Reunion E-mail -- Check out your spam folder

 Earlier today, YAA sent out a Reunion email.  It seems to be stuck in a lot of spam folders.  Here is what it says:

35th Reunion In Person. In Pierson. June 2 - 5, 2021   Dear Classmates of the Greatest Yale Class Ever! It’s our 35th reunion! Wow! Thirty five years! Has it really been that long?! Come back IN PERSON to Yale on June 2-5, 2022! After a year like no other, let’s reconnect with a class like no other! We all understand that there are far greater – and important – things happening in the world. And each of us is thinking about how we help shape the future. But if the past year has taught us anything, it is how important it is to take the time, and make the time, to get together with the people you love, to share memories and make new ones. Reunions are a chance to do just that – to reconnect, to renew, and to recharge. Great friends, good conversation, amazing pizza … and throw in some fabulous 80’s music. Burning down the house still sounds as awesome today as it did in 1983 blasting out our windows in Old Campus!   What we really need to make reunion special - the only thing we need -- is YOU! Our goal for this reunion is simple: Come Back! Come back to renew old friendships and forge new ones.  Come back to find support and strength! Come back to feel inspired by the ways classmates are making a difference in the world! Come back for the hugs! Come back for the pizza! Just Come Back!       We all -- Darcy, Andrew, Matt (Homer) and Lisa -- are already working hard to make this the best reunion ever! But we cannot do this alone. WE NEED YOUR HELP! We need your ideas and talents on how we drive attendance (we want everyone back!), select programming, and plan service projects! Look for up-to-date reunion information at aya.yale.edu/reunions and more information about registering this winter.   Our fearless communications leader, Margie Whiteleather, will again be championing our social media effort! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Tiktok channel for fun content and reminders. We have already launched a podcast that aspires to help us get to know the real 'us', 35 years later! Let us know if you want to share your story.   Join our tea

New Podcast Episode -- Steve Harper

Listen in as Steve Harper takes along his journey from actor to writer to innovator.  He talks about life and his web series, Send Me, a series that explores characters who ask to be sent back to the time of slavery.  Along the way, we talk about race, the evolution of media and a whole lot more.  For more about Steve, visit his webpage here:  https://harpercreates.com/

For a bit more about Steve, visit his bio.

New Podcast Episode -- Rob Long

The class podcast drops new episodes every Thursday.  Our Thanksgiving episode features classmate Rob Long.  Rob has had a storied career as a writer, working on shows like Cheers.  Listen in as he gives his perspective on the entertainment industry and the future of political discourse.  It is a super interesting episode.

Here is how Rob described himself:

Television writer and producer, author and journalist, cook and general all-around lazybones.

Early career milestones include being writer and co-executive producer of television comedy Cheers.

Later career milestones include a string of cancelled television shows, two books, a weekly commentary on public radio, a column for the English-language Abu Dhabi-based newspaper, The National and occasional writing for Time and (what was then) Newsweek. A contributing editor to National Review magazine.

My weekly radio commentary, “Martini Shot,” is broadcast on the Los Angeles public radio station KCRW, and is distributed nationally. It’s also podcast in iTunes.

My first book, Conversations with My Agent, chronicled his early career in television. It was published in the UK by Faber & Faber, in the US by Dutton, and in France by Actes Sud. My second book, Set Up, Joke, Set Up, Joke, was published in November 2005 by Bloomsbury.

My most recent book is Bigly: Donald Trump in Verse, published in October 2017 by Regnery.

Co-creator and Executive Producer of Sullivan & Son. Executive Producer of "Kevin Can Wait" on CBS.

Available to show-run whatever needs show-running.

Currently writing. Or pretending to.

Co-founder of Ricochet.com, fast growing podcast empire.

More to come, if I can stop eating the entire bread basket in restaurants.

Can be found in New York and Venice Beach.

A moving essay by Doris Iarovici

 Our classmate, Doris Iarovici penned this essay earlier this year.  I missed it then, but came across it today.  Give it a read.  It hit home for me, as I think about the time I have had this year with my father.

Click here for the whole essay.

COMMENTARY

I Didn’t Know My Mother, Not Really, Until The Pandemic

January 29, 2021

• Doris Iarovici

The author as a child with her mother, Mioara Iarovici. (Courtesy)

When I was 10, soaking up the July sun in the Adirondacks, I calculated how many more summers like that one I could expect to have with my parents. Forty? Fifty, I hoped?

Maybe I'd newly learned the concept of life expectancies, or an elderly relative had died. We'd been in the U.S. five years then. We were at Schroon Lake: silky water, rolling green hills, shimmer of sky. We had a cabin with knotty wood-paneled walls; a pebbly beach. The worry creases softened on my parents’ foreheads when we were there. We swam and fished and read and flew on swings. We ate candy bars mid-day. But what we did hardly mattered. It felt like heaven, being in that place with those people: mother, father, brother. I didn't want it to end.

New Podcast Episode -- Morgan Grove, an urban forester

 Tune in to our latest podcast episode, in which Morgan Grove discusses his work as an urban forestry expert.  Part hopeful, part scary, Morgan describes how climate change will change our lives.

