Letters

Degrees of Separation

Matt Jennings’s summer 2009 magazine story “The Most Improbable Story Ever Told” about Simon Thomas-Train’s near-tragic 2005 Norway experience conjured up for me a rush of thoughts and reflections during a quiet moment’s reading in an otherwise hectic day.

Regarding Feb first-years, such as Mr. Thomas-Train ’09: I’ve always been impressed at this collection of charismatic and outgoing students. Does the admissions process somehow select for their qualities, or do their qualities compel them to seize the opportunity of delayed matriculation in an outstanding institution while squeezing in the chance for exploration and personal growth? Regarding Simon’s original survival and his subsequent chance meeting with his Midd alum surgeon halfway around the world: It’s always rewarding to offer thanks at the time a good deed or effort is completed. When this isn’t possible, how often in life do we get a second chance? Honest praise and heartfelt thank-yous are some of the most precious gifts that can be bestowed. Sometimes the opportunity immediately opens wide for it, but sometimes an effort must be made. Unfortunately, sometimes we miss these chances entirely, despite our efforts, and we may bear that albatross for life. But never should the opportunity be missed twice, as I’m sure Simon learned.

What a wonderful ending to the tale, and I hope great thanks were extended, albeit years later. From this story of only two pages, I was not only moved by a harrowing tale of serendipitous luck and reward pulled from everyday unexpected danger, I was also reminded and reassured that talented Midd people are everywhere and may even affect us when we least expect it. As we all know, Middlebury is more than a place. It’s an experience, transient with individuals’ tenures on campus, yet everlasting in rich memories, and enlightening in new concepts, challenges, and triumphs through those we’ve known or those who share the foundation of our common extended family.

Bruce Silverman ’92
Chicago, Illinois

Blown Away

I am a Bread Loaf graduate, and certainly a great benefit of that is receiving Middlebury Magazine. I love each issue, but I have to say I was blown away by the story of Simon Thomas-Train ’09 (“The Most Improbable Story Ever Told”). Matt Jennings did a great job of relaying this one-of-a-kind, truly amazing story in a way that kept you on the edge of your seat until the shockingly wonderful ending. I have sent it to several people, including a gastroenterologist, as I’m sure other gastro docs, and probably most surgeons, also recall their extreme surgeries and scars. I can only imagine how happy Simon was that he mentioned his accident and surgery to the alum.

Just wanted to pass on how much I enjoyed reading this—I’d love to know more about what they continued to talk about!

Deborah Smith, MA English ’05
Southborough, Massachusetts

My Treasured Gift

While reading about Simon Thomas-Train ’09, a lump rose in my throat.

I had a similar experience 25 years ago after a miraculous recovery from a climbing accident. During my senior year, I broke my back in a serious fall, losing bladder and bowel function in addition to movement below the waist. Within a year, I regained full use of my legs and organs and live a very active life.

While I was in the hospital, my father asked a colleague to pay me a visit. Both men were active mountaineers at the time, as well as publishing members of the Wilderness Medical Society. I was honored that this man, whom I had never met, would take the time to stop by. Well, he let me have it, scolding me for my costly mistake.

One year later, I was working at an environmental education center in the Rockies when I ran into Dr. M. I don’t think he remembered me—I am not sure—but I was so proud to walk down the road toward him, shake his hand, and say hello!

While recovery from this trauma has been primarily a private experience for me, inspiration ought to be shared. Thank you—Simon, gentleman surgeon, and Matt Jennings—for the reminder.

Carrie Bowman ’84
Seattle, Washington

Acts of Fate

We just read “The Most Improbable Story Ever Told,” and we can only say WOW! The timing of the incredible events makes one realize how most of life is a lot like this story—that it’s filled with twists and turns that are, or are not, meant to be, and that someone truly must be watching over from above.

Simon Thomas-Train’s will to live and fortune of being in that particular doctor’s hands at the time of his tragedy coupled with whatever it was that directed him to pick up the same man’s bag five years later gave us all goose bumps! So well written. Thanks very much.

