Reunion is One Year Away!

Over the weekend, the Yale College Class of 1986 had a tremendous 25th Reunion.  We had classmates drop in, and by all reports it was a fantastic time.

What does this mean for you?  It means that we have one year . . .  one year . . . until our 25th Reunion.  Save the dates -- May 24-27 -- and make plans to be there.

Clear here for a summary of all of the Reunion-related posts to date.

Class Lunches -- Chicago

Joe Gromacki organizes class lunches every month in Chicago.  They are typically held on the last Thursday of the month.  Here are the remaining dates this year:

June 23 (note not last Thursday of this month)

July 28

August 25

September 29

October 27

November – none

December – none

These lunches will begin at noon.  Locations to be determined.  If you're interested, please let Joe know at: jgromacki@jenner.com.

Amor Towles Releases New Book

I received a note that classmate Amor Towles will be publishing his debut novel, Rules of Civility, on July 25.  

Here is the write up on Amor's new book:

RULES OF CIVILITY (July 25, 2011; ISBN: 978-0-670-02269-4) is an elegant and enchanting debut novel set in New York City in 1938 by Amor Towles. Readers will quickly fall under the spell of this beguiling novel with its crisp writing, its glittering atmosphere, and its uncommonly appealing heroine.

RULES OF CIVILITY tells the story of a watershed year in the life of Katya “Katey” Kontent, a young, sharp, urbane woman of extraordinary ability and humble origins. Armed with little more than a formidable intellect, a bracing wit, and a large dose of moxie, Katey embarks on a yearlong journey through the upper echelons of New York society in search of a future far brighter than she has been told she has the right to expect.

RULES OF CIVILITY opens on the last night of 1937 in a jazz bar in Manhattan, where Katey, a secretary at a Wall Street law firm, and her glamorous boardinghouse roommate Eve meet a handsome banker with royal blue eyes and a friendly but world-weary smile named Tinker Gray. “Dibs,” says Eve, as both women become instantly enamored. This chance encounter and its startling consequences cast Katey off her current course.

By summertime of 1938, Katey’s social orbit has expanded and she becomes acquainted with a shy and principled businessman named Wallace Wofford, the elegant and wealthy Anne Grandin, and a pack of energetic, soiree-hopping trust funders led by the irrepressible Dicky Vanderwhile. With her new credentials in-hand as an assistant to a Conde Nast publisher and her ever-increasing social stature, Katey experiences first-hand the poise secured by wealth and station, but also the envy, disloyalty, and desires that reside just below the surface.

RULES OF CIVILITY is at once an elegant fairy tale and a classic coming-of-age-story that details how a few chance encounters and spur of the moment decisions when one is young can define the rest of one’s life.

Amor Towles, 46, was born and raised just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale University and received an MA in English from Stanford University, where he was a Scowcroft Fellow. He is a principal at an investment firm in Manhattan, where he lives with his wife and two children.

PRAISE FOR RULES OF CIVILITY

“[A] smashing debut… remarkable for its strong narrative, original characters and a voice influenced by Fitzgerald and Capote, but clearly true to itself.”

—Publishers Weekly starred review

“Historical love story. Snappy dialog and sophisticated characters. A romantic look at the difficulties of being a New Yorker.”

—Library Journal

Classmates Ray Gallo and Andy Cowan Join Forces in California Law Firm

The other big law firm news within our class this week was in California:  Andy Cowan has joined Ray Gallo's law firm, Gallo & Associates.  I think this is a great combination.  Having worked on a case with Ray, I can attest to the fact that he is a top-notch lawyer -- effective, tenacious, and thoughtful.  Combined with Andy, I have no doubt that California has a new legal dream team.

Freshfields recruits litigation partner for fast-growing US practice- Legalweek

I am very excited to announce that I have joined a new law firm – Freshfields Bruckhaus Derringer.  It is an exciting move personally and professionally, so I wanted to let you know about it.  I will still be practicing in New York, but that my practice will become increasingly more international in the years to come. 

Freshfields recruits litigation partner for fast-growing US practice- Legalweek

Making A List For Summer Science Reading : NPR – Carl Zimmer One of the Top Science Writers of the Year

NPR featured a segment on the best science writing and what people should be reading this summer.  Yale 87’s own Carl Zimmer got a shout out because of his “Planet of Viruses.”  Click below for the full report.

