Before we get to the news, I am offering you a very simple to-do list: Read this column. Send in updates for this column. Register for and attend reunion.


In maintaining the tradition of exceptional women from Wilmington, Delaware (a quick shout out to Cindy Bergman, though I guess I could have just walked into the other room to see her), I have received news that our own Terry Plank will be receiving an honorary degree from Dartmouth in June. Congrats to Terry on her second Dartmouth degree! On a related note, I’m optimistic that the call I received from the College is not someone looking to rescind mine (“Sir, upon further review and a demonstrated lack of achievement during the past 30 years, we have decided…”). The recent announcement includes this quick bio for Terry: “Terry Plank ’85 (doctor of science), geochemist, professor. Terry Plank is the Arthur D. Storke Memorial Professor in the department of earth and environmental sciences at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. A geochemist who studies magmas associated with the plate tectonic cycle, she is known for her studies of subduction zones. Plank graduated from Dartmouth with a degree in earth sciences. She received a doctorate from Columbia University in 1993 and taught on the faculty of the University of Kansas and Boston University before joining Columbia University in 2008. Plank received the Houtermans Medal from the European Association for Geochemistry and the Donath Medal from the Geological Society of America and is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the Geochemical Society, the Geological Society of America and the Mineralogical Society of America. In 2012 she was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow and in 2013 was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.”


Thumbs up to Scott Stevens for some of his recent literary achievements. Scott and several colleagues are the editors of a new book: Why You Can’t Teach United States History without American Indians, edited by Susan Sleeper-Smith, Juliana Barr, Jean M. O’Brien, Nancy Shoemaker and Scott Manning Stevens. For more information: uncpress.unc.edu/books/13213.html. A resource for all who teach and study history, this book illuminates the unmistakable centrality of American Indian history to the full sweep of American history. The 19 essays gathered in this collaboratively produced volume, written by leading scholars in the field of Native American history, reflect the newest directions of the field and are organized to follow the chronological arc of the standard American history survey. Contributors reassess major events, themes, groups of historical actors and approaches—social, cultural, military and political—consistently demonstrating how Native American people and questions of Native American sovereignty have animated all the ways we consider the nation’s past. The uniqueness of indigenous history, as interwoven more fully in the American story, will challenge students to think in new ways about larger themes in U.S. history, such as settlement and colonization, economic and political power, citizenship and movements for equality and the fundamental question of what it means to be an American.


In Bay Area news, I connected with Mikey Lehman, Tom McDonald and Eric Wilinski for dinner in late March. In typical guy fashion, there was zero discussion about current careers, but plenty of talk about sports, Alpha Chi Alpha and recent travels. Seeing their kids (Marley and August Lehman, Audrey McDonald and Soren Wilinski) and learning of their activities and talents was really great and confirmed my suspicion that these youngsters were fortunate to get more of the genes and traits of their respective moms.


—John MacManus, 188 Ringwood Road, Rosemont, PA 19010; (610) 331-6417; slampong@aol.com; Leslie A. Davis Dahl, 83 Pecksland Road, Greenwich, CT 06831; (203) 552-0070; dahlleslie@yahoo.com