John Pogue's newest movie . . .

From superherohype.com:

John Pogue to Helm Ciudad

by Silas Lesnick

September 24, 2013

Sierra Pictures announced today that they are set to finance and produceCiudad, a big screen adaptation of the upcoming Oni Press graphic novel by Captain America: The Winter Soldier helmers Joe and Anthony Russo and Ande Parks and Fernando Leon. John Pogue (The Quiet Ones) is attached to direct with Joe Russo himself providing the adapted screenplay. Production is targeting a spring 2014 shoot in Columbia. The story follows a weary mercenary, who is hired by a Brazilian drug lord to extract his daughter from one of the world’s most dangerous and corrupt cities: Paraguay’s Ciudad del Este. Dwayne Johnson was said to be eyeing the leading role in the film last year, but he appears to no longer be involved. Eric Gitter and Peter Schwerin are producing the project through the Closed on Mondays Entertainment banner. Joe and Anthony Russo and Closed on Mondays’ Joe Nozemack will executive produce with David Guillod of Intellectual Property Group. Sierra’s Nick Meyer and Marc Schaberg will also executive produce the project. Closed on Mondays’ James Lucas Jones and Steven V. Scavelli will co-produce with Kelly McCormick, Sierra/Affinity’s Senior Vice President of Production and Acquisitions, overseeing. Read more about: Ciudad

Here is a recent interview with our classmate, Claire Messud:

In conversation with Claire Messud

The author of ‘The Woman Upstairs’ on middle age, adages and why being likeable will cost you dear

• By Alex Clark
• Published: 21:30 September 26, 2013
• 

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The nature of Claire Messud’s novels — the elegance of their construction and prose, the wry, precise sentences, her powerfully accurate descriptions — makes it somehow unlikely that she would tell me about a twee sign in a bakery near where she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass,” the sign reads, “it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” It just doesn’t seem very Messud in either sentiment or delivery, and indeed she remarks that it is the kind of thing she would once have “scoffed at”. But we have been talking about middle age (she is 46), and about how its consolations — a certain kind of relaxation with oneself, or an improvement in material circumstances — are offset by such harrowing milestones as parental illness and death.

Once those kinds of experience have entered your life, adages start to seem slightly less objectionable on mere aesthetic grounds; as Messud puts it, “super-tacky, but not wrong”.

Messud uses the verb “scoff” at one other point, when she recalls a first-person piece she read in a magazine, some years ago, while killing time in a waiting room. It was about a woman who had only just realised that you weren’t graded at the end of your life. At first it seemed a ridiculous notion but as she read on, it began to dawn on Messud that she half-identified with it. Now, she says, “I still believe on some level that at the end somebody will say: you get an A-minus for your life. And it’s not true. It’s not true.”

LOVE IS STRANGE

Our classmate, Ira Sachs, has been busy.  Check out how he is shooting his new movie

LOVE IS STRANGE

The official Tumblr for Ira Sachs' upcoming film Love is Strange starring Alfred Molina, John Lithgow, Darren Burrows and Academy Award winner Marisa Tomei.

MUST READ: Want a behind-the-scenes look at how movies are made? Read Ira Sachs’ compelling production blog for insight on the filming of Love is Strange: http://loveisstrangemovie.com

LOVE IS STRANGE

A Review of ‘Red Grooms - Larger Than Life,’ at Yale University Art Gallery - NYTimes.com

Saw this recently at the Art Gallery.  Very cool.

Yale University Art Gallery/Red Grooms/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Courtesy of Marlborough Gallery 

“Cedar Bar,” a 1986 work of colored pencil and crayon on five sheets in a wood frame, now on display at the Yale University Art Gallery.
By SYLVIANE GOLD 

There’s a wild, wild party going on at the Yale University Art Gallery these days. And I don’t mean the happy celebration of painting that can be ascribed to most any art museum. This particular bash — calling it wild is probably understating things — rounds up Rembrandt and Leonardo, Picasso and Stravinsky, cancan girls and the New York Knicks and lets them all loose in a big room with plenty of booze, cigarettes and a large, extremely entertaining bowl of grapes.

