reed magazine logonovember2005

Reed Mag Nov 05

Email
reed.magazine@reed.edu

Interim Editor
Edward Hershey

Editor
Mitchell Hartman

Associate Editor
Amy Taylor

Alumni News
Robin Tovey '97

Class Notes
Laurie Lindquist

Graphic Designer
Anderson McConaughy Design

Associate Graphic Designer
Laura Pritchard

Web Design
Tony Moreno

 

About this Issue

As the August issue went to press, editor Paula Barclay went off to a new life in New Mexico. Her successor, Mitchell Hartman, arrived in October just in time to proof the final copy of this edition. He is at work on the February 2006 issue. In nearly a decade, Barclay saw the magazine through a major transformation, adopting higher standards for writing and design without forsaking the magazine’s proud tradition as a sounding board for Reed alumni. She never forgot whom this magazine is really for and about, and that is a lesson for those in her wake to remember.

One of Barclay’s innovations — the occasional grouping of feature stories around a theme — is deployed in this transitional issue. The idea germinated after a parent, Minnesota-based engineer Randy Wedin, submitted an introspective recollection about dropping his son off to start at Reed. With so many alumni who are (or soon will be) parents (and grandparents) of collegians, Wedin’s essay struck a chord. When the Wall Street Journal did a story on “helicopter parents,” who hover over their students at college, we realized this really is a topic of broad interest and approached Alaska attorney Susan Orlansky ’75 and University of Minnesota administrator and author Marjorie Savage for added perspective.

Two other subjects are worthy of note in this issue. Veteran reporter Todd Schwartz offers a profile of Don James ’50, a key player in the defense of Oregon’s voter-approved assisted suicide law in the face of a federal legal assault. Schwartz found James fiercely insistent on his right to end his life on his own terms, yet ever-more fervently clinging to life in the face of terminal illness.

And Alex Golub ’95 has generously contributed an essay reflecting on the life of Gail Kelly ’55, a famously demanding (and often acerbic) Reed anthropology professor who died in August. The appreciation appears in our new quarterly feature Endpaper, and is adapted from a longer version posted on Golub’s blog.