 

Making A List For Summer Science Reading : NPR

SEC Announces Arrival of New Administrative Law Judge Cameron Elliot

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced recently that classmate Cameron Elliot has joined the agency as an Administrative Law Judge.

Mr. Elliot has been based in New York as an Administrative Law Judge for the Social Security Administration since June 2008. He was previously an attorney at the law firm of Darby & Darby P.C. in New York, where he handled intellectual property litigation. Prior to his private-sector work, Mr. Elliot spent eight years at the U.S. Department of Justice, starting in 1998 as a trial attorney in Washington, D.C., where he was responsible for civil litigation in patent and copyright cases. From November 2001 until September 2006, Mr. Elliot was an Assistant U.S. Attorney, first in the Southern District of Florida and then in the Eastern District of New York.

Mr. Elliot graduated from Harvard Law School in 1996 and clerked for Judge Edward Reed in the U.S. District Court in Nevada from July 1996 to August 1998. Mr. Elliot holds a Bachelor of Science degree in physics and applied physics from Yale College, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1987. He then served for six years as a submarine officer in the U.S. Navy and Naval Reserve.

Administrative law judges are independent judicial officers who rule on allegations of securities law violations in public administrative proceedings instituted by the Commission. They conduct public hearings, in a manner similar to non-jury trials in federal district courts, issue initial decisions, and have authority to impose a broad range of sanctions. Those sanctions include suspending or revoking the registration of registered securities, brokers, dealers, investment companies, investment advisers, municipal securities dealers, municipal advisors, transfer agents, and nationally recognized statistical rating organizations. In addition, they can order disgorgement, civil penalties, censures, and cease-and-desist orders against these entities, as well as individuals, and can suspend or bar persons from association with these entities or from participating in an offering of penny stock. Parties may appeal an administrative law judge’s decision to the five-member Commission, which can affirm, reverse, or modify it, set it aside, or remand it for further proceedings. Appeals from Commission decisions are to a U.S. Court of Appeals.

SEC Announces Arrival of New Administrative Law Judge Cameron Elliot

Kathy Edersheim Wins Yale Medal

The Class of 1987 has its first Yale Medal winner!  Kathy Edersheim will be honored this fall at the Yale Assembly with the Yale Medal.  

Inaugurated in 1952, the Yale Medal is the highest award presented by the Association of Yale Alumni, conferred solely to honor outstanding individual service to the University. Each year's recipients reflect the range of service and leadership the AYA strives to recognize with this award.

The AYA honors these individuals for their remarkable contributions, and it recognizes that they do honor to Yale and to all of us in the alumni community by the ways in which they have chosen to render service back to our treasured community of scholars and friends.

Usually, the Yale Medal is awarded to older alumni who have devoted a lifetime of service to the University.  In Kathy's case, she is be honored (I suspect) for packing a lifetime of service into just a few years.  Kathy has been, among other things, the President of the Yale Club of New York City, the Chair of the AYA Board of Governors, and the founder and leader of the Yale Global Alumni Leadership Exchange. 

Congratulations Kathy! 

Michael Morand is Yale Alumni Magazine's Yalie of the Week

Every week, the Yale Alumni Magazine lists the Yalie of the Week.  This week, the Yalie of the Week, is our very own Michael Morand.  Here's what YAM had to say:

New Haven is full of Yalies Who Stayed: came here for college, liked the place, got a job, bought a home, settled down, got involved in local stuff. Michael Morand '87, '93MDiv, has taken that pattern to its extreme -- except, maybe, for the settling down part. An aficionado of all things Yale and all things New Haven, Morand is constantly on the move, from aplanned food co-op to a community theater performance to acity plan commission meeting to a photo op with Paul Giamatti '89, '94MFA. (Morand's Facebook posts this week included plugs for his dry cleaner, an environmentally themed New Haven high school, Easter brunch overlooking the Quinnipiac River, and the Yale Day of Service -- twice.)

So when Yale handed out its annual Seton Elm Ivy Awards this week -- Elm to members of the New Haven community, and Ivy to Yale students, faculty, and staff -- it had to give Morand a special Elm and Ivy Award. An associate vice president of the university, he recently shifted from his decade-long stint in theOffice of New Haven and State Affairs, where he served as Yale's public face (and hot pink socks) in New Haven's City Hall and its neighborhoods. From his student days as a member of the city council, he moved on to serve on (or chair) the boards of the Chamber of Commerce, New Haven Public Library, Arts Council, and a multitude of other local organizations.

