Send a Green Card and we'll print
your news!
a
photo, and we'll display it!
Current
News - Fall 2002
CRAIG SAKOWITZ
REPORTS: Just moved to the San Francisco Bay Area with my wife Sharon
Karlsberg '96 so that she may pursue her MBA at UC Berkeley. We recently
spent the weekend at the Dartmouth
Outing Club of Northern California cabin near Lake Tahoe with Peterson
Conway '95 and Sara
Olsen. Sara lives in Berkeley and has started her
own firm that helps organizations "track the social, environmental
and financial performance of investments in the common good." Or
so she claims. By the way, we performed the Salty
Dog Rag (listen here) in snowshoes during a full-moon night hike!
Craig performed the wedding ceremony of Julia
Hammer and Robert Dunn in Hawaii this summer where the
couple now lives. Julia is Assistant Professor of Volcanology at University
of Hawaii. Not a bad place for that...
JEFF MIDDENTS WRITES: After seven years in grad school, I completed
my PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan in August
2001. (A good dissertation is a DONE dissertation!) That project, an examination
of film history and culture through a Peruvian film journal published
in the 60s and 70s, will be slowly transformed into a publishable manuscript
over the next couple years (I hope). At the time, I was teaching at University
of California at Santa Cruz and my wife, Angela Dadak '92, was
finishing up her MA in ESOL at the Monterey Institute of International
Studies. She caused the next move by getting a full-time job in TESOL
(rare right out of grad school!) at Georgetown University. (She's still
there, loves it immensely.) We had been wanting to come back east anyway,
so this was great. (Brandon Adams actually helped us pack up our
stuff back into the truck, which was amusing since he had helped us *unload*
the truck when we moved from Michigan two years earlier! WEBMASTER'S
NOTE: Big deal, I packed the truck and DROVE Jeff to grad school in Michigan
in 1993. He recently completed his degree in conducting from Indiana
and has returned to San Francisco.) Trolling the Washington Post while
finishing up the dissertation, I managed to land a one-year sabbatical
replacement position in the Department of Literature at American University.
The job at AU was great though I knew it was only temporary and I would
probably have to find something else for next year
And then a funny thing happened: both colleagues and students at AU started
clamoring to find some way for me to stay. (This, after my job search
at the MLA petered out to nothing.) To make a long and very convoluted
story short, my department surprised me a few weeks ago by telling me
that they had created a tenure-track position specifically designed for
my interests and would rush me through the hiring process if I were willing.
So, in a whirlwind week consisting of probably the easiest set of job
interviews anyone has ever had, I landed the position of Assistant Professor
of Literature at American University, where I will be teaching film and
Latin American literature.
So now we are in a nice (and relatively affordable) housing in Glover
Park in DC, contemplating the fact that we might actually be able to stay
in one place for longer than a few years. (And I finally get to teach
the same class twice, something I have yet to do!) Given that the end
of the school year is fast approaching (I'm avoiding grading papers right
now by typing this), the summer holds for me a lot of research, some ultimate
Frisbee (which I just started playing when I moved here, still can't really
throw...), a wedding or two and reunions, naturally.
Speaking of weddings, I should note that I recently went to the wedding
of one Clarice Rabinowitz-- although that's PFC Rabinowitz to certain
folks. Now a JAG lawyer stationed here in the DC area, she married Chris
Julka, another JAG lawyer and a heck of a nice guy. Angela and I were the
sole Dartmouth reps in a small wedding that culminated in a cruise around
DC -- right during Cherry Blossom season! Personally, I knew Chris and
she would do well when I saw them dance the foxtrot at the reception...
remembering very well how she wouldn't let me lead when we took our first
(failed) ballroom dance classes in Collis sophomore summer.
JAN MATUSKA WRITES: What do you do when you finally decide to
step out of your brother's footsteps (at the age of 30)? How do you get
a bunch of classmates from distant countries to visit you for a square
dance and mexican food? How can you hope for a happy marriage when you are
a "lawyer" in "Texas"?
You marry the lawyer sitting in the cubicle next to yours in a Houston
law firm. On April 7th when Brian Moss and Jen Gray (Cornell '91)
exchanged their vows at a ranch outside of Austin, TX.
Brian's best man was his brother Bill Moss '92 (who in the meantime
got married as well) and guests included Rich Hoffman, who could
not bear the peer pressure and had to propose to Katharine Feehan later
that month, Paul Majewski, who seems happy to bear the peer pressure
for sometime longer, and Jonathan Leizman and his wife, whose pregnancy
puts anew pressure on Brian and Jen. Sporting a lot of funky Italian casual
wear was Josh Wesoky, who traveled all the way from London with
Henry Nilert, who actually got married a month ago in a small ceremony
in London.
Entertainment and embarrassment was provided by Luke McInnis,
who danced when nobody else did (or maybe nobody danced because of Luke),
who asked the bride's mother after the ceremony of what relation she was
to the wedding couple, who. ... . the list is just too long.
Johnette Kao '92 was in attendance either as Paul's date or as
a mascot for the Kodak film company, blinding everybody continuously with
her flash. In a memorable Austin hangout, where the plaster on the ceiling
was dangerously moving with the rhythm of the ...harmonica, and where
piss was a better alternative to the beer, the group met Jim Keating
and Courtney Gilbert Keating '92, who had a baby two weeks
later.
I personally had to travel 40 hours in the span of three and a half days to
get to Texas from Czech Republic, only a few days after my wife gave
birth
toour second child. Even though I only had one jar of real fire salsa
to show for it, it was a great wedding and visit, and was well worth almost
each minute on the plane.
And one last news is that Mattias Lamotte '93 found somebody who
is willing to marry him (congrats) and the huge wedding will take place
on June 29th,2002 in St. Tropez France with the presence of many well known
people including the Queen of France, the King of Bohemia and a few hundred
other lesser nobility from the old continent.
