Sheepish

18 Jul

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Susan (Kennedy) Elkin (’70 applied art) always loved animals and always loved art. Her mix of classes in animal science, pottery, and other art subjects at Iowa State prepared her for a life on Cobun Creek Farm in Morgantown, W.V., where she has 38 acres of land, a pottery studio, and a flock of Coopworth sheep. She also has a smattering of geese, chickens, peacocks, and angora goats; a house full of purebred Maine Coon cats; an alpaca; and a couple of Great Pyrenees dogs to guard the sheep.

Though she came to Iowa State to study veterinary medicine, Susan fell in love with creating pottery the first time she took the class, and she says her work at the Octagon Center for the Arts in Ames set her on a path to making pottery for a living. She’s since given up the activity due to a number of health issues, but she stays active on the farm, breeding, raising, and selling animals and their products, including wool and peacock feathers.

“I try to be as creative as I can with the sheep,” she says, pulling out container after container filled with naturally dyed wool and yarn in a rainbow of beautiful colors. She sells her products directly to customers, but also to local shops and at the annual Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.

A sign in Susan’s kitchen proclaims “I’m creative, not neat,” and, indeed, Susan’s home, barn, log cabin, and studio are filled with such an assortment of stuff that you could spend a month just discovering all that’s there.

She says she couldn’t manage the place without her friends. And although she says she “misses Iowa terribly,” she’s content for now to live among her flowers and gardens and her real-life petting zoo.

The last of the east

9 Jul

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Our VISIONS Across America trip to Indiana, Ohio, and West Virginia (the last of the eastern states!) will be remembered for its unique sounds and smells: A jet engine, fresh-baked brownies, a professional football team’s locker room, hot asphalt, wet sheep, and an impromptu living-room banjo concert.

Alumni in these three states are an eclectic bunch. We met folks in big cities, suburbs, and small towns. All had great stories to share.

INDIANA

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We started with a daylong drive to Indianapolis to meet with two alumni in that capital city. The first was Dr. Douglas McKeag (’68 zoology), professor emeritus and former chair of the Department of Family Medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine. He’s also the founding director of the IU Center for Sports Medicine and has been on the sidelines as the team physician for a number of university and professional sports teams. We met Doug at the impressive Lucas Oil Stadium on the south side of downtown Indianapolis; after some wrangling with the facilities folks, Jim was allowed to photograph Doug on the concourse and even in the Indianapolis Colts’ locker room. Pretty cool!

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Later that day – after lunch in a downtown Indianapolis eatery and a quick peek at the excellent Indianapolis Museum of Art – we were treated to a toe-tapping banjo/fiddle concert at the home of Donald Somers (’58 ag journalism), accompanied by his friend, Bill Banker.

06-27-13-IMG_4719In an email to me, Don described himself as a “rabid banjo enthusiast,” and that was pretty obvious once I saw his music room filled with banjos (above) and learned that he had more banjos in the closet and under the bed…a real banjo explosion. Don played in a bluegrass band in Milwaukee, Wis., but he now plays “old-time clawhammer style” every week with friends near Indianapolis. He even treated Jim and me to a banjo rendition of the Iowa State fight song!

OHIO

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Continuing east the next day, we dropped in on Nate Carr (’85 sociology), one of Iowa State’s most outstanding wrestlers of all time. Nate was busy working with a group of young wrestlers at Troy Christian School just north of Dayton at a Carr Wrestling Club summer camp, but he took time out to visit with us. Nate’s a husband (he met his wife, Linda, at Iowa State), father of seven children (oldest son Nate Jr. wrestled for Iowa State and graduated in 2012), coach, minister, Olympic medalist – and just a super nice guy. We got to meet Linda as well as their youngest son, 14-year-old David.

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Our next stop was hands-down the sweetest experience we’ve had on our VISIONS Across America travels. I think I may have gained a few pounds, and I certainly got my sweet tooth satisfied – all thanks to Mark Ballard (’84 family services; MS ’86 professional studies in education). Mark is co-founder and co-CEO of Sugardaddy’s Sumptuous Sweeties, a brownie and blondie boutique bakery in Columbus. These are not your ordinary treats…they are decadent and amazing. Believe me, I tried a lot of different flavors (caramel, peanut butter, and toasted coconut with cashews, to name a few) and I could very easily work my way through the rest of the menu (cherry almond, nutty blonde, campfire s’mores, chai spiced, cinnamon, rich mint, and more) – all hand crafted in small batches and sold fresh the day they’re made. Mark is a master marketer and businessman, and he’s taken Sugardaddy’s way beyond a typical local bakery: His company has received national attention from the Food Network, Ellen DeGeneres, InStyle magazine, and many others. You can visit Sugardaddy’s three locations in Columbus or order on the Web.