Susan and Bill Hatfield
Barrington, Rhode Island

The Rest of the Story

There is more good luck and serendipity to Simon’s tale: When the car crashed, the first bystander, an EMT, immediately called an ambulance, which arrived within five minutes. Also at the time, my wife and I were in Oslo, en route to visiting Simon the next day.

Before he blacked out, he somehow remembered the name of our hotel. It was a 10-minute cab ride to his bedside, not a 24-hour, passport-grasping, ticket-grabbing ordeal.

Then during the 2009 reunion, Simon called: “The most amazing thing has just happened. . . . Do you want to meet the surgeon?” Did we ever! We live an hour from campus, so over we went. At the final reunion brunch, we hugged, laughed, and prodded Simon’s scar with a delightful spark of a gentleman—the surgeon, and member of the class of 1959—who had only been doing his job, and saved our son’s life.

David Thomas-Train
Keene Valley, New York

At What Cost?

The summer edition of Middlebury Magazine contained a name I recognized, Mike Heaney ’64, and a story—“The Road to Vinh Thanh”—that I can relate to. Mike and I were among the very few Middlebury cadets in our class who ended up in Vietnam during the early days of the war. (It is my understanding that a much larger percentage of cadets in the Class of ’65 and forward ended up in country.) I was fortunate not to experience the level of violence Mike writes about. As a 1st Lt. Infantry, of the Big Red 1, however, I can talk about a very uncomfortable, frightening year of misery. War is not fun. It is something I would not wish on anyone.

I grew up in the small ski town of Killington, Vermont. All my life and during my years at Middlebury, I was always taught to respect my elders and authority figures. As an ROTC cadet, and a naive officer at best, I never questioned my orders. One saluted, said, “Yes, Sir,” and shipped off to Vietnam. During my time in country, I never had time to question the mission. My sole concentration was focused upon keeping the men under my command alive. I lived in the now; we would survive; the unthinkable would never happen to me. In fact my sense of sight, sound, and smell developed far beyond anything I could have foreseen. We were ready.

One year later, I returned home and just like everyone else, I, too, watched Walter Cronkite on the evening news. Things in Vietnam got worse and worse. Would I have questioned my mission if my tour had started three years later? I do not know. I do know that to this day I still feel guilty about the soldiers under my command who did not make it back.

Time moved on. Forty years later, my senses were once again kicked into high gear. My wife and I had started a business importing and selling boots. Things were going so well we were looking to expand. Poppy designed a new line of footwear, and we needed an affordable place to manufacture our products. We looked toward Vietnam.

We arrived in Saigon at the same airport I departed from all those years ago. The plane landed, the door opened, and we headed across the tarmac to immigration. The heat was just as stifling as I remembered. The smells were the same, and the language had the same singsong sound I had almost forgotten. As we reached the air-conditioned immigrations building, the first person I met was a young man wearing a military uniform. I was nervous. My stomach started a slow roll. I was sweating despite the cool room.

“Passport, please.” I passed the checkpoint. Everything looked like Saigon except the signposts. And where were the older people my age? The city’s name had changed, of course, and the motorcycle population had multiplied 100-fold. I was assured there are older people, but they are all home taking care of the grandchildren; both mom and dad work. We found modern factories and a five-star hotel with the TV tuned to CNN and a Christmas tree that reached to the top of the gothic ceiling. Everyone was very warm and welcoming. Things had really changed for the better. We did find a factory and we did start importing and selling shoes made in Vietnam.

Returning from our trip, I started to think about the bigger picture. The workers and overall population seemed happy, and living standards had definitely improved. That said, was my year in country helpful? Was the man on the street better off because of the USA? Was the war worth the cost? I say, “No” to all these questions.

Are we making the same mistake again today? War is final. Nobody is entitled to anything. Everyone is equal. There are no extended deadlines or do-overs. Why can’t we learn from the past? Shouldn’t our leaders be thinking of these things before our troops are sent into battle? Will recent Middlebury grads say 40 years from now: “I wasted a year of my life”? I hope not, but I think they, too, will come to feel the way I do today.