Y87 has three authors on NYT's list of Top 100 books of 2021

 Very impressive -- our classmates have written three books that made it on the New York Times list of Top 100 Books of 2021:  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/11/22/books/notable-books.html

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

Set in the 1950s, Towles’s exhilarating novel follows four boys on a trip across America, from rural Nebraska to the skyscrapers of New York. All of them seek a better future but have very different ideas about how to get there; over the course of 10 days this multiperspective story offers an abundance of surprising detours and run-ins.

My Year Abroad by Chang-rae Lee

Part study of suburbia, part globe-trotting adventure, Lee’s latest novel follows a young man from a transformative trip in Asia to a low-key life in a New Jersey town. Reflective, precise writing and a steady churn of pleasures and perils make for a winning combination.

Life's Edge: The Search for What it Means to Be Alive by Carl Zimmer

Zimmer’s book tackles some of biology’s hardest questions: What is life? How did it begin? And what criteria should we even use to call something “living”? From metabolism to sentience to evolution to our current focus on DNA, Zimmer takes the reader on an elegant, deeply researched tour.

New Podcast Episode -- Minter Dial

 

Tune in to our latest podcast episode, which features Minter Dial.  Minter is a busy man, with a wide variety of interests and experience.  

Minter Dial is an itinerant bohemian in search of experiences and interesting people. His mission is to elevate the debate and connect people, dots and ideas. As a metier, he relishes being an energetic speaker on leadership, brand and digital strategy with a specialization in digital transformation since setting out on his own in 2009.

1)  Click here for his episode.

2)  Listen to Minter's own podcast here.

3)  Check out Minter's webpage here.

Jose Egurbide and Restorative Justice

Got a great note from Jose Egurbide, who lives in LA:

In October 2017, I lost my older sister Cristina. Those of us who have experienced the loss of a sibling know it can have a profound impact on our lives, which was certainly the case for me. In the face of my own mortality, I developed a growth mindset, discovered Mindfulness in the process, saw what a valuable tool it was in helping me deal with my own trauma, and quickly incorporated it into my professional work.

In 2018, I embraced an opportunity to teach Restorative Justice at Pepperdine’s School of Law. I took over a class previously taught by Daniel W. Van Ness, a renown restorative justice scholar and one of the principal authors of the United Nations‘ Basic Principles on Restorative Justice.

In March 2020, I was invited to be a guest panelist at Wisdom 2.0 in San Francisco, where I had a chance to share the benefits of Mindfulness in the context of successful diversion strategies for eligible petty offenders as alternatives to a more punishment-based Criminal Justice System. In that context, Mindfulness can be a more effective tool towards behavior modification than punishment because it addresses the root causes of criminal behavior in the first place.

In October 2020, in the middle of the COVID pandemic, I spearheaded the very first Criminal Justice System Mindfulness Summit in Los Angeles. This virtual convening was attended by hundreds of judges, police officers, prosecutors, public defenders, CBO representatives and other key justice system stakeholders.

2021 marked for me my 26th year as a career prosecutor with the LA City Attorney’s Office, the second largest municipal law firm in the U.S. In March, I was appointed Chief of the Criminal and Special Litigation Branch and currently oversee 480 employees, including 255 attorneys. Based on my experience developing therapeutic alternative prosecution models for the most vulnerable criminal justice-involved populations (like individuals experiencing homelessness, mental illness and/or drug addiction) I’ve spent the first six months of my tenure re-structuring our Criminal Branch to reflect my vision for more transparency, consistency, and accountability, as we redefine the role of a prosecutors’ office in the 21st century.

Under my leadership, this office is implementing a more balanced and restorative approach to fighting crime by focusing on public safety and recidivism reduction, smart prosecution, leading with diversion first whenever appropriate, while still aggressively prosecuting our most serious crimes and protecting the rights of victims of crime.

We are in the midst of a lot of changes in the Criminal Justice system but while legislators and justice reformists are busy decriminalizing certain behavior and funding community-based alternatives, nobody is supporting progressive prosecutor offices, notwithstanding the fact that we remain the gatekeepers for the system, wield broad discretionary powers and understand better than most that meaningful and long lasting change, whether on a personal level or on a system-wide level, must start from within.

For this reason, I am calling out to all in our Yale family with Public or Private Foundation connections: If you are passionate about criminal justice reform, alternatives to prosecution for young offenders, expansion of more whole-person, therapeutic, trauma-informed approaches to addressing the root causes behind non-serious, non-violent crime, let’s connect and let’s talk! I desperately need your help, support and assistance! Ashe!

New podcast episode -- Paul Doiron: a trout fisherman who never gave up his dream and became a novelist

Paul Doiron is a novelist who writes mystery novels set in the woods of Maine.  It hasn't always been like that.  Listen to Paul's story, about how his life evolved and he never gave up his dream.

You can read more about Paul at http://www.pauldoiron.com/.

Listen to the episode by clicking here.