WEST VIRGINIA

Morgantown, W.V., is home to the newest member of the Big 12: West Virginia University. We met two alumni in Morgantown and also took a tour of WVU’s Erickson Alumni Center, one of the nicest alumni facilities I’ve seen. (Join us there this fall for a football tailgate!)

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Our first alumni visit was with Michael Clow (’78 naval science). We met him at the Morgantown Municipal Airport, where he is director. It was a hot day – way too hot to be photographing someone on the tarmac, if you ask me. But Michael spent the last decade-plus in Florida, so he was used to the heat, and Jim will do anything to get a great shot. (I preferred sitting in the air-conditioned pilots’ lounge.)

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We woke the next morning to stormy skies and steady rain. This was not a good thing, because our travels took us to Susan Elkin (’70 applied art), owner of Cobun Creek Farm. Susan has 38 lovely acres, a flock of Coopworth sheep, geese, chickens, peacocks, angora goats, a house full of purebred Maine Coon cats, and a couple of Great Pyrenees (the polar bear of dog breeds) to guard the sheep. By the time we left, we were both wet from the rain, muddy from the sheep, and I was covered with cat hair (my own fault, I’ll admit). Susan’s place is like a real-life petting zoo.

UP NEXT

I’ll be writing more about each of these alumni and posting some of their stories in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, the big countdown is really on: 39 states completed and just 11 more to go! Next up is Nebraska, the Cornhusker State (and a super quick drive from Ames!)

Are we there yet?

25 Jun

Jim and I are packing the car for another road trip, this one to Indiana, Ohio, and West Virginia. We leave tomorrow; we’ll meet with alumni in each state and be back in Iowa before the Fourth of July.

I have to say that I’m getting much better at preparing for these trips. Here are a few things on my packing list:

  • Twizzlers (the No. 2 most important thing to have in the car)
  • GPS (the No. 1 most important thing)
  • Atlas with large print
  • A bag for trash – it drives me nuts to have random trash in the car
  • Planning documents for all our upcoming trips, so we can multi-task
  • CDs of road songs, Broadway musicals, and books
  • Ziploc bags, all sizes
  • Sharpies and highlighters
  • Umbrella for rain and sunscreen for sun; I’m guessing we’ll run into both
  • Socks (I failed to bring socks to the Dakotas)
  • A huge thermos of coffee, and a Starbucks gift card for when it runs out

Happy Independence Day!

Bringing the beach to South Dakota

21 Jun

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It all started with a cruise.

Trey (’05 journalism & mass communication) and Becah (’05 chemical engineering)  Fliehs discovered that they loved to travel – especially when the travel took them to the Caribbean islands. After they graduated from Iowa State, they began a tradition of taking cruises to the islands each January.

On the first one, in 2006, they traveled with a group of more than 30 people and determined that they needed a name.

“If you’re going to tote around 32 people on a traveling event, you’ve got to be able to corral everybody somehow,” Becah said. “We were trying to think of fun names, and we came up with Team Cocktail.”

Every year, the “Team Cocktail” group got bigger and bigger.

“Everywhere we went, people wanted to know how they could become a member of Team Cocktail,” Trey said.

A few years ago, the couple was on Barbados, looking at T-shirts and lamenting the quality.

“When we’d get home and wash the shirts, they would shrink up,” Trey said. “So we got the idea to make high quality, fun T-shirts you could wear either on vacation or once you get home.”

Becah and Trey – along with Trey’s sister, Lyndsey Fliehs Higgins (’02 marketing and management) – decided to take Team Cocktail to the masses. With a logo design and trademark, the company launched a website in 2010. Today, Team Cocktail offers Caribbean-based T-shirts, polo shirts, board shorts, and accessories online, in retail shops in 25 states, and on several islands. They also sell merchandise at country music concerts and festivals. The company has recently branched out to offer special cruise packages, excursions, and beach getaways.

