After the Chorines
In January, James Naughton '67 completed a five-night run at the Orange County (Calif.) Performing Arts Center, but he largely ignored tunes from his Broadway career. "Once you've been on stage with seven chorines in their underwear, singing without them leaves one wanting something else," he told the Los Angles Times. Instead, Naughton sang songs by artists ranging from Duke Ellington to singer-songwriter Randy Newman.
Childhood Hero
"Langston Hughes was part of my education as a child," Loni Berry '76, '89 A.M. told the Cleveland Plain Dealer in late January. "I feel like I knew him." To share his appreciation, Berry created Love, Langston, a series of dramatic vignettes taken from Hughes's poems and mixed with music and dance from the jazz era. The musical theater piece was performed in January and February as part of Cleveland's Great Lakes Theater Festival.
Early Warning
To some, Steve Emerson '77 A.B., A.M. is a jingoistic Muslim-basher. To others he is a prescient journalist whose 1994 film, Jihad in America, about an alleged terrorist cell at the University of South Florida, was an early warning about terrorist activity in the United States. "I told people there was an Islamic Jihad cell in Tampa and people scoffed," Emerson said in a January speech quoted by the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times.
Hungry, Too
A power crowd was on hand at Maxim's, the legendary Chicago eatery, when National Public Radio host Ira Glass '81 and New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell dropped by in early February for a conversation over breakfast. "Storytelling. By ordinary people. It's so hard to find these days in magazines or newspapers, which are filled with celebrities of one kind or another," the Chicago Tribune quoted Glass as saying. "But people are so thirsty for this."
The Shoe Fits
For Timberland CEO Jeffrey Swartz '82, integrating the company into the community is more than a matter of giving away money. "Timberland isn't philanthropic," Swartz told Footwear News in late December. "We don't have a foundation. We are trying to integrate justice into how we do our business. It's not about talking [the] talk, it's about living the values."
Urban Slight
"Girls in Manhattan don't want to hear that you're a musician," Bryan Bullett '94 told the New York Times in February. Bullett, who's been playing guitar in a band called Playdate and working as a bartender since getting laid off last year, explained: "They want to hear that you have a million-dollar record deal." Bullett was cited as part of a growing group of single Manhattanites flocking to Brooklyn, where, they say, dating is less about money and more about substance.
Brrrr!
An average year-round temperature of Ð56 degrees Fahrenheit didn't faze Meghan Prentiss Ô98 during a stint conducting meteorological research at the South Pole. "It's very, very dry, which saves you from really feeling the cold," Prentiss told the Boston Globe in late February. Prentiss even became a member of an exclusive club of South Pole veterans after she took a lap around the geological South Pole wearing only her boots and hat.
Tech-nostalgia
As a sophomore, Glen Sanford '98 built a Web site devoted to the history of Apple computers as part of a computer science project. His site, www.apple-history.com, remains one of the best sources for information about Macs. Although his favorite model is the Titanium PowerBook G4, he told Macworld in January that "there's something about my old Apple IIc that I really miss."
