Our “far from home” solicitation brought just one reply. We know there are ’86s on at least six continents. You must be feeling shy or wanting us to make stuff up. Well the amalgamation below prevents resulting to fabrication. I hope you’ll inundate Davida for the next issue. Just after I announced this far from home issue, Andrew Walkling wrote: “As fate would have it, I just got back from a wonderful trip: Two and a half weeks in Sri Lanka! My partner, Lakshmi, is from there, and we stayed with family, ate lots of great (fresh!) food and traveled around the country, visiting 1,000-year-old Buddhist temples and other extraordinary sites. I got wild and danced with some of the country’s leading TV stars (friends of my partner, who’s an actress), though I’m not ready to share those potentially incriminating pics with Dartmouth classmates just yet. While I was there, Sri Lanka had its mini-revolution, with the autocratic, nepotist president ousted at the ballot box and the new, reformist president inaugurated the same day the election results came in. (And then, wouldn’t you know, the pope showed up!) All in all a fantastic visit and I’m looking forward to returning sometime next year.” Andrew is a professor at Binghamton University (SUNY). His specialization is 17th-century English court culture, and he has just completed a book on musical and theatrical entertainments performed between the late 1650s and 1688 titled Masque and Opera in Restoration England.


Okay now the “my new world” part: Mark Greenstein made it to Asia for the first time, with a ski trip to the Northern Alps of Japan for six days, followed by four days in Beijing, including two ski days. Yes, there are four ski areas on the outskirts of Beijing. Though they get almost no snowfall, the Chinese are adept at making snow. They would like to host the Winter Olympics in 2022 and since Western countries don’t really want to play Olympic hosts any more, China will probably land these games too. I take back an appreciation of Chinese capitalism—they originated it—of the warmth the suburban people have for Americans and of the niceness every one of them showed to a sometimes-lost stranger. From Japan, nothing was really surprising except the goodness of their toilets—warm seats and, well, you can look up the rest.


Our Helen Shelton was named one of the “25 Most Influential Black Women in Business” by The Network Journal magazine. She is senior partner and director of multicultural marketing at Finn Partners, a New York-based PR firm. “My career has been quite a ride working with some of the world’s most outstanding cultural institutions, artists, corporations and foundations. Much of this is due to the strong foundation I received at Dartmouth and the manner in which I was trained to look at things by my art history professors and the rigorous nature of the academic structure of the College. I particularly enjoy travels to Italy and the Leeward Islands. I’m an adjunct professor at NYU’s school of continuing professional studies, where I teach PR consulting and history, theory and practice. I volunteer with a service organization called the Links on issues around women and children affected by domestic violence. The Links also provides arts education for inner-city kids.” Helen’s profile in Hello Beautiful is: http://bit.ly/1Aa7Iwj.


—Mark Greenstein, 107 Fenn Road, Newington, CT 06111; msg@ivybound.net; Davida Dinerman, 12 Kings Row, Ashland, MA 01721; davida@dinerman.com