Nautical Nostalgia
Sixty years after he sold his 1925 R-class racing yacht, Karl Stein ’30 was reunited with the newly restored boat after his nephew, Paul Burns, discovered that a friend now owned it. “At the age of 93, Karl was as adept as a man of 30 at the tiller,” Burns wrote in September in the Brunswick, Maine, Times Record.
These Old Houses
For Nat Lewis ’47, whose watercolors were recently featured in two shows in Maine, the old, decaying houses she paints are more than just abandoned relics. “These old places speak to me of the hardworking families they sheltered,” Lewis told the Caldwell (N.J.) Progress, “and seem to reflect the simpler existence which took place within their walls.”
A Lack of Vision
Technology has helped improve the lives of many people with disabilities, but computers and the Internet remain out of reach for most blind people. When Jim Dickson ’68, who is blind and a vice president at the American Association of People with Disabilities, recently received a report on his computer, he was forced to ask a colleague to read it to him. “That’s annoying, it’s humiliating, it’s inefficient,” Dickson told the Baltimore Sun in October.
Political Art
Lydia Eccles ’76, an artist who made headlines a few years ago with her tongue-in-cheek Unabomber-for-president campaign, is now one of the driving forces behind Oni, a unique communal art gallery in Boston’s Chinatown. Noting that Oni “has a whiff of the 1960s about it,” a reporter for the Boston Globe wrote in November that Eccles and her colleagues “are true believers: in the power of art, in the power of community and commitment.”
Keeping the Faith
Listeners to the Minnesota-based religious talk radio show Speaking of Faith, are so devoted to host Krista Tippett ’83 that they donated nearly a third of the show’s budget last year. As a result of this devotion, Speaking of Faith is now carried on 150 public radio stations. “It’s very intense and intimate,” said Tippett in November, when the Minneapolis Star-Tribune asked her to describe her distinctive interviewing style. “I close my eyes, and their voices are inside my head.”
Undercover No More
Since launching her acting career at Brown, Aunjanue Ellis ’93 has been featured in movies ranging from the drama Men of Honor to the comedy Undercover Brother. It’s those diverse credits that led Ebony in September to name Ellis one of its “Actresses on the Rise.”
Opening Doors
When Raun Kaufman ’95 was diagnosed with severe autism as a baby, one doctor doubted whether he would ever be capable of meaningful communication. Now, as director of global outreach at the Autism Treatment Center of America, Kaufman is trying to help others like him. “All we really ask is for people to leave the door open, to have hope,” he told the Scotsman, Scotland’s largest daily newspaper, in September.
Revelation
Christopher Reeve: Courageous Steps, a documentary that aired on ABC in September, was directed by Reeve’s son, Matthew Reeve ’02, who presented an intensely intimate portrait of the actor’s struggle to walk again. “I would not have revealed myself in this way to other filmmakers,” the elder Reeve told the Los Angeles Times.