The island lifestyle is in direct contrast to Trey and Becah’s day-to-day lives in Groton, S.D. Trey is a third-generation farmer, working alongside his father and grandfather on a 10,000-acre corn and soybean farm in the northeast part of the state. Becah is a technical manager at the POET ethanol plant down the road and is also active on the farm. All the corn grown on the farm is sold to the ethanol plant.

“We represent the next generation of farmers who break the traditional mold of how people view the career,” Becah said.

Though South Dakota has a reputation for being located in “blizzard alley,” Trey and Becah agree that the state is “quiet, calm, and beautiful.” And, at least, it’s not as cold as its northern neighbor.

“We’re the tropical Dakota,” Becah laughs.

The Dakotas

16 Jun

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Thirty-six states are now complete, with just 14 more to go.

Jim and I recently returned from North Dakota and South Dakota – yes, they are two separate states, even though I find myself referring to them as “The Dakotas” more often than not.

We met with Iowa State alumni only on the far eastern side of the states (so close to Minnesota it almost felt like cheating) because, well, that’s where they live. We didn’t get to travel to the wild-west part of either state, which was sort of disappointing. But then again, we didn’t have to compete with family vacationers in their slow-moving recreational vehicles at Badlands National Park, Mount Rushmore, Theodore Roosevelt National Park – or even Wall Drug.

Our first destination was Fargo, N.D. It’s really hard to go to Fargo and NOT think about the hilarious 1996 Coen brothers’ movie of the same name, even though the film was actually set in Minnesota.

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Despite its reputation for brutal winter weather, Fargo is a very nice city with a cool, historic downtown area. It’s also home to North Dakota State University. Jim and I took a quick drive around the campus and had our picture taken in front of the big bison sculpture before getting down to business.

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We met first with John Wheeler (’84 meteorology), well known in the area as a television meteorologist for ABC-affiliate WDAY-TV since 1985. I get the feeling that if you want to know what the day’s weather is going to bring in Fargo, you check with John.

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Equally successful is John’s wife, Emily Williams-Wheeler (’86 interior design), an artist and art instructor who owns Studio e. Emily took us to Fargo’s West Acres Mall, where she just completed painting a brightly colored children’s mural.

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Driving south, we arrived at the home of 2005 grads Trey & Becah Fliehs in Groton, S.D. Becah (chemical engineering) and Trey (journalism & mass communication) are farmers – and also owners of a Caribbean-inspired company called Team Cocktail. Becah is also the technical manager at a nearby POET ethanol plant. (That’s Trey and Becah with their three-legged dog, Trip, short for Tripod.)

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Our last visit during this brief trip to the Dakotas was with Walter Bones (’73 animal science), a farmer and former South Dakota secretary of agriculture. Walt operates (along with two brothers, a brother-in-law, and three nephews) the family farm near Parker that was homesteaded by his great-grandfather in 1879. So there’s a lot of history there.

We’re back in Iowa now, with stories to write, photos to look at, and more trips to plan.

Lost in space

10 Jun

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When Robert Antol was 10 years old, his parents bought him and his brother a cheap cardboard telescope. They viewed the moon, Jupiter, and Mars and thought, “Wow!” Bob was hooked. He soon graduated to a telescope “made of actual glass” and, as an adult, purchased a full-sized telescope with a tripod.

But the telescope was bulky and took time to set up in the yard each night – and it got downright cold during the winter. Bob yearned to have the telescope fixed permanently in an observatory, perhaps in a shed with a roll-off roof, or in a dome above the garage. In the end, Bob and his wife, Barb, went with the deluxe, only-in-your-dreams version: They extended their house, constructing an attached two-story octagonal tower topped with a 16-foot domed observatory.

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To say this is a cool toy is a huge understatement. This observatory is beyond cool. And Bob clearly likes nothing more than showing it off.

When Jim and I visited the observatory in the Antols’ home in Poughquag, N.Y., in early May, Bob cued the theme song to 2001: A Space Odyssey as he opened the metal, rotating roof. He showed us the 14.5-inch telescope mounted on a precision robotic mount. He showed us how, with the push of a few keys on his computer, the telescope automatically points to any object in the night sky.

Sun_2May2013Since it was daytime when we visited, Bob let us view the sun through his solar telescope. The telescope allowed us to see solar “prominences” (or flares) and the surface of the sun.

Had we been there at night, we could have potentially seen the rings of Saturn, the bands of Jupiter, the polar ice caps of Mars, or the intense shadows of the mountains on the stark landscape of the moon. Additionally, the powerful telescope in the Stargate 4173 at Grimaldi Tower (the observatory’s official name) will pull into view far-away galaxies and globular clusters, to which Bob refers to as “Star Trek moments.”

