Class Note 1997
Issue
Nov - Dec 2018
As promised, here are more updates from our amazing June reunion.
Aran Toshav, wife Rebecca Friedman, and their family live in New Orleans, where Aran is a radiologist and associate professor of clinical radiology at the Louisiana State University School of Medicine.
Zoe Langsten McKelvey, husband Randy, and their kids live in Westfield, New Jersey. Zoe, who previously practiced law, is now focusing on raising 5-year-old son Rhett and 2-year-old daughter Kenzie.
Phil Lord, Chris Miller, and Robyn Murgio attended the festivities. Chris recently posted the action-packed trailers for two upcoming animated films he and Phil produced. Phil’s screenplay for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse features a half Puerto Rican, half African American teen from Brooklyn as Spidey and premieres in December. Phil and Chris also wrote the story and screenplay for The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, which comes out in February 2019.
Kristin Brenneman Eno is an early childhood studio art teacher at the Manny Cantor Center in New York. She lives in Brooklyn with husband Sean and their two daughters.
Marisa (Bassett) de la Garza is a social worker in Syracuse, New York, where she lives with wife Kate and their two daughters.
In other news, congratulations to Karen Stern on her second book, Writing on the Wall: Graffiti and the Forgotten Jews of Antiquity. Published by the Princeton University Press, the book brings together nearly 10 years of research on burial caves in the Middle East, Europe, and North Africa, using graffiti to reconstruct the lives of long-forgotten and non-elite peoples in the ancient world. Starting about 3,000 years ago, Jews scratched walls in homes and public spaces with prayers, warnings, blessings, and store advertisements. In the margins of the texts, they sketched outlines of ships, people, menorahs, and synagogue columns.
In an interview with Atlas Obscura, Karen said that for countries that have been torn apart by religious strife, and places where few Jews live now, the graffiti serves as evidence of past centuries of peaceable coexistence. Privileged and ordinary people of many faiths all had the same habit of emblazoning their names, interests, and accomplishments on the walls. Decoding the inscriptions, Karen said, sheds light on those who left few other traces. “It’s about paying attention to voices that have otherwise been drowned out.”
Karen is an associate professor at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. She researches across the disciplines of archaeology, history, and religion and teaches courses on Mediterranean cultural history and the material culture of Jews in the Greco-Roman world. She plans to create an online database of Jewish graffiti, which will be updated as more examples surface.
Finally, Anne Jones, Dan Gonzalez ’96, and John Replogle ’88 cofounded District C to teach the next generation of talent how to work in diverse teams to solve complex problems. By certifying high school teachers and schools to implement its unique learning model in which teams of four students from four different schools solve a real problem for a real business, District C aims to give every high school student in the Research Triangle of North Carolina a real-world learning experience by 2025. Participants include Triangle-area businesses, universities, and business leaders committed to preparing the region’s future talent with the mindsets and tools needed for complex work.
On November 12 Anne, Dan, and John will come together with 16 Triangle-area high school students as they pitch their solutions to a Raleigh-based business at the North Carolina State Entrepreneurship Clinic. This cohort of students will join more than 115 other District C alumni and future leaders.
Take care and send me your news.
—Jason Casell, 10106 Balmforth Lane, Houston, TX 77096; jhcasell@gmail.com
Aran Toshav, wife Rebecca Friedman, and their family live in New Orleans, where Aran is a radiologist and associate professor of clinical radiology at the Louisiana State University School of Medicine.
Zoe Langsten McKelvey, husband Randy, and their kids live in Westfield, New Jersey. Zoe, who previously practiced law, is now focusing on raising 5-year-old son Rhett and 2-year-old daughter Kenzie.
Phil Lord, Chris Miller, and Robyn Murgio attended the festivities. Chris recently posted the action-packed trailers for two upcoming animated films he and Phil produced. Phil’s screenplay for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse features a half Puerto Rican, half African American teen from Brooklyn as Spidey and premieres in December. Phil and Chris also wrote the story and screenplay for The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, which comes out in February 2019.
Kristin Brenneman Eno is an early childhood studio art teacher at the Manny Cantor Center in New York. She lives in Brooklyn with husband Sean and their two daughters.
Marisa (Bassett) de la Garza is a social worker in Syracuse, New York, where she lives with wife Kate and their two daughters.
In other news, congratulations to Karen Stern on her second book, Writing on the Wall: Graffiti and the Forgotten Jews of Antiquity. Published by the Princeton University Press, the book brings together nearly 10 years of research on burial caves in the Middle East, Europe, and North Africa, using graffiti to reconstruct the lives of long-forgotten and non-elite peoples in the ancient world. Starting about 3,000 years ago, Jews scratched walls in homes and public spaces with prayers, warnings, blessings, and store advertisements. In the margins of the texts, they sketched outlines of ships, people, menorahs, and synagogue columns.
In an interview with Atlas Obscura, Karen said that for countries that have been torn apart by religious strife, and places where few Jews live now, the graffiti serves as evidence of past centuries of peaceable coexistence. Privileged and ordinary people of many faiths all had the same habit of emblazoning their names, interests, and accomplishments on the walls. Decoding the inscriptions, Karen said, sheds light on those who left few other traces. “It’s about paying attention to voices that have otherwise been drowned out.”
Karen is an associate professor at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. She researches across the disciplines of archaeology, history, and religion and teaches courses on Mediterranean cultural history and the material culture of Jews in the Greco-Roman world. She plans to create an online database of Jewish graffiti, which will be updated as more examples surface.
Finally, Anne Jones, Dan Gonzalez ’96, and John Replogle ’88 cofounded District C to teach the next generation of talent how to work in diverse teams to solve complex problems. By certifying high school teachers and schools to implement its unique learning model in which teams of four students from four different schools solve a real problem for a real business, District C aims to give every high school student in the Research Triangle of North Carolina a real-world learning experience by 2025. Participants include Triangle-area businesses, universities, and business leaders committed to preparing the region’s future talent with the mindsets and tools needed for complex work.
On November 12 Anne, Dan, and John will come together with 16 Triangle-area high school students as they pitch their solutions to a Raleigh-based business at the North Carolina State Entrepreneurship Clinic. This cohort of students will join more than 115 other District C alumni and future leaders.
Take care and send me your news.
—Jason Casell, 10106 Balmforth Lane, Houston, TX 77096; jhcasell@gmail.com