Mining for Potential in West Virginia | Constance Spencer

Check out this blog post by Connie Spencer about the Yale Alumni Service Corps trip to West Virginia:

I watched with compassion as a girl dropped her head to hide tears spilling down her face after reading her 10-minute writing exercise to other high school students, and the Yale Alumni Service Corps volunteers who had come to West Virginia to coach them on college applications. The girl's story was a description of anguish and love between a child and her alcoholic mother -- a mother who did not want her child to go to college and leave her behind. The next student nervously read her story which featured the most influential person in her life, her grandmother, a woman who had been a shut-in for 20 years. Another student wrote of a beloved uncle who died young of a drug overdose, leaving behind confusion and grief. These stories represented some of the obstacles that the students in Western Appalachia face when considering their futures, and our task was to help them overcome these roadblocks in order to understand their value and extraordinary potential -- in only four days!

YaleNews | Inauguration weekend Oct. 12–13 to build on tradition and unite community

Check out the Salovey inauguration weekend . . .

Inauguration weekend Oct. 12–13 to build on tradition and unite community

September 16, 2013 

Yale’s long history, current vitality, and future aspirations will all be showcased at the inauguration of Peter Salovey as the university’s 23^rd president, with a series of events in the days leading to the formal installation ceremony on Sunday, Oct. 13 at 2 p.m.
The fellows of the Yale Corporation selected Salovey, who began work in Woodbridge Hall on July 1, as Yale’s new president in late November 2012, following extensive consultations with the Yale community. The trustees and Salovey aim to include all of the Yale community, New Haven residents, and friends around the world in the inauguration events this fall.
The festivities include a campus-wide open house on Saturday, Oct 12 for all students, staff, faculty, alumni, and New Haven residents. Sunday’s Inauguration Ceremony will be viewable live online via the Yale YouTube channel. The weekend will conclude with a festive “block party” on Hillhouse Avenue, open to all.

"Yale grew from an institution chartered on Oct. 9, 1701, by a visionary group of men who shared one region, race, and religion,” notes Kimberly Goff-Crews, vice president and secretary of student life, co-chair of the Inauguration Planning Committee with Daniel Harrison, the Allen Forte Professor of Music Theory. “Their collegiate school has been transformed over the centuries into our global university, comprised of women and men with many aspirations and ideas, representing many experiences and beliefs, hailing from many cultures and backgrounds. 

“This inauguration provides an opportunity to celebrate the best of today’s Yale and its traditions, made anew by each successive generation,” she adds.

“President Salovey asked us to conceive a series of events that would highlight the many facets of Yale, its people and their pursuits, and the spirit of inspiration that unites us,” Harrison says. “There is much to celebrate, so the inauguration includes many parts, building to Saturday and Sunday activities accessible by all. We hope everyone in the Yale family will participate and will join us in sharing information about the inaugural celebrations with their colleagues, neighbors, and friends.”

Campus-wide open house on Oct. 12, to focus on “inspiring connections”
In keeping with Salovey’s commitment to make Yale even more unified and accessible, this inauguration will feature an innovation on tradition, with a campus-wide open house that encourages people beyond Yale to connect with the campus and the people at Yale to connect with parts of the university they do not already know.

Alumnae Weekend Includes Visits from Harvard, Vermont - Yale Bulldogs

Attention all Field Hockey players!

 

Alumnae Weekend Includes Visits from Harvard, Vermont

The Yale field hockey huddle. (photo by Sam Rubin '95, Yale Sports Publicity)
Ceremonies Recognize New Coaching Endowment
NEW HAVEN, Conn. – What promises to be a memorable Alumnae Weekend for the Yale field hockey team centers around two games at Johnson Field, as the Bulldogs host Harvard on Saturday and Vermont on Sunday. Saturday's game, the Ivy League opener, includes ceremonies recognizing the program's new coaching endowment -- Pam Stuper is now Yale's Caroline Ruth Thompson '02 Head Coach of Field Hockey. It is also Yale's chance to notch a fifth straight win in the series against Harvard, something that the Bulldogs have never done before.

