Class Notes Digest
Learn what’s happening with your classmates and other BU friends by browsing the current class notes below
Learn what’s happening with your classmates and other BU friends by browsing the current class notes below
Whatever you’ve been up to, we want to hear about it. Send your stories and photos to casalum@bu.edu. We’ll feature the highlights here and in print—and all of your notes here.
actor • archaeologist • banker • codebreaker in World War II • curator • data scientist • engineer • filmmaker • first lieutenant in the Korean War • founder of a theater • graduate student • painter • philanthropist solving global hunger • photographer • playwright • president • priest • screenwriter • senior defense official/defense attaché at the US embassy in Athens, Greece • senior vice president of sales • volunteer with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society • wealth management advisor • architects • editors • musicians • entrepreneurs, including a sweater designer and a Sudoku software designer • doctors • professors • lawyers • authors (1 poet, 4 memoirists, 10 fiction writers, 18 nonfiction writers)
1. Ghost Out of Vegas (CreateSpace, 2017), Edwina Lynch (CAS’55) of Pasadena, Calif. 2. The Choice Not Made (CreateSpace, 2017), Bill Brennan (CAS’59) of Annandale, Va. 3. California Dreaming: Society and Culture in the Golden State (Pickwick Publications, 2017), Ronald Wells (CAS’63, GRS’64,’67) of Maryville, Tenn. 4. John William McCormack: A Political Biography (Bloomsbury, 2017), Garrison Nelson (CAS’64) of Colchester, Vt. 5. Evolution, the Logic of Biology (Wiley, 2017), John Torday (CAS’68) of Redondo Beach, Calif. 6. Once Upon A Time Off Broadway (Dreamer House Publishing, 2017), Dori Newman (CAS’69) of Moody, Maine 7. Gross Misbehavior and Wickedness: A Notorious Divorce in Early Twentieth-Century America (Temple University Press, 2017), Jean Elson (CAS’70, Wheelock’71) of Durham, N.H. 8. Journeys to Professional Excellence: Stories of Courage, Innovation, and Risk-Taking in the Lives of Noted Psychologists and Counselors (Sage Publications, 2017), Fred Bemak (CAS’70) of Fairfax Station, Va. 9. Second Chances (Christopher Matthews Publishing, 2018), Jeremy Soldevilla (DGE’68, CAS’70) of Dorchester, Mass. 10. Going to Boston: Harriet Robinson’s Journey to New Womanhood (University Press of New England, 2017), Claudia Bushman (GRS’78) of New York, N.Y. 11. Your Patient Safety Survival Guide: How to Protect Yourself and Others from Medical Errors (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), Gretchen LeFever Watson (CAS’82) of Norfolk, Va. 12. The Education of a Young Poet (Counterpoint, 2017), David Biespiel (CAS’86) of Portland, Ore. 13. Louse Point: Stories from the East End (BookBaby, 2017), Shelby Raebeck (GRS’87) of East Hampton, N.Y. 14. Ocean Liners: Glamour, Speed, and Style (V&A Publishing, 2017), coedited by Daniel Finamore (GRS’87,’94) of Salem, Mass. 15. Warning Light (Penguin Random House, 2018), David Ricciardi (CAS’89) of Cos Cob, Conn. 16. Fall from Grace (The Wild Rose Press, 2018), Judith Boss (GRS’90) of Exeter, R.I. 17. Trust Me, I’m a Doctor: My Life Before, During and After Anna Nicole Smith (CreateSpace, 2017), Sandeep Kapoor (GRS’91, MED’96) of Studio City, Calif. 18. Finding Forever (Gallant Fox Press, 2018), Kristen Casey (CAS’96) of North Potomac, MD 19. Liquid Landscape: Geography and Settlement at the Edge of Early America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), Michele Currie Navakas (CAS’01) of Oxford, Ohio 20. Take Care (Albert Whitman & Company, 2018), Madelyn Rosenberg (GRS’02) of Arlington, Va. 21. Small-Screen Souths: Region, Identity, and the Cultural Politics of Television (Louisiana State University Press, 2017), coedited by Lisa Hinrichsen (GRS’07,’08) of Fayetteville, Ark. 22. Divorce: A Consumer’s Guide to the Divorce Process (Blurb, 2017), Amy Puliafico (CAS’08) of Stoughton, Mass. 23. Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America (NYU Press, 2017), Shari Rabin (CAS’09) of Marietta, Ga. 24. We Play a Game (Yale University Press, 2018), Duy Doan (GRS’11) of Jamaica Plain, Mass.