Morand now divides his work time between Yale's Office of Public Affairs and Communications and the Association of Yale Alumni. He divides his play time between. . . everything else.

The last time a classmate was Yalie of the Week, Natasha Zupan was tapped for that honor:

It sounds like the plot of an Almodovar film: a house painter (in Spain, of course) confesses to his artist client that he has been having an affair with her cleaning lady. In the artist’s house. With the cleaning lady dressing up in the artist’s underwear.

What is our heroine to do? Laugh? Cry? Fire them both? Perhaps. But because she is Natasha Zupan ’87, she also made art from this tawdy-but-true story, as told to AOL News.Zupan’s exhibit “Flesh Fold,” a series of collages incorporating panties and bras—some hers, some donated—opens September 24 at the Alexander Salazar Fine Art gallery in San Diego.

While Zupan is not our first Yalie of the Week to make underwear-related art, she is almost certainly the first who collected 100 foundation garments from “a very large-breasted woman” and “turned it into a painting called Boobie Trap.” Who could top that?

The 25th Reunion

There is a lot of new material on the blog this month.  Much of it relates to the Reunion.  Here is a rundown of this month's posts:

1. We have the dates for the 25th Reunion -- May 24-27, 2012.  Click here for more details on the timeline.
2. We need your ideas!  We have a plan for our activities, but we would love your input.  Please click here for more details about planning.  
3. We are putting together a class video montage.  We need your pictures from college.  The more embarrassing (for others), the better.  Seriously.  Send them in.  
4. We are doing a dues drive -- the Drive for 25.  Please pay dues this year.  Click here for more information.
5. We need stuff.  Really.  Can you help out with donating to the reunion?  If so, we would love to hear from you!

One more thing:  please call a classmate you haven't spoken to in a while.  Find out how they are doing.

Reunion Planning -- We Need Stuff

With reunion planning in full swing, we are starting to work on the budget.  We could use your help to make this as special a reunion as possible while controlling costs.  Put simply: We need stuff.  Lots of stuff.  Are you in a position to donate to the reunion cause?  If so, we'd love to hear from you.

So, what could we use?  We could use audio-visual equipment/expertise.  (Wouldn't be great to watch some our classmate's work on the big screen?)  How about some wine?  Nice food?  Activities for the kids?  (One recent 25th reunion had a tent filled with video games generously donated by a classmate.)

Please feel free to offer suggestions, too.  We would like the class to shape for themselves the reunion experience.

Nicky Grist Announces Job Opportunity

Classmate Nicky Grist has been working hard for years on behalf of the Alternatives to Marriage Project. Now it is time for her to move on. Nicky passes along this note:


Please help me replace myself as executive director of the Alternatives to Marriage Project – see the full posting here: http://www.unmarried.org/images/exec_dir_posting.pdf. The pay is low, but my 5-1/2 years in this role were a valuable and enjoyable experience, I think I made a decent contribution to society, and there’s big growth potential. This could be the right moment for you to try something new!

The Drive for 25

Dear Classmates,

Over the last few years, we haven't pestered you about class dues. Why is that? Well, for a couple of reasons. First, we didn't have much we needed dues for. Our events have been self-funded and the blog and e-newsletter is not costly. Second, we didn't have a pressing need for funds. Both of those things have changed.

In the last several months, classmates have stepped up to organize what is shaping up to be a great 25th Reunion. And, we have a nascent initiative to support community service among classmates. For both of these efforts, we could use your help. Specifically, we need to increase our class treasury so we can nail down the compelling offerings we hope to provide at reunion and to get the service opportunities we are putting together off the ground. Planning these sorts of things is much simpler when we have the capital necessary to assist class volunteers with the necessary support.

Please click here, or the title of this blog entry, to access the class dues website.  It is easy to do, so please take a minute and do it now.

When you visit the site, you will see that we have different levels of contribution.  We ask that you pay dues at the highest level you can . . .  every bit will help us provide the robust reunion programming and meaningful service opportunities we are putting together.

Thanks -- Tim