I am sad to report that Kimberly Akemi Bal Sloper passed away October 9 in her home in Wailuku, Maui, after fighting an aggressive form of breast cancer on and off for the past year and a half. She is survived by her husband, Bill, daughters Caroline, Emily and Olivia, and her parents, Beryl and Eugene Bal.


Andrea Meacham Rosal wrote: “Allison Pope Mangin, Elizabeth Fuller Boone, Mita Gupta, Susan Vernal Rogers and I spent a week in Maui in late July visiting with Kim. Later, when Kim’s condition worsened, Mita and Liz were each able to spend time with Kim in her final weeks, first in the hospital and then at home under hospice care. 


“Kim’s impact as a bright, beautiful, peaceful and loving person is felt deeply by all of us and by so many others who had the good fortune to know her. We will be creating a memory book for Kim’s daughters with photos, impressions and stories about their mother. Anyone who wants to share a memory or impression of Kim during our time at Dartmouth is invited to please e-mail your thoughts to me at ameach@gmail.com.”


An obituary will appear on the magazine’s website at www.dartmouthalumnimagazine.com, and those who wish are welcome to post remembrances of Kim.


Congratulations to Lauren (Hirshfield) Belden, who has been pretty busy lately. She wrote: “After marrying Nate Belden last fall, we welcomed a little girl into the world on June 10, 2012. Her name is Olivia Bird Belden, and we’re already looking forward to bringing her to Hanover next spring for reunion. Life in San Francisco is happily full of Dartmouth get-togethers, and my book club alone is a great excuse to see Allison Brown, Barb Wentworth, Andrea Lodzieski, Carrie Spring ’98, Carrie Langsdorf ’98, Abbey Doolittle ’98, Karen Dauer ’99, Jeana Chung ’99, Tara Pennington ’99 and Katie Hearey ’99. 


“In other news Nate and I have just begun embarking upon plans to open a winery in Sonoma come 2014, so if any of you find yourselves in California wine country, give us a call and come taste some of the very first barrels of Belden Barns wine!”


Congratulations also to Sandy Alexandre, who just published her first book, The Properties of Violence: Claims to Ownership in Representations of Lynching. Available at Amazon.com, the book demonstrates how representations of lynching violence in literature and culture are shaped by a dialectic of possession and dispossession. Sandy is an associate professor of American literature at MIT.


Best wishes to everyone for a wonderful holiday season and a terrific 2013!


—Jason Casell, 6426 Needle Leaf Drive, Rockville, MD 20852; jhcasell@gmail.com