Alumnae Weekend Includes Visits from Harvard, Vermont - Yale Bulldogs

Foodtober: Taste of New Haven, 10/1 | Yale Alumni Association of New York

New Have has some terrific restaurants.  Check them out during the upcoming YAANY Foodtober event  . . .

Foodtober: Taste of New Haven, 10/1

Photo (cc) flickr.com/altopower

Come eat up some of the tastiness New Haven has to offer! Taste of New Haven brings six of the Elm City’s most delicious and innovative restaurants here to the Big Apple, where we’ll sample their cuisine at a convivial open-to-all event at the Yale Club (you do not have to be a Yale Club member to attend!). The evening will be peppered with some of New Haven’s cultural institutions and sporting events to ignite conversation as we enjoy our taste of New Haven.

Your ticket price includes savory and sweet food samplings (more than a bite, smaller than an appetizer) from all six restaurants, and a donation for our Foodtober beneficiaries. Reserve yours before the September 24th early bird discount cutoff!

Foodtober: Taste of New Haven, 10/1 | Yale Alumni Association of New York

Why music? An overture to the Yale School of Music

This video celebrates the Yale School of Music’s mission of cultivating and sharing great music. It was written, directed, and scored entirely by graduates and current students of Yale University, and features musicians from a variety of YSM Ensembles. (Visit music.yale.edu for more information)

Yale Alumni Recognition Awards

Alumni Awards and Recognition

The Association of Yale Alumni applauds the outstanding dedication and accomplishments of Yale’s many volunteers. Volunteers give of their time and their talent in so many ways, demonstrating that the best of Yale can be the best for Yale.

While Yale volunteering - whether for your Yale College Class, regional club, graduate or professional school association, shared interest group or other group - is its own reward, the Yale Alumni Association seeks to honor and recognize those individuals and alumni group whose service stands out.

Yale Medal - Yale’s highest honor for individual service

AYA Leadership Awards for Volunteer Innovation and Service for outstanding individual service to the Yale Alumni Association

AYA Board of Governors Excellence Awards for superior accomplishment among AYA-affiliated alumni associations

Yale College Class Awards - awarded by class leadership for distinguished service

POV: Interview with John Barker, Founder of Barker DZP | The Agency Post

Recently, The Agency Post ran an interview with our classmate, John Barker, about John’s New York ad agency.  Click the link below for the whole article.

  

POV: Interview with John Barker, Founder of Barker DZP

By:Jami Oetting Date posted: September 4, 2013

Tell us about Barker DZP and what differentiates it from other agencies.

We call ourselves “The Agency: Reintegrated” because Barker was founded to bring the marketing disciplines back together again. It’s why we have branding, advertising, interactive, social, mobile and content production all under one roof. We came from big agencies, and we saw how multiple profit centers competing for client budgets distracted and sapped the energy out of good people. We are one agency. It lets us focus on the big ideas that make a real impact in the marketplace because we’re not bound by any single discipline, media or genre. And the results can be genuinely enormous. We’re not the kind of agency you hire to get a 4 percent or 5 percent lift; we try to add a zero to that. We’re fairly aggressive.

For more of the interview, click here:

POV: Interview with John Barker, Founder of Barker DZP | The Agency Post

Flash Sale: Harvard vs. Yale Rivalry on Ice at Madison Square Garden, 1/11/14 | Yale Alumni Association of New York

Check this out . . .

Harvard vs. Yale Rivalry on Ice at Madison Square Garden, 1/11/14

Join other Yalies from the tri-state area to cheer on our National Champion hockey team.

