David Spindler’s adventures during the past 20 years are difficult to sum up in such a short column. The New Yorker took 10 pages to tell his story in the 2007 piece, “Walking the Wall: Can One Man’s Obsession Unravel the Mystery of an Ancient Structure?” He started hiking the Great Wall of China in 1994, when he was the only American studying for a master’s in history at Peking University. He did a stint at CNN Beijing and McKinsey & Co. and attended Harvard Law School. But the wall kept drawing him back. David has become one of the wall’s leading historians and has hiked countless miles on it, working full time as an independent scholar since 2002. He has yet to publish any work in English about his research. But you can get a glimpse of his efforts if you live in New York by visiting the Rockefeller Brother’s Fund, which is exhibiting “China’s Great Wall: The Forgotten Story,” a series of large-scale, historically based photographs, a collaboration between David and a California-based photographer. E-mail Leona Hewitt at lhewitt@rbf.org for information about visiting the exhibit.


Martin Fackler also has made Asia his home for many years, living in Shanghai and Beijing while working for the Associated Press and now covering Japan and the Koreas for The New York Times, where he is the Tokyo bureau chief. He previously covered economics in Tokyo for the Times and The Wall Street Journal and began his journalism career in Tokyo in the late 1990s after getting an M.A. in history and studying journalism and economics. In recent months he’s covered such diverse stories as the Japanese elections, the decline of Pacific bluefin tuna and the dying tradition of a sacred Buddhist temple inside a dormant volcano, where Japanese visitors hope to commune with the dead.


Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis also has the world on her mind these days. In October she was named U.S. ambassador to Hungary by President Obama. In recent years she has been a prominent Democratic fundraiser and is the president of AKT Development Corp. in Sacramento, California. As of this writing no word on when Senate confirmation hearings will take place.


Hank Rogerson and Jilann Spitzmiller, award-winning documentary filmmakers, have turned their attention to helping others hone their craft. They’ve launched Documentors—a Web site to help others make their own documentary films. You can check it out at www.documentaryhowto.com. Hank and Jilann, the founders of Philomath Films, have been making documentaries together for more than 20 years. They’ve won dozens of prestigious awards and their films, including Shakespeare Behind Bars and Homeland, have been shown around the world.


For all you cyclists out there, Jeremy Rider has debuted a new invention called the Sipstream, a bike-mounted hydration system that is available in the D.C. area through Hudson Trail Outfitters or online at www.sipstream.com. You can find other stores nationwide on the Web site. When he’s not presumably hitting the road on his bike, Jeremy lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife, Jill, and three children,


During my September visit to campus I finally had the chance to visit Rauner Library, formerly known to most of us as Webster Hall. Rauner houses Dartmouth’s Special Collections and archives and the renovated space is stunning, with a glass book refrigerator several stories high at the center and a giant Cat in the Hat to welcome you. You’ll also get a glimpse of a large Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, whose creator was Robert May ’26. Drop in for a visit if you’re back in Hanover.


—Jennifer Avellino, 5912 Aberdeen Road, Bethesda, MD 20817; javellino@mac.com