Class Note 1993
Issue
July-August 2024
Summer means books, and a few of our class writers and authors shared what they have written, what has influenced them, and what they are reading.
Sharon Amy Wiggins is a school librarian in Westchester County, New York, for the last 14 years. She shared a book from college that has influenced her the most: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Amy’s senior thesis centered on the book: “It brought me deeper into the trove of Southern Black female writers and allowed me to see myself and my community proudly represented in literature.”
Geoff Tuff reflected that “the book I was exposed to at Dartmouth whose ideas have stayed with me the longest and played the most substantial role in how I think and focus my writing is Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.” Geoff’s most recent article in the Harvard Business Review (January) is titled, “When an Active Pause Is the Best Strategic Choice.”
Kate Gaertner has an essay titled “Circular Food Systems: Feeding the Urban World” in a compendium of essays, Proven Climate Solutions: Leading Voices on How to Accelerate Change. Kate provided a book recommendation influenced by her time at Dartmouth: “I would suggest Donella Meadow’s book, Thinking in Systems: A Primer, to anyone who wants to understand the most effective levers for transforming systems. Donella is a legend—globally and among the legions of Dartmouth students she educated from 1972 to 2001.” Kate and her family are excited to be moving to Boston this summer, so please connect if you’re in the area.
Brian Schott is the founding editor of the art and literary journal, Whitefish Review (WFR). He collaborates with Adam Blue,who has been the art editor since issue No. 4. Brian writes that the 29th issue, the music issue, “feature[s] an interview with Raven Chacon, the first Native American to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music [and] Toby Scott, Bruce Springsteen’s longtime sound engineer, about the guitar he gave Bruce for his birthday that now sits in the Music Hall of Fame. The cover of the music issue is a custom screen print for WFR by Mike Tallman, who has done gig posters for The Allman Brothers, Phish, and the Rolling Stones.”
Andrew Von Mayrhauser is an eighth-grade English teacher and grade level dean at Head-Royce School in Oakland, California. He started teaching middle school in the fall of 1993, straight out of Hanover. He shared that his “favorite book is usually the most recent good book I’ve read, which happens to be The Last Ranger by Peter Heller ’82, most famous for The Dog Stars.” Andrew is also an accomplished storyteller, with a “list of 31 stories I tell students and recently have been telling for Moth events. I won at a Moth event recently and will be telling at the Moth Grand Slam in San Francisco this fall.”
—Munir Haddad, P.O. Box 1754, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568; munir.s.haddad.93@alum.dartmouth.org; Natalie Weidener Kupinsky, 1 Stanmore Court, Potomac, MD 20854; natalie.weidener.kupinsky.93@dartmouth.edu
Sharon Amy Wiggins is a school librarian in Westchester County, New York, for the last 14 years. She shared a book from college that has influenced her the most: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Amy’s senior thesis centered on the book: “It brought me deeper into the trove of Southern Black female writers and allowed me to see myself and my community proudly represented in literature.”
Geoff Tuff reflected that “the book I was exposed to at Dartmouth whose ideas have stayed with me the longest and played the most substantial role in how I think and focus my writing is Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.” Geoff’s most recent article in the Harvard Business Review (January) is titled, “When an Active Pause Is the Best Strategic Choice.”
Kate Gaertner has an essay titled “Circular Food Systems: Feeding the Urban World” in a compendium of essays, Proven Climate Solutions: Leading Voices on How to Accelerate Change. Kate provided a book recommendation influenced by her time at Dartmouth: “I would suggest Donella Meadow’s book, Thinking in Systems: A Primer, to anyone who wants to understand the most effective levers for transforming systems. Donella is a legend—globally and among the legions of Dartmouth students she educated from 1972 to 2001.” Kate and her family are excited to be moving to Boston this summer, so please connect if you’re in the area.
Brian Schott is the founding editor of the art and literary journal, Whitefish Review (WFR). He collaborates with Adam Blue,who has been the art editor since issue No. 4. Brian writes that the 29th issue, the music issue, “feature[s] an interview with Raven Chacon, the first Native American to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music [and] Toby Scott, Bruce Springsteen’s longtime sound engineer, about the guitar he gave Bruce for his birthday that now sits in the Music Hall of Fame. The cover of the music issue is a custom screen print for WFR by Mike Tallman, who has done gig posters for The Allman Brothers, Phish, and the Rolling Stones.”
Andrew Von Mayrhauser is an eighth-grade English teacher and grade level dean at Head-Royce School in Oakland, California. He started teaching middle school in the fall of 1993, straight out of Hanover. He shared that his “favorite book is usually the most recent good book I’ve read, which happens to be The Last Ranger by Peter Heller ’82, most famous for The Dog Stars.” Andrew is also an accomplished storyteller, with a “list of 31 stories I tell students and recently have been telling for Moth events. I won at a Moth event recently and will be telling at the Moth Grand Slam in San Francisco this fall.”
—Munir Haddad, P.O. Box 1754, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568; munir.s.haddad.93@alum.dartmouth.org; Natalie Weidener Kupinsky, 1 Stanmore Court, Potomac, MD 20854; natalie.weidener.kupinsky.93@dartmouth.edu