Madison Square Garden
4 Pennsylvania Plaza
(Located between Seventh and Eighth Avenues from 31st to 33rd Streets, it is situated atop Pennsylvania Station)

Click here to purchase tickets and make sure to type in the promo code “Bulldogs”! Prices are $25, $50, and $60.

These YAANY tickets will have seats together.

This event will sell  out very quickly, so do not delay!

The two Ancient rivals have skated against each other 237 times in games contested at eight different cities. The first meeting of 2014, which brings the Yale and Harvard men’s hockey teams back to the city of the first game in 1900, should have the most fans to ever see the historic rivalry. That’s because it’s being billed as “The Rivalry On Ice.”

Flash Sale: Harvard vs. Yale Rivalry on Ice at Madison Square Garden, 1/11/14 | Yale Alumni Association of New York

Harvard Business School Case Study - Gender Equity - NYTimes.com

Have you read the latest NY Times article about gender equity at Harvard Business School?  It’s an interesting read and, for me, thought provoking.  Over the last several years, I have spent a lot of my time working on gender equity issues in law firms.  I am partner of a BigLaw law firm, and our track record on retaining women is consistent with our peers – which is to say that it is poor.  Over the last few years, we have instituted new initiatives and time will tell if they are enough.  By next year, 75% of our junior and mid-level associates will be women, so we better get gender equity issues right.  The HBS experience might be instructive for BigLaw, and it might be instructive for other institutions.  It does pose a number of intriguing questions:  how does the HBS approach square with/compliment the Lean In message of Sheryl Sandberg?  Will the efforts of HBS mean anything 10 years down the road for these graduates?  And, if so, what?  Do the efforts of HBS administrators address the sorts of concerns expressed by Anne Marie Slaughter in the Atlantic last year?  With changes like those made at HBS, can women “have it all”?

What do you think?

Harvard Business School Case Study: Gender Equity

By JODI KANTOR

September 7, 2013

BOSTON — When the members of the Harvard Business School class of 2013 gathered in May to celebrate the end of their studies, there was little visible evidence of the experiment they had undergone for the last two years. As they stood amid the brick buildings named after businessmen from Morgan to Bloomberg, black-and-crimson caps and gowns united the 905 graduates into one genderless mass.

But during that week’s festivities, the Class Day speaker, a standout female student, alluded to “the frustrations of a group of people who feel ignored.” Others grumbled that another speechmaker, a former chief executive of a company in steep decline, was invited only because she was a woman. At a reception, a male student in tennis whites blurted out, as his friends laughed, that much of what had occurred at the school had “been a painful experience.”

He and his classmates had been unwitting guinea pigs in what would have once sounded like a far-fetched feminist fantasy: What if Harvard Business School gave itself a gender makeover, changing its curriculum, rules and social rituals to foster female success?

Harvard Business School Case Study - Gender Equity - NYTimes.com

Morse College Reunion

Last year, Yale started having Residential College Reunions.  The next on tap is the Morse College Reunion -- April 4-5, 2014.  The organizing committee features members of the Class of 1987 -- the best class ever to grace the halls of Yale.   Anyone interested in helping out, should let me know.  And, please, please, please plan on attending.

Gendler appointed deputy provost | Yale Daily News

Tamar Gendler has been busy, busy, busy.  She is now deputy provost, along with her other duties.  Good luck Tamar!

Gendler appointed deputy provost

Tamar Gendler, former chair of the Philosophy Department, steps into her new role as deputy provost for the humanities and initiatives today. Photo by Philipp Arndt.

By Sophie Gould
Staff Reporter

Philosophy Department Chair Tamar Gendler will join the Provost’s Office today in the newly created role of deputy provost for the humanities and initiatives.