Terry Fletcher ’64
New London, New Hampshire

Find Peace

I was deeply moved by Mike Heaney’s essay “The Road to Vinh Thanh” (summer 2009). His journey was told with beauty and simplicity, yet with great emotional depth. As he lay pinned on that hill of death so far away in 1966, I and others were graduating high school, heading to Middlebury healthy and happy. The Vietnam War, at its peak in 1968, claimed 250 American lives in a single week. Meanwhile, we skied, studied, participated in or protested ROTC and the war. It struck me as I reread his piece, “There but for the grace of God go I.” I hope he and his surviving comrades—on both sides—have found some measure of healing, reconciliation, and peace. My VA colleagues and I are here for Mike and the warriors of another generation streaming home today, with scars both visible and invisible.

Al Perry ’70
Fresno, California

Plain Wrongheaded

It was disappointing to read that the College has decided to discontinue its support of the New England Review (“The Future of the New England Review,” summer 2009). The walls of circumstance have certainly closed in on some of the College’s best endeavors. But Professor Jason Mittel’s claim that NER does not impact “classrooms and the student experience” is perilously literal-minded. He might as well claim that because water doesn’t appear on the food pyramid it should be eradicated from the human diet. Few undergraduates subscribe to NER, but it’s an act of populist chauvinism for the College to espouse this indifference. It would be pretentiously wrongheaded to believe that NER has stature merely because its readers are a happy few. But it’s just as wrongheaded for the College to assume that the Nielsen ratings should determine course content. Indeed, entire academic departments have been rather expensively founded on them.

NER is a lighthouse for boats carrying fresh language and for the College’s true destiny.

Aaron Strumwasser ’06
Mercer Island, Washington

Support NER

My former classmate Sarah Tuff is right on about the intellectual excitement of Middlebury’s acclaimed and nationally recognized literary journal, New England Review (“The Future of the New England Review,” summer 2009). Her article begins and ends on just the right note—NER forms an essential contribution to the field of creative writing, and it must stay afloat. As one of the people mentioned in her article, I must write in to offer one correction and to state my point of view. I should add here that I don’t speak for NER in any way, although my long-standing connections to the journal (mentioned in the article), beginning with my undergraduate days as a student intern under both David Huddle and Stephen Donadio, obviously make me a partisan.

American Studies Professor, BOC member, and Acting Provost Timothy Spears is simply wrong to claim that journals like the NER “do not play a significant role in tenure cases.” In fact, the field of creative writing has graduate schools across the country and in the UK. Tenure-track creative writing professors, like all other academic faculty, submit dossiers including publications to tenure review and faculty evaluation committees. Those committees certainly do count NER in the upper ranks of publications that reflect the equivalent of “advanced research” in the fields of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. In Britain, creative writing faculty publications qualify as research towards official government evaluations of academic standards. NER and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference give Middlebury College a very rare reputation amongst creative writing faculty in every state. NER regularly receives submissions from all over the world. How regrettable to hear that this far-flung esteem is not shared by some of Middlebury’s own faculty!

The appearance of unfairness in the College’s recent decision-making regarding NER can be suggested by a comparison with the College’s approach, in these admittedly tough times, to the so-called auxiliary enterprises, operations such as the Juice Bar, the golf course, and the Snow Bowl, all of which the College subsidizes to the tune of $8 million a year. This sum utterly dwarfs the funds required to uphold the promise of support to NER that Middlebury made when it decided to acquire the magazine. To my knowledge, none of the auxiliary enterprises has been threatened with immediate closure so far. In fact, readers of these pages might recall Middlebury CFO Patrick Norton’s comment, in the winter 2009 issue of Middlebury Magazine: “We are working with a task force of Middlebury trustees to bring these operations closer to break-even.” In other words, operations far less valuable to the core mission of the College than NER and far more expensive than NER are not being threatened with closure or total elimination if they fail to “meet their costs.” Nor are they even being asked to break even. They are only being asked to come “closer to break even.”