“When I saw the same objects with this telescope that I’d been viewing with my old telescope, I just about fell down,” he said.

Bob received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Iowa State in 1978, and three weeks after graduation he started to work at IBM in the state of New York. Thirty-five years later, he still works in the electronic design automation unit of IBM. Chips designed by his group are used in the Xbox and Wii game systems.

Someday, when he retires, Bob says he and Barb will have the luxury of spending long nights in the observatory, with no alarm clock waking them for work at 5 a.m.

“After a night of observing, I go downstairs with such peace and tranquility,” Bob says. “You just immerse yourself in the stars.”

It’s been eight years since the observatory was completed, and the Antols are still in awe.

“We are still surprised sometimes that we really did this thing.”

A huge need

5 Jun

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The first thing you notice about Bing Howell is his smile. The second thing is how extremely articulate he is. So it’s no surprise that at 32 years old he’s had a crazy-fast career trajectory.

This is a guy on the move. As a kid, he lived in Sacramento, Calif.; Guadalajara, Mexico; and Omaha, Neb., before moving to Rhode Island to finish high school. His parents are from Trinidad and Panama, and Bing said he grew up knowing he wanted to travel.

He came to Iowa State for two reasons: The university was good at Div. I men’s basketball and international business. (“Everything else was secondary,” he says.)

The basketball part didn’t quite pan out.

“[Coach Larry] Eustachy said I could walk on [to the team],” he explains. “I tried out, but I didn’t get past day two.”

The academic part was a lot more successful.

Bing earned a bachelor’s degree in management information systems and international business, with additional study in transportation and logistics.

Following graduation, Bing went to work for the investment banking firm Merrill Lynch in New York.

“It was engaging and exciting for the first two months when there was leadership development training and onboarding,” he said. “It was exciting and engaging for the next two months after that when my project was new. But I have a tendency to learn things really, really quickly, so after the first four months on the job it became redundant. I felt a bit lacking in purpose.

“So then my sister coached me. She said, ‘You need to be doing something you enjoy each day.’”

And then he found his passion: education.

He spent time in New York as an intern with Sponsors for Educational Opportunity, a minority internship placement program that focuses on bringing minorities to Wall Street firms, corporations, investment banks, and law firms.

“Merrill Lynch had an award-winning financial literacy program that taught kids financial principles from kindergarten through high school. I put together a financial literacy program for a couple hundred low-income middle school kids in New York. On kickoff day in the summer of 2004 we had 15 volunteers that were engaging with 200 kids over the course of a four-hour financial literacy day. The kids were all ecstatic that someone was there sharing their time, and they were ecstatic about the material – they’d just never been exposed to it. And so by the end of that four-hour window I was actually more alive professionally in something I was spending less than 10 hours per week on than the 80-90 hours I spent on my job. A couple months after that I stopped doing my job and I’ve been working in education in some capacity ever since.”

Bing moved to New Jersey to work for the state’s Department of Education. He’s worn several different hats, including human resources director for 22 of Camden’s 26 schools and manager of the Office of Portfolio Management.

“Camden is the poorest city in the country,” Bing said. “It’s the second most dangerous city in the country, and it has the absolute 22 worst-performing schools in the state. It’s not just bad – it’s abysmal. It’s a lot of concentration of bad stuff happening in the same place.”

Bing says he chose Camden “largely because there was a huge need.” In 2011 he joined the Broad Residency – a leadership development program that places participants into high-level managerial positions in school districts and departments of education.

“Camden is where I actively chose to spend most of my time while going through the residency program,” he said. “Camden had a concentration of the worst schools – that’s where the need is; that’s the best place to implement new strategies.”

Beautiful music

31 May

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Professional musician Maureen Hurd Hause has had a frantic morning. She’s had to get her two daughters, Elena, 7, and Nora, 2, ready for their day. Then she’s driven from her home in West Orange, N.J., to meet Jim and me at Carnegie Deli in Midtown Manhattan. When she dashes in, she’s out of breath and smiling.

Maureen is always smiling.

The 1994 music grad has one of the sunniest dispositions I’ve ever encountered. After a cup of coffee and a quick chat, we head out onto the street where Jim takes pictures of Maureen playing her clarinet on the corner of 7th Avenue and 57th Street, with New Yorkers, tourists, and taxi drivers all around. With Jim at her feet, Maureen throws back her head and joyfully plays Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. And I feel like I’m in a Woody Allen movie.