I tried to take a selfie of us once but goofed the whole thing. “Hold the river closer, Narcissus,” they told me. “Hold the river closer”.
—From “Love Trinkets,” in the collection of poems, We Play a Game (Yale University Press, 2018),
by Duy Doan (GRS’11) of Jamaica Plain, Mass.
Priyanka Naik (CAS’10) of New York, N.Y. (pictured in the header above), won an episode of the Food Network competition show Cooks vs. Cons by using peppermint in a breakfast hash and creating a dish using nacho cheese. Her meals: Indian breakfast hash with peanuts, cumin, mint chutney, and nacho cheese pav bhaji with arugula, kale, and nacho cheese.
“I beat out two professionals and one other amateur chef to take home the prize of $10,000,” she writes. “I have been cooking—and, most importantly, eating—for 25+ years. My specialty is bringing together ingredients, flavors, and cultures through original vegetarian dishes into what I like to call an Indian twist on global classics.”
As a partner manager for Twitter, she has been a guest chef in the company’s New York City and San Francisco headquarters. She’s also a contributing editor to the Staten Island Advance, builds sponsored content with several food brands, and is writing a cookbook. Find her original recipes on her blog.
This was the headline of the March 1971 Rolling Stone article about the CAS alum who a month earlier had saved NASA’s third moon landing. It was Don Eyles’ last-minute computer program—made in just two hours—that fixed a switch on Apollo 14 and allowed the spacecraft to land on the moon. In 2018, Eyles (CAS’66) of Boston, Mass., published Sunburst and Luminary: An Apollo Memoir (Fort Point Press, 2018), which documents the drama of those years during which he writes that he “worked at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory on the guidance system for the Apollo spacecraft. I created software for the onboard guidance computer of the Lunar Module and worked directly with the astronauts who would use the software. The book combines plain-English technical explanations with descriptions of important places, people, and events against a backdrop of the turbulent 1960s and early 1970s.”
The National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame accepted this photograph by Glenn Kulbako (CAS’82) into its permanent collection. Kulbako captured the moment the horse Arrogate—owned by Prince Khalid bin Abdullah of Saudi Arabia—broke the 152-year-old Saratoga course record at the 2016 Travers Stakes. Kulbako’s work has been featured in Time Magazine, Newsweek, National Geographic, and others.
Peter Bury (CAS’48, GRS’49) of Lisle, Ill., a Korean War veteran, served with the Army’s 58th Field Artillery Battalion, 3rd Division, and was eventually promoted to first lieutenant. After he was discharged in 1953, he received notice that he had earned the Bronze Star, but it never came. He contacted US Representative Bill Foster’s office for help and received a Bronze Star and the Korean War Service Medal on May 27, 2017, more than 60 years after being discharged from the Army.
Mike Nuell (CGS’90, CAS’94) of Potomac, Md., launched MClass Games to produce electronic versions of Sudoku for players worldwide. He’s pursuing a patent for Multiplayer Partisan Sudoku, which transforms the typical Sudoku puzzle into a multiplayer online board game in which players compete for territory. Mike describes it as “a game of pure skill in the same class as Chess, Go, and Tic-Tac-Toe. The most relevant description is a struggle for territory in a condition of rapidly diminishing resources, which definitely should be taken as a commentary on the present state of the planet.”