Why doesn’t the College consider offering NER a somewhat similar path? What catastrophic harm would come to a college with an operating budget of around $250 million per year if it chose to continue supporting NER on a partial basis after the two-year grace period, gradually shifting the funding of the journal over the next five years, say, to a sustainable mixture of grants, subscriptions, donations, and, over time, a reduced level of College money, as needed? Has this possible solution ever been explored in detail, and if not, why not? One final thought. If the College is truly serious about helping NER sustain itself beyond the next two years, above all it must establish a fund-raising avenue, whether formally or informally, for potential donors to give larger sums on a tax-exempt basis with the assurance that the money will go directly to the magazine. Perhaps the College could offer matching funds up to a given amount as an extra incentive for potential donors and as a gesture of goodwill.

J. M. Tyree ’95
San Francisco, California

Further Support

In “The Future of the New England Review” in the summer 2009 issue, President Ron Liebowitz told the reporter that not one of the letters he had received in support of New England Review had come from anyone who currently teaches, works, or studies at Middlebury; neither had any of the dissenting posts on his blog.

We, the undersigned, aim to rectify that situation. Some of us are among the 27 current or former faculty or staff members who have had works published in the Review (plus 4 visitors, for a total of 31); others of us are interested and involved citizens of this academic (and intellectual) community. But we all wish to declare our enthusiastic support for the College’s continuing its limited, but essential, subsidy of the NER. The New England Review is a national institution that has garnered extraordinary praise from newspapers, magazines, and Web sites; its writers have been awarded a wide range of literary prizes, including Pulitzers, National Book Awards, and National Book Critics Awards. NER is often cited as one of the top literary magazines in the country. In the words of one critic: “New England Review is a reminder that stories and words matter and can last centuries and still be brand new.” And another states: “Definitely a unique creature among its peers, New England Review makes well known its place in a room full of literary journals.”

Comparable to other cherished components of this institution that are deemed worthy of continued support even though they may be costing the College money, the Snow Bowl, the golf course, or 51 Main (only three of many), the NER, we strongly believe, deserves the amount of support it currently receives. We also hope that the president and his development staff will conscientiously seek donations to support the Review, as they do for other valuable components of the College.

In addition to its national profile, the NER has also provided an outlet for some of the most original work by Middlebury faculty over the years (several on the list have had more than one item published in the journal). The distinguished and devoted editor of the Review has played a unique role among his peers in commissioning articles, reviews, reevaluations, and translations that might never have been undertaken, were it not for his suggestions and gentle urging. Furthermore, his editing skills are extraordinary: no piece of writing ever sees the light of day unless it has been subjected to the most scrupulous and constructive shaping, rewriting, and editing. Not one of us can say that his or her writing hasn’t been significantly improved by the process of its being selected to appear in the NER. One colleague confessed recently that the NER had published “the best piece of writing he had ever done in his life.” The Review publishes only about two percent of the total submissions it receives in a year. That is extremely selective. We consider ourselves very fortunate to have appeared in its pages. In addition, several of our most talented students have benefited enormously from internships with the Review, as well as in the popular J-term courses on magazine publishing offered by its managing editor.

We understand that this is a time of severe financial crisis and soul-searching. We all support that effort and have participated in it in our own departments and programs. But unlike skiing or golfing or socializing, NER is engaged in the enterprise of soul-searching: for that reason alone it should not merely be tolerated, it should be celebrated. Long live the New England Review!