Now everyone is smiling.

Maureen grew up in tiny Ida Grove, Iowa. She began taking private clarinet lessons with ISU music professor Joseph Messenger during her freshman year of high school.

“It was 100 miles each way for three years,” Maureen remembers.

At Iowa State, Maureen was a member of the orchestra and wind ensemble and continued to study with Messenger.

“I had wonderful, amazing teachers in the Music Department,” she says.

She followed up her Iowa State degree with three graduate degrees from the Yale University School of Music. Today Maureen teaches clarinet in the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, and she’s also a freelance musician in the New York City area.

The New York Times called one of Maureen’s performances at Carnegie Hall (not coincidentally right across the street from our meeting place at Carnegie Deli) “striking” and “vibrantly played.” She has performed with the American Symphony Orchestra, New York City Opera Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society.

She’s a classical clarinetist but loves Benny Goodman, and she’s recorded a number of CDs, including a solo CD.

“I tried to record things that hadn’t been recorded before,” she said, adding that some of the numbers were composed by her husband, Evan Hause.

As if playing on the streets of New York were not enough, Maureen happily agreed to play for us in Central Park, and, again, we drew a happy crowd.

Let there be light

28 May

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You walk into a dark room and the lights magically come on. You’re sitting at your desk and the room lights dim as the sun streams through your window. You’re away from your home, but the lights turn off and on to suggest that someone’s there.

You have modern lighting control systems to thank.

Ben Hahn (’98 electrical engineering) works every day to make sure that his company’s sophisticated lighting controls are the lowest cost, highest performing systems in the country.

Ben is vice president of Sensor Switch in Wallingford, Conn. A division of Acuity Brands, Sensor Switch manufactures occupancy sensors, time-based controls, and photo sensors for energy savings and occupant convenience.

On a tour of the manufacturing plant on a Friday afternoon in early May, I was struck by the similarity between lighting control sensors and computers. Ben explained that the sensors really are tiny computers. We saw robotic machines and a human work force assembling, labeling, testing, and boxing the products in a precise, streamlined way.

“We’re very efficient here,” Ben said. “With our automated systems, we’re competitive with overseas manufacturing.”

Sensor Switch provides lighting control systems for new construction as well as retrofitting existing buildings.

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Ben started with the company in Minnesota, where he got involved with marketing and product management. He moved to Connecticut in 1999, and he decided to stay.

“I liked the job, and I met a girl,” Ben says. He and his wife, Marci, now have two sons, Simon, 7, and Tyler, 5.

“My kids know I’m a Cyclone fan,” Ben says. “Even out here, we can watch 95 percent of football and men’s basketball games” on Direct TV or online.

Ben took Simon to visit the Iowa State campus last July.

“It’s never too soon,” Ben said with a smile.

New York and beyond

21 May

Jim and I managed to miss the Midwestern snowstorm in early May by traveling to New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York, where we couldn’t have asked for nicer weather: It was warm, sunny, and bursting with spring color.

We also couldn’t have asked for nicer alumni. Everywhere we went, Iowa Staters went out of their way to make us feel at home in the Northeast.

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We flew into the Newark Liberty International Airport and rented a car. Our first two New Jersey alumni meetings were very near Philadelphia, so we stayed in Philly our first two nights and took advantage of all that city has to offer: historic architecture, parks and squares, and great food. We visited the Liberty Bell out of a sense of obligation but really preferred the Mural Arts Program (all over the city) and the creepy coolness of the Eastern State Penitentiary.

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We met our first alum on Day 2: Bing Howell. Bing (’03 MIS & international business) works for the New Jersey Department of Education in Camden, making a difference in one of the most challenging school districts in the country. I’ll tell you more about Bing (and some of the other alumni we met) in the coming weeks.

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Next we met Robi Polikar at Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J. Robi (MS ’95 electrical engr/biomedical engr; PhD ’00) was born in Istanbul and is currently a professor and department chair for the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. After meeting with Robi, I felt really proud to live in Ames – he said such nice things about his experience in Iowa and at Iowa State University.

