wide berth. For students from out of area, they may be unaware of how to co-exist safely and peacefully with bears, and the temptation to try to “get a closer look” or “get just one picture” can be powerful.
Rebecca Chamberlain:
Black bear attacks are extremely rare. They usually occur in the spring, when a mother is protecting her cubs. At this time of year, they are foraging for food, and fall salmon will be coming into the waterways. However, people might want to keep garbage cans closed, etc. Here’s a National Parks site, for those who want more information on backcountry bear safety. The same safety tips apply here, too. http://usparks.about.com/od/backcountry/a/Bear-Safety.htm
It’s thrilling to have a black bear back on the land. The original Lushootseed name, for area around the Fourth Avenue bridge, is bəsčətx̌ʷəd— the “place of the black bears.” The salmon came up through the portage, and black bears often congregated there. They were numerous in this area, not that long ago, and to have one back seems hopeful.
As Thoreau reminds us,
“In wildness is the preservation of the world.”
All the best in this beautiful fall season. To salmon, and bear, and “all our relations!”
The title of this new alumni blog is “The Evergreen Mind: all new, all change, all ways.”
This phrase is taken from a work of art created by Tim Girvin ’75 as a gift honoring first-year faculty and awarded at the 40th anniversary celebration, May 2012. Executed as a palimpsest, the work “relates to messages that lie beneath. ”
Tim states in his blog, it is “a holistic risk” that requires people to work, “to dig,” to uncover the layers of meaning. Tim writes: “The point related to my earliest experience at the college — which was experiment. To create a gift, I thought of a layering of attitudes, messages, some poetic recollections, meditations on the Evergreen State College.”
Tim’s reflections have shaped our aspirations for this blog — a Greener community place to exchange thoughts and ideas, a space to share experiences and dig deep amid the layers and experience the Evergreen Mind.
Retrospective…
In the beginning, 1976-79, there was The Evergreen Alumni Newsletter . Then came The Evergreen Review (1979-2001). With the new millennium, the Review was reborn as The Evergreen Magazine, reflecting the College and it’s community in a modern, full-color format that everyone in the Greener-verse continues to look forward to twice a year, either in the mailbox or on-line.
Since 2008, a much smaller but generally appreciative Greener audience has enjoyed The Evergreen EXPRESS, an eNewsletter. Functioning as a sort of “kid-sister” to the Magazine, this modest compendium of alumni interviews and articles was published twice a year by the Office of Alumni Programs.