New Podcast Episode -- Yuka Manabe, Val Norton and Carl Zimmer -- discussing COVID: what they've seen, what they've learned, what we should know

 Join our classmates Yuka Manabe, Val Norton and Carl Zimmer as they discuss COVID.  Yuka is a Professor at Johns Hopkins Medical School, specializing in infectious diseases.  Val Norton is an Emergency Room doctor and hospital administrator in San Diego.  Carl Zimmer is a science writer for the New York Times and 14 books, including A Planet of Viruses.  (https://carlzimmer.com/)

You can access the podcast here.

Latest Podcast Episode -- Tim Harkness

 The tables are turned in the next episode of the podcast, with Tim Harkness being the interview subject.  Hear about how Tim's application to college started as a family joke during a 1976 road trip through New England and his thoughts on the importance of improving diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

To hear Tim's interview, click here.

A University of a Billionaires' Toy

 I have been watching with some dismay the firestorm at Yale concerning academic independence.  I saw a blog post, which is excerpted here, from a Yale Professor -- Jason Stanley.  Please give it a read.  His argument is both sound and troubling, calling recent actions by the Yale leadership an "existential threat to the university mission."

I would also recommend the statement by the Yale History Department, which is breathtaking in its brevity and message.  Click here for that.

Here is the beginning of the post, from the Academe Blog:

A University or a Billionaires’ Toy

Guest Blogger / 5 days ago

BY JASON STANLEY

Yale University is a central democratic institution, a fact recognized by its tax-exempt status. It provides a forum in which society’s most difficult issues can be confronted and freely discussed. The University educator is thus tasked with presenting their students with intellectually rigorous foundational challenges to tradition; that is the role of education in fostering autonomous thought. Fulfilling this mission will always threaten those in power, and that is why academic freedom is the university’s core principle. A university with no firewall between a society’s billionaires and its academic program is no university at all. Yet, a disturbing pattern of behavior by this university’s administration over time suggests the absence of a firewall, which is an existential threat to the university mission.

Click here for the whole post.

Opportunity Hoarding at an Elite Private University -- a recent article of interest

 I read this article recently and found it compelling.  Please take a few minutes to read it.  Is this something we should discuss as a class?  Is this a fair/helpful topic for reunion?

While the author's focus is on Princeton, can the same be said for Yale?

Here is a link to the article:  https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-gamma/opportunity-hoarding-elite-private-university#.YWmJvvYBhMg.link

Opportunity Hoarding at an Elite Private University

It’s time to address elite private universities’ role in maintaining social hierarchy and intergenerational inequality.

Latest Podcast Episode -- Emily Greenwald

 Tune in to the latest podcast episode featuring classmate Emily Greenwald.  Emily shares her journey from pre-med to history to grad school to professional historian.  Along the way, she learned a great deal about herself and the world.  One of her biggest lessons came on a tandem bicycle!  So, tune in and enjoy the podcast.  Click here to listen in.

A great report of enduring friendship

 Brian Williams, '87 JE, SOM '97 writes: 

"In early Fall, I had the pleasure of hosting a brunch with four '87 classmates. Yale brought us from different home states to New Haven in August of 1983 for the weeklong Pre-Registration Orientation Program, where we became fast friends. Our educational, career, and life journeys took us all around the country and the world, and we now find ourselves in Los Angeles, adoptive home to all of five of us. It was great to catch up, 38 years after our initial meeting on Old Campus, with Preston Lewis, Vincent Jordan, Steve Harper, and Jon Walls. All of us are doing great and we're looking forward to seeing our '87 classmates next June!"

 "I also am thrilled to announce my marriage, on January 21, 2021, to Kimberly (Clayton) Hershman '87 BK, '92 Law. We got married in a beautiful, COVID-safe backyard ceremony."

Class Podcast

 We have launched a class podcast, which  you can access here.  Every Thursday leading up to our Reunion in June, 2022, we will be posting discussions with classmates.  These are meant to explore how we have lived our lives and how we see our future.  We won't be sauntering through resumes or talking about our successes only.  The whole point is to share our lives and what we've learned since 1987.

We are always looking for guests to give an interview.  Please give some thought about sitting for an interview -- everyone has learned through life and has something to share.  

If you would like to sign up to be a guest on the podcast, you can do so here:

Sign up to be a guest

Latest Podcast Episode -- An Interview with Caprice Young

 In the latest episode of our podcast, we hear from Caprice Young about her life as an educator and how her college classmate saved her life.  

Take a listen to Caprice's interview by clicking here.

You can find the Y87 Podcast on Spotify, Google and Apple.  We are hoping to drop an episode every Thursday.

Reunion Dates -- June 2-5, 2022

 It is that time again -- time for a reunion!  Our 35th Reunion will be live, in person in Pierson College.  The dates are set: June 2-5, 2022.  

Here is a link to the official reunion site, which will have updates periodically:  

https://alumni.yale.edu/reunions/yale-college-reunions#

Stay tuned for more!

Class Podcast

 We've started a new "thing" -- a Class of 1987 Podcast.  

We will be highlighted the lives our classmates and covering topics of interest to the class.  Look for episodes to drop on Thursdays.

Interested in being a guest?  Give us a shout, we'd love to have you join us!  Sign up to be a guest here.

The Podcast is called Y87 and it can be found on Spotify or by clicking here.