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We left New Jersey behind us and headed next to the town of Poughquag, N.Y. Never heard of Poughquag? You can find it on the map near Poughkeepsie in the Mid-Hudson River Valley. Poughquag is home to Robert Antol (’78 mathematics), who has a crazy-cool space observatory built onto his home. Bob and his wife, Barb, not only let us play with his telescope but they also fed us New York-style pizza on their back patio. What a great day! (I love this photo Jim took of Bob and me in his observatory with the alien!)

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We set out for the state of Connecticut next, to meet with Ruth Fitzgerald (’71 history, MS ’74 urban & regional planning) in Hartford. Ruth is the founding principal of Fitzgerald & Halliday, a planning and environmental analysis firm that specializes in transportation and community planning projects. That’s Ruth above, working with her IT specialist, Howard Latimer.

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Just down the road in Wallingford, Conn., we met Ben Hahn (’98 electrical engineering), vice president of Sensor Switch. Ben took us on a fascinating tour of his firm, which manufactures occupancy sensors and network lighting control systems that provide energy savings. We probably embarrassed Ben with all the crazy things Jim had him do for photos (sorry, Ben!), but it was a really fun tour.

IMG_6351After our meeting with Ben, we spent the night in New Haven, home of Yale University. Jim and I both love to see other college campuses, so walking on Yale’s Old Campus and the New Haven Green was a real treat. We also ate some of the famous New Haven-style pizza.

The next day, we did what every red-blooded Iowan fears the most: We drove through New York City. Actually, not so much “through” as “around” the city, en route to the Newark airport to drop off our rental car. But still, we did drive in the Bronx and I was pretty nervous that we’d take a wrong turn and end up totally lost and have to pay for an extra day on our car and miss our connection with the car service that was scheduled to pick us up. I was worried for nothing, because we sailed through with only one teensie wrong turn, which the GPS fixed for us very quickly. We actually turned in our rental car almost an hour early.

The car service (which, I cannot stress enough, is such a better option than a taxi) picked us up and delivered us directly to our inn in Brooklyn that we had booked for the next few nights. From then on, we relied on public transportation and the kindness of ISU alumni to get us around the city. Oh, and lots of walking.

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I almost feel like this was “Part II” of this trip, because when we got into Brooklyn, everything changed. And not just because we were without a car. There’s just such a different vibe in the city. Brooklyn was a great (and considerably less expensive) place to stay – and it was easy to jump into the subway and get to Manhattan in less than 20 minutes. We were lucky to be in New York when we were: The trees were all in bloom, the weather was beautiful, and New Yorkers were just grooving on it everywhere we went.

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Our first meeting in New York City was with Rachel (Hollrah) Beardsley (’02 Spanish/political science) and her husband, Peter. The couple lives in lower Manhattan and can tell you lots of stories about surviving the effects of Hurricane Sandy. Rachel and Peter met as students at Brooklyn Law School and both are practicing attorneys. To say they were good sports about the photo shoot is putting it mildly; we had Rachel change clothes three times! She went running for us in Central Park; they took us sailing on Long Island Sound; she posed with the Statue of Liberty – and also with her cat. Most grueling photo shoot ever!

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The next morning, alumnus Trent Preszler  (’98 interdisciplinary studies) picked us up in his Chevy Volt and – after grabbing lattes and egg sandwiches and taking a quick peek at his Brooklyn apartment – took us with him on his 80-mile commute out to the north fork of Long Island. What a fascinating drive – from the city to the countryside to the New England-styled towns and wineries. Trent is CEO of Bedell Cellars winery and vineyards in Cutchogue – located in the prettiest setting you can imagine. Jim photographed Trent out in the vineyards and in the sophisticated tasting room, above.

Bedell Cellars wine had already made quite a name for itself through awards for its wines and its tasting room, but the winery’s most recent claim to fame happened just this year when its 2009 Merlot was chosen to be served at President Obama’s inauguration luncheon. Trent gave us a wonderful tour of not only the winery and vineyard but of the North Fork itself.

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The next morning we met Maureen Hurd Hause (’94 music) in Midtown Manhattan. Maureen is actually a New Jersey alum who teaches clarinet at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, but she often plays as a professional musician at Carnegie Hall, so our idea was to meet her there. The fact that the lower fourth of Carnegie Hall was covered in scaffolding didn’t deter Jim from photographing Maureen on the street corner in front of the building. We drew quite a crowd! Maureen was belting out Gershwin tunes, Jim was lying on the ground, and more than a few people photographed the goings-on with their iPhones.

And then our New York adventure came to an end, but not before having a picnic in Central Park.

Next up: North and South Dakota!

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