Michael Katz
Middlebury, Vermont

The BOC Explains

As members of the Budget Oversight Committee (BOC) that recommended that the College discontinue its relation with the New England Review, we read Michael Katz’s letter, which was e-mailed to all faculty and staff, with great interest. We offer the following observations:

• The quality of the work published in the NER was never an issue for us in making our recommendation to President Liebowitz. Rather, given the College’s core mission and the economic limitations we now confront, we concluded that the opportunity costs of the institution’s significant fiscal support are simply too high.
• Professor Katz’s letter suggests that the deficits generated by the Snow Bowl, the golf course, and 51 Main escaped the attention of the BOC. That is not so. The committee recommended that these auxiliary operations find ways to reduce costs; in the case of 51 Main, if the operation does not eliminate its budget deficit by the end of the calendar year, it will be shut down. The president accepted our recommendations. We do not think it is unreasonable for the New England Review to find ways to reduce their costs as well.
• The magazine article concludes with an invitation to readers to send donations to the College to secure the Review’s future. We would like to extend our own invitation, to all of the NER’s readers and champions, to become subscribers too.

Budget Oversight Committee:
Dave Donahue, Peter Matthews, Patricia
McCaffrey, Paul Monod, Patrick Norton, Carol Peddie, Tim Spears

From the NER Editor

Readers of the article “The Future of the New England Review” will be heartened to learn that in an extremely challenging economic environment the College administration has recently made a commitment to helping NER generate the funding it will need to continue publication, and we are currently working with the Office of College Advancement in a concerted effort to achieve that objective. The New England Review already has a sizable endowment fund that was established in the 1980s expressly to support its operations, and the College draws on the income from that endowment to defray the magazine’s expenses each year. That income, combined with revenue from subscriptions, sales of individual copies, electronic licensing, etc., covers a significant portion of our annual budget.

But as in the case of any magazine whose mission is to provide readers with substantial intellectual content—including the New Yorker, Harper’s, and the Atlantic—our overall income cannot cover all the costs, and in the potential absence of a continuing College subsidy the amount of money we’re looking for is between 90 and 100 thousand dollars annually. This figure is not insurmountable, and it does not seem an unreasonable price to pay for the intellectual opportunities that—as the record clearly shows—NER offers Middlebury faculty, students, and alumni, as well as the many participants at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the School of English, in addition to the larger cultural community that the publication reaches.

Indeed, when the College established its relationship with NER and agreed to provide ongoing support, it was understood that the presence of the magazine at Middlebury would help confirm Middlebury’s national reputation in the area of contemporary writing and literature. As is demonstrated by the awards regularly conferred on the work we publish and the many expressions of support (including numerous new subscriptions and financial contributions) that we’ve received in recent months, over the 31 years of its existence NER has come to be one of the most highly regarded literary magazines in the country. In light of this prestigious history, and with the assistance of many people at the College and beyond who are joining in our effort, we are confident that we can succeed in realizing our goal, which is to sustain publication and keep faith with those who, in taking the initiative and providing an endowment, were determined to secure the future of the New England Review at Middlebury.

Stephen Donadio
Middlebury, Vermont

Outpouring for Hugh

I write this letter for two reasons. First, to compliment and congratulate the staff of Middlebury Magazine on the summer 2009 edition—it is superb, full of rich content, with an appealing layout. Second, I’d like to echo Matt Jennings’s editorial comments about Hugh

Marlow (“Middlebury Unplugged”). Like the editor and the legions of alums that Hugh has touched through the years, we all know how extraordinary has been his reach and how noticeable has been the cumulative impact of his efforts for the benefit of the College. So many of us call Hugh a personal friend and recognize how special has been every lunch, dinner, or meeting with him.

Each of us, as well as Middlebury, is immeasurably richer for having known him, worked with him, and experienced his contributions.

Samuel Gordon ’64
New York, New York

Appreciation

Congratulations to Liza Donnelly and the editorial staff for creating and publishing the delightful cover art for the summer 2009 issue. I like it so much that I have framed it for my wall. Having spent eight summers “on the mountain,” I am tickled by the imaginative rendition of the Bread Loaf experience. It is now 20 years since I was graduated the second time from Bread Loaf. I continue to appreciate the excellence of teaching and good times even as I have moved on.

John Lintner,
MA English ’80, MLitt ’89
Kent, Connecticut

Seeing the Real Brazil

I appreciate Angela Evancie’s sweet description of a moment in Brazil (“Street Sense,” spring 2009), but I am very upset that we always seem to find ourselves painting pictures of Brazil as seen through a lens of Rio and street crime, with a touch of drugs. It even says in the title she is trying to dig under the “exported image,” but instead she seems to fall back into the common trap.

I will admit that while I was a tourist at first and may have even suffered the same preconceptions prior, but after living there for five years (in the ’90s) I became closer to a native. I was lucky to live in the south and have a sales job that took me all over the country (though there is still much I have yet to see).

And this, combined with becoming fluent in Portuguese, allowed me to go behind the scenes and get to know what Brazil represents in reality.

Brazil is huge and diverse, like America, with that same entrepreneurial zeal and only a slightly more dysfunctional government. It is not a single city dominated by favelas. It would be like always visualizing America as Los Angeles, one damn tough Los Angeles.

Beyond Rio, past the favelas and historic streets of this coastal city, is a country that does more than just get drunk and celebrate Carnaval. There are many unique individuals, all striving to make life better in a country that offers incredible opportunity, from the rainforests in the north, across the arid plains and jutting hills in the coastal serras, out beyond the fertile plains of the Midwest to the marshes and the edges of the Andes in the west and back down to the serralhera of the south, with its river valleys cascading down to the beaches below.

Mark Gross ’91
Newton, Massachusetts

Accomplishments Beyond Measure

The theme of the letter from Emily Donnan ’05 (“Advice for Grads”) and the perhaps unconscious theme of President Liebowitz’s Baccalaureate address (“The Opportunity of a Lifetime”), both in the summer 2009 issue, concern me greatly. Both seem to say that college, and by extension life, are about achievement, success, and accomplishment. I have only rarely communicated with the College and returned for only one reunion. I think that is due in part to my response to this half-spoken attitude, which I disagree with. Middlebury

College, and life, are much more.

In his address, President Liebowitz gives nearly the first third of his remarks over to the awards, achievements, and scholarships won by members of the graduating class. In her letter, Ms.Donnan writes of the sense of unfulfillment, emptiness, and disappointment in life after Middlebury, in that it is not filled with achievements and successes.

Successes along the lines of what President Liebowitz lists and Ms. Donnan laments are praiseworthy and, not so incidentally, highly measurable. Colleges take pride in the highly competitive awards their best graduates receive, and individuals can track their progress through grades, projects completed, and changes they have created in the larger world. However, life is much more than that. So is a Middlebury education.

It’s likely my achievements wouldn’t be listed in anyone’s address:

• Marrying for the first time, and hopefully only time, eight days before my 40th birthday.
• Dealing with infertility, as a couple, and adopting two daughters.
• Working through the special education system on behalf of one of these daughters and getting her placed in an appropriate therapeutic residential school paid for by the school system.
• Moving my mother from an assisted living center in Vermont to a nursing home a mile from our house so she could get the care she needed.
• Successfully changing careers, after 22 years, from middle school education to environmental conservation.
• Building an organization and increasing its budget eightfold.
• Doing a job hunt, at present, in the middle of the recession, since I was recently let go from that organization.
• Navigating life with a lifelong stutter.
  

Most of these accomplishments are not measurable. Results are but landmarks, indicators of something far more important. An emphasis on achievement reminds me of a boy I worked with while middle school director. If this boy did not excel he often would lash out in anger. It took a lot of work for us to show him and his parents how this attitude was so destructive—of his sense of self, his friendships, and his growth.

I would hope that Middlebury can pride itself on some of the things I gained there as a student: expressive writing skills, a broadened sense of the world, along with the interest and ability to continue broadening it, a love of the life of the mind, seeds of confidence that I know always need nurturing, and much more. For me, my Middlebury education is an important part of my life of growth and learning. I hope it is for others as well.

Christopher Duncan ’73
Poughkeepsie, New York

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Letters Policy

Letters addressing topics discussed in the magazine are given priority, though they may be edited for brevity or clarity. On any given subject we will print letters that address that subject, and then in the next issue, letters that respond to the first. After that, we will move on to new subjects. Send letters to: