Binyavanga Wainaina from July issue of Vanity Fair
Binyavanga Wainaina, Union’s writer-in-residence, is featured in Vanity Fair’s special issue devoted to Africa, out today.
Wainaina’s piece, “Generation Kenya,” is a deeply personal tale about growing up on the world’s second-largest continent and the media’s insistence on treating Africa’s 53 countries as a “vast, hopeless mass.”
Bono, of the music group U2, served as guest editor for the issue, which has 20 different covers featuring prominent people like Muhammad Ali, Desmond Tutu, Maya Angelou, George W. Bush and Madonna.
Vanity Fair has a circulation of 1.2 million.
This is the second national magazine to feature Wainaina’s writing this spring; he also wrote an essay for the current issue of Harper’s.
In May, Wainaina was a finalist for a National Magazine Award, the magazine industry’s highest honor. Wainaina, 36, was nominated in the Fiction category, which honors the quality of a publication’s literary selections. Wainaina’s piece, “Ships in High Transit,” was selected as part of the entry for The Virginia Quarterly Review. His story had already won the literary journal’s top short fiction prize for 2006.
July issue of Vanity Fair
The Kenyan-born Wainaina is in the second year of a three-year term as visiting writer.
In 2002, he won the prestigious Caine Prize for African Writing for his short story, “Discovering Home,” and The Independent, a newspaper in the United Kingdom, recently named him one of the 50 best artists in Africa.
Last January, Wainaina’s satirical piece for Granta, “How to Write about Africa,” became one of the literary magazine’s most widely reprinted stories. It included advice on the collection of stereotypes and clichés authors could fall back on when writing about his homeland.
Wainaina is teaching three classes at Union this term, including Modern African Literature.
Warren D. Bagatelle ’60, a well-known investment banker, ardent supporter of Union College for more than three decades and founding member of Union’s Eliphalet Nott Society, died May 31. He was 69.
Warren Bagatelle '60
Bagatelle, a CPA, was a partner at Loeb Partners Corporation and served on many corporate and not-for-profit boards. Before joining Loeb, he ran the NYSE member firm of Rosenkrantz Ehrenkrantz Lyon & Ross. Prior to his Wall Street career, he ran several publicly traded and privately held companies.
He earned an MBA in accounting from Rutgers University in 1961 and began his career at Arthur Andersen & Co.
“Warren was a very social, active, successful, fair and honest man, with a lot of integrity,” said Charles Roden ’60. “He and I were frat brothers and classmates, and we’ve had an investment partnership together, HSB (named for his beloved wife, Hedy Bagatelle), for at least 25 years. In business, he was a tiger. He was also very helpful to Union graduates, hiring many students over the years. Warren was passionate about Union.”
As an undergraduate, Bagatelle was a member of Phi Sigma Delta and an accomplished athlete involved in football, wrestling and lacrosse.
“Warren was at Union when I played for the junior varsity lacrosse team,” remembered Stephen Zuckerman ’62. “Warren sagaciously advised me that when chasing a loose ball, first go after the opposing player, and once he was out of the way, then go after the ball. When we would meet in later years, he still had the same attitude toward me and others; that he was your big brother here to help you.”
As an alumnus, Bagatelle was chairman and member of the Graduate Management Institute Advisory Council, an Admissions representative and a Friend of Union Athletics. He helped launch ENS more than a decade ago to foster entrepreneurship through the Union community.
A native of Mt. Vernon, N.Y., Bagatelle lived with his wife of more than 44 years, Hedy (Schwartz), in Wayne and then South Orange, N.J. He also is survived by a son, David; daughters Tracy Bagatelle-Black ’89, who earned a B.A. in Political Science and Philosophy, and Adrien ’92, who holds a B.A. in Psychology; and four grandchildren. A funeral service was held Sunday in New Jersey.
Donations to the Warren D. Bagatelle Scholarship Fund may be sent to the Union Graduate College, Lamont House, 807 Union Street, Schenectady, NY 12308.
Erin Davies, 29-year-old Sage Graduate student who was the victim of a hate crime on April 18, 2007, will speak about anti-gay harrassment to promote awareness of homophobia. Presented by SPECTRUM.
SPECTRUM, Union’s Gay-Straight Alliance, presents a talk about hate crimes by 29-year-old Erin Davies on Thursday, June 7 at 5 p.m. in the Reamer Campus Center Auditorium.
Davies, a graduate student at Sage, had her 2002 Volkswagen Beetle spray-painted with the words “fAg” and “u r gay” in April. The crime occurred on the 11th annual “National Day of Silence” when college students nationwide demonstrated against anti-gay harassment.
Davies, who has been out about her sexuality for a dozen years, decided to use the vandalism as way to promote awareness of homophobia. She created two Web sites and visits high schools, colleges and gay activist rallies nationwide. Armed with special T-shirts and stickers, she plans to drive her Bug cross-country until 1 million stickers have been purchased for display on cars.
“We felt this was a good opportunity for a speaker to address an important, relevant issue on campus,” said Spectrum President John Francis '09. “People don’t seem to realize that hate crimes aren’t isolated events happening just here at Union. They impact people everywhere on multiple levels.”
Three alumni climb Africa’s 19,340-foot Mount Kilimanjaro
Short video clips from their ascent up Mount Kilimanjaro can be found below. Also below is a link to an online album of photos from the group's trip in Kenya and Tanzania. Videos and photos by Andrew Stone '02 and Remi Drozd '02.
AT A BAR IN ARUSHA, TANZANIA the night before Remi Drozd ’02 was set to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, a trail guide told him two hikers died the day before in a blizzard near the summit. Drozd and fellow climbers, Andrew Stone ’02 and David “D.J.” Hewey ’05, both former presidents of Union’s Outing Club, were shaken by the story but remained undeterred.
Kilimanjaro: See spring 2007 magazine.
“We hear this story and say, ‘This is pretty serious stuff. We’ve got to be careful and make good decisions up there,’” Stone recalled.
The threesome, joined by friends Brian Kulig and Cindy Keller, had by then completed two safaris, visited Amboseli National Park in Kenya, and Tanzania’s Lake Manyara National Park and Ngorongoro Crater during what was a three-week trip to Africa last December and January. The three alumni credited studying abroad and Outing Club adventures at Union College as the springboard behind their trip and six-day climb up Africa’s highest peak.
“Running the Outing Club shaped who I am today. I was able to be creative and invent new trips. I learned that if you let people be creative and run individual trips, the club ends up running itself,” Stone wrote in an e-mail message.
In 2000 Drozd completed a summer term abroad in London, Holland and Hungary studying national health systems with Professor Robert Baker, who specializes in bioethics. That’s where Drozd said he caught “the traveling bug.” In fall 2003, Hewey studied at Queensland University in Brisbane, Australia. The program is jointly run by Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Union. Stone completed a mini-term in France in 2001.
Kilimanjaro: See spring 2007 magazine.
Mount Kilimanjaro, nicknamed ‘Kili,’ is located south of the Tanzania-Kenya border near the equator and close to the continent’s eastern coast. The group flew by plane From Boston to Amsterdam to Nairobi, Kenya and traveled by bus and taxi cab while in Africa. During the trip through Africa, they slept in hotels and tents. As Stone did while planning hiking trips for the Outing Club, he read extensively and outlined the group’s adventurous vacation, which cost each traveler about $5,000. That’s a fair price considering the range of activities and length of the trip. The guided hike up Kilimanjaro cost about $850.
As Stone did while planning hiking trips for the Outing Club, he read extensively and outlined the group’s adventurous vacation, which cost each traveler about $5,000. That’s a fair price considering the range of activities and length of the trip. The guided hike up Kilimanjaro cost about $850.
Stone, 27, is an electrical engineer at Draper Labs in Cambridge, Mass. Drozd, 26, is a medical student at the University of New England’s College of Osteopathic Medicine near Portland, Maine. Hewey is a 23-year-old former manufacturing engineer who lives in Portland. The three lived together in a house off Nott Street dubbed the “Union College Outdoors Club” during the 2001-02 academic year. That school year they summited the 5,300-footMount Marcy in the Adirondack Park.
And more recently the three nearly summited the 14,260-foot Longs Peak in the Rocky Mountains. That climb was good training but did not cause the acute high-altitude sickness the three encountered on the last leg up Kilimanjaro. The mountain’s gently sloping trail is easy for experienced and fit climbers, but problems lie in the thin air.
“A lot of us wanted to get off the mountain. You’d take three steps forward and you’d have to catch your breath. The last day of the climb was incredibly difficult,” Stone said.
About two-thirds of those who climb higher than 8,000 to 10,000 feet suffer from mountain sickness, also called high-altitude sickness, caused by a lack of oxygen. Symptoms of common mountain sickness include headache, poor appetite, nausea and dizziness. Though rare, some climbers who ascend too quickly or sleep at high altitudes suffer from life-threatening lung problems or brain tissue swelling. Lungs can fill with fluid and hinder breathing. Brain tissue swelling can cause confusion, loss of coordination and changes in behavior. The best treatment for both is quick descent. The rule on Kilimanjaro is “climb high, camp low,” Stone said.
The group stayed in rented nylon tents laid out near four huts along the less-traveled Machame route. They wore their own cold-weather clothing that had been kept in the large backpacks each took to Africa. The guides and porters cooked eggs, sausage and bad-tasting porridge for breakfast. They also made a packed lunch and cooked chicken dinners.
Kilimanjaro: See spring 2007 magazine.
Shortly after midnight on the fifth day of the trip, the group set out from summit camp at 15,000 feet. The blizzard conditions of the prior week had passed and temperatures were hovering around zero. They reached the mountain’s crater rim by 6 a.m., where Drozd succumbed to the effects of high-altitude sickness. Ever the doctor, he told himself that “acute changes in pressure had caused his brain tissue to swell and triggered a vomiting spell.”
“He got to the crater rim—and Remi’s in good shape—and he lies down. He vomited to the left, he vomited to the right and spun around and vomited again. He pulled himself up and hiked the rest of the way to the top,” Stone said.
Before dawn, light from the village of Moshi located thousands of feet below was visible. As the sun rose, the group walked toward the summit on a snow packed trail like zombies in a B movie. Drozd pulled out a digital camera and filmed a 360-degree view.
The friends celebrated briefly at the summit before descending. They slid like children on a snow hill down about 3,500 feet and hiked a bit lower before their final night of camping. They walked off the mountain the next day and relaxed for the next week while staying at a beachside bungalow on the resort island of Zanzibar.
When Hewey returned to New England, his hometown newspaper, The Eagle Tribune, featured him in a front page story. He told the Haverhill, Mass. paper: “I went on a backpacking trip during my freshman year [at Union College], and it was instantly addictive. It was an incredible and spiritual experience. Some people run in marathons; I hike mountains.”
Stone says the threesome have targeted Alaska’s 20,320-foot Mount McKinley in Denali National Park for their next major climb.
Ralph Alpher, a distinguished research professor of physics and one of the pioneering architects of the Big Bang model for the origin of the universe, has been awarded the National Medal of Science.
Alpher is among eight people chosen for the honor, which was announced by President Bush last week.
Ralph Alpher
The National Medal of Science honors individuals for pioneering scientific research in a range of fields, including physical, biological, mathematical, social, behavioral and engineering sciences. The National Science Foundation administers the award, the highest honor