Gendler will hold her new position for one year, during which she will collaborate with Emily Bakemeier, deputy provost for the arts and humanities, and will also serve as a point person for any “special initiatives” that the University undertakes during Yale President Peter Salovey’s first year at the helm of the University. Though Gendler’s new position is a one-year, part-time role that will allow her to continue her research and teaching, Gendler said philosophy professor Stephen Darwall has taken over the chairmanship of the Philosophy Department as of this morning.

“I am very grateful to [Gendler] for her willingness to contribute her perspective and energy to our office in this year of transition and of major steps forward for the University,” Provost Benjamin Polak said in a memo to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on Friday.

Gendler said the creation of an additional position within the Provost’s Office was the result of conversations between Polak and over 50 professors in the humanities over the past several months. The combined arts and humanities portfolio was too large for any single person to manage, she said. Though Bakemeier, who has overseen the arts and humanities since 2009, said she and Gendler have yet to confirm how they will share responsibilities, she said she is “thrilled” to be working alongside Gendler in sharing the humanities portfolio

Gendler appointed deputy provost | Yale Daily News

Emanuel Pastreich: Vagabonds Will Revitalize Detroit

I am, as many of you know, from Detroit.  So, it has been with great sadness that I have watched the city’s decline into bankruptcy. 

One of our classmates, Emanuel Pastreich, was mentioned in a Detroit-related piece the other days, so I thought I would share it.  Here is an excerpt . . .  the whole article is reachable by clicking on the link below:

 

That’s how New Orleans got on the hipster map, for better or for worse. The invasion indicates a community’s networks scaling globally. On the backs of these migrants come fresh ideas and knowledge, density be damned. New Orleans was re-imagined and experienced transformational change. The same could happen to Detroit and, South Korea:

Dr. Emanuel Pastreich, a long-time resident of Korea who has worked with various Korean academic and government institutions in efforts to increase Korea’s global stature, has recently released a remarkable book that presents the quintessence of his philosophy. Dr. Pastreich is the director of the Asia Institute and a professor at Kyung Hee University, and has penned A Different Republic of Korea about Which Only Koreans Are Ignorant, which has drawn considerable attention. …

… The book is meant as a touchstone to point Korea in the right direction towards its true long-term potential on the global stage. Much of the focus falls on the various hidden treasures in Korean culture itself. Pastreich uses a powerful parable taken from the Lotus Sutra to describe Korea’s relationship with its own culture.

The parable goes like this. A man meets an old friend and they talk until late in the evening. Before dawn, the friend leaves while the man is still asleep. The friend takes a priceless gem and sews it into the lining of the man’s jacket as a special gift to help him, and then he leaves before the man awakes. When the man wakes up he continues on his travels, unaware of the jewel sewn into his clothes. He suffers painful experiences, being subjected to hunger, disease, and terrible poverty. After many years, he meets up again with his friend who tells him that he had had a priceless jewel in his clothes all that time, but had been unaware of it. The point of the parable is that often the most valuable things in our lives we have right with us, but we are completely unaware of their presence. In the case of Korea, there is a profound lack of awareness of the richness of Korean culture itself.

Emanuel Pastreich: Vagabonds Will Revitalize Detroit - - newsle

Getting together for a (hopefully) happy reunion | | The Bulletin

Here is Bruce Feiler’s latest in the NY Times (we’re a busy bunch, apparently).  You can click on the link below for the entire article.

Getting together for a (hopefully) happy reunion

By Bruce Feiler / New York Times News Service

Published: September 06. 2013 4:00AM PST

This summer, 39 members of the Peters family gathered in Smith Mountain Lake, Va., just outside Roanoke, for their 40th family reunion. What started with five nearby families in 1970 has grown to 10 families, some from as far away as Alaska and Washington state. Activities included water-skiing, a pickleball tournament and TV theme-song trivia night.

For some outsiders, the Peterses’ tradition of gathering every summer is a fantasy of togetherness, mutual support and love. For others, it’s a particular kind of hell. I asked Oliver Peters, whose father started the tradition and who has been the event’s chairman for the past 13 years, how he cuts down on fighting.

Three rules, he said. No. 1: be clear about who’s paying for what; No. 2: make attendance at the event, or any activity within the event, optional; No. 3: make sure each family has its own space.

Getting together for a (hopefully) happy reunion | | The Bulletin

A Catalog for All the World’s Viruses? - NYTimes.com

Check out Carl Zimmer’s latest NY Times article.  Very interesting stuff . . . 

Viruses have a knack for ambush. Time and again, they have struck our species without warning, producing new diseases. H.I.V. burst on the scene in the early 1980s, and it took years for scientists to figure out that it had evolved from a chimpanzee virus in the early 1900s. In 2003, a previously unknown bat virus in China began to cause SARS in humans. Today we are in the midst of yet another ambush, as a new virus called MERS is infecting people, mostly in in Saudi Arabia. Scientists have yet to definitively pin down its origin, although preliminary evidence points to another species of bat.

A Catalog for All the World’s Viruses? - NYTimes.com

Here's the video of Tamar Gendler's welcoming address

Tamar Gendler Gives Freshman Address

Our very own Tamar Gendler gave the welcoming address to Freshman this year.  Here is her speech:

Tamar Gendler, the Vincent J. Scully Professor of Philosophy and chair of the Department of Philosophy, urged the new freshmen to embrace contradiction in her Keynote Address to the Class of 2017, presented on Aug. 27 in Woolsey Hall. The text of her speech follows.

Thank you so much, Dean Gentry and Dean Miller.

And welcome, welcome, members of the Yale College Class of 2017! As a proud member of the Yale College Class of 1987, I welcome you the best reunion cohort ever — the 2s and the 7s — we’re thrilled to have you join us!

Can you believe you’re here? I mean it — really — look around you! You’re sitting in Woolsey Hall, on the campus of Yale University, surrounded by 1359 of the most amazing and engaging and exciting young people on the planet. You hail from all 50 US states and from 49 different countries: you are from Argentina and Bulgaria and China (though there’s no one from Denmark or Djibouti!) you’re from Ethiopia and France and Ghana — and Hong Kong and India and Japan and (don’t worry, I won’t do the full alphabet) … and Senegal and Trinidad and the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam (though there’s also no one from Yemen or Zimbabwe.) You play the violin and the marimba and the gamelan and the electric guitar. You’ve won math competitions and poetry prizes; you’ve built award-winning haunted houses and toured with teams of professional clowns; you’ve tended gardens and worked on oil rigs; you’ve organized peace protests and served in the Navy. You, class of 2017, are an extraordinary and diverse group.

Look around the room again — this is a room full of people who will become your classmates for the next four years and your friends for the next forty; this is a place where your predecessors have sat and your successors will sit; and this is a space — like so many other spaces on this magnificent, sometimes overwhelming and sometimes intimidating, but often magical campus — that is yours to explore, yours to learn from, yours to transform, yours to make your own.

Been offline

The last few months have been rather hectic -- work is busy, there have been a few fun trips and then there are those four kids.  We have been running hither and yon getting ready for school, looking at colleges (I cannot believe that I am old enough to have a child looking at colleges), and just trying to get everything done.  So, enough of the whining.  Back to blogging . . .

Yale Belly Dance Society

So, I have been looking into the latest at Yale as part of putting together the Morse College Reunion (April 4 and 5, 2014).  We are trying to reach out to current students and alums of every age . . . so I am finding some new organizations.  Well, at least new for me.  Did you know that Yale has a Belly Dance Society?  I didn’t.  Well, now we all know.

Yale Affiliates
Belly Dance Society

The Yale Affiliates Belly Dance Society is an organization run by Yale students and affiliates designed to bring belly dance enthusiasts in the Yale community together. Our goal is to promote Middle Eastern dance, music, and culture at Yale and in New Haven. Our Performance Troupe is selected by audition every fall, and we also hold belly dance classes, workshops, and other events.

Yale Belly Dance Society