By Sherri Kimmel
There are two Keiths sitting in a circle in this bare-bones cafeteria—a stark setting for a Swarthmore class. One, Keith W., is 25, compact, handsome, with a goatee. He wears an orange polo shirt and a big grin as he talks about his baby son and how he wants to change his path—his future, his son’s future. He’s been “in” since September, having been nabbed for drug possession, and hopes to make his way back “out” in February.
The other, Keith R., clean-shaven, a couple decades older, has also been thinking about his child—a junior in the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District who is in the beginning stages of the college selection process. Most likely she’ll choose an Ivy-level institution on the West Coast.
By Carol Brévart-Demm
Arianna Freeman ’01 was nervous. Here she was, a Philadelphia attorney with a client on death row, playing the ultimate waiting game. “It was harrowing for my client more than for me, but to watch a healthy, able-bodied 47-year-old man uncertain of whether he’ll live or die that day is not to be recommended,” she reflects back on that afternoon in October 2012.
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By Sherri Kimmel
It’s cold in New York City. Single digits. Trains aren’t running on time. Or at all. Amtrak even has to drag an old-timer out of mothballs to replace a newer engine seized up by the cold. But here, this January, in an office suite on 9th Avenue in Midtown, you’ll hear no jokes about global warming.
By Carrie Compton
The butterflies, and later the antelopes, conspired to break free of Tasha Lewis ’12’s mind and then out of Beardsley Hall. Her antelope sculptures breached walls at Hobbs Coffee in The Ville, then they galloped about in the College’s List Gallery before flocking to Old Tarble.
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By Carol Brévart-Demm
Anyone who has seen Cecil B. DeMille’s blockbuster The Ten Commandments will recall the raid on the temple granaries by overworked and underfed Israeli slaves laboring to construct a treasure city to honor Pharaoh Sethi. They fill their baskets with grain, and, once well-fed, return to work.
In the January Bulletin, we chronicled several student activities that were prominent on campus way back when. Some still exist today. We asked readers to add to the lore. Here are their memories.
By Fran Hostettler Putnam ’69
For many years, I have been haunted by reports about global climate change. I could not bear to face the coming devastation to our planet brought about by the consumption of fossil fuels. The overwhelming nature of this problem led me to feel hopelessness and despair. When I became a grandmother in 2006, I realized that the bright future I envision for my grandchildren is seriously threatened by our changing climate. I became acutely aware of how little time remains to influence the causes of climate change, so I vowed to change my passive attitude to one of active engagement.
At the urging of my husband, Spencer Putnam ’67, we designed and built a net-zero-energy house to lower our personal carbon footprint. After moving into the house in 2008, we hosted a series of open houses to showcase our combination of an active and passive solar design with other energy-efficiency features.
By Robin Ridington ’62
During my sophomore year, former Dean Everett Hunt gave a Collection talk. While praising what was special about the College, he mentioned two former students, Eric Freedman ’59 and Johanna “Jimmi” Mead ’58, who had left before graduating to plan their move to a remote wilderness location. I met them that winter and agreed to join them the following summer, once they had found a suitable place. Eric and Jimmi were pacifists and liked the name of the Peace River in British Columbia (BC), several thousand miles from Pennsylvania. They had no idea that they would be moving to Dane-zaa Nunne, the traditional territory of the Dane-zaa First Nations (also known as Beaver Indians). They ended up informally occupying a beautiful spot in the Minnaker River valley, 7 miles by trail from Mile 210 on the Alaska Highway.
Musical theater productions in America typically come to life in a creative frenzy of collaboration, usually in hurried preparation for a New York debut. While the names of composer, lyricist, and original stars are immortalized on marquees and cast albums, many other creative personalities help to shape a musical at its inception but gradually are forgotten. Trude Rittman, the composer and conductor whose inspired transformations of Richard Rodgers’ tunes are heard throughout South Pacific (and many other shows) as dramatic underscoring, comes to mind. I find it difficult to imagine the characters Nellie Forbush and Emile de Becque falling in love without Rittman’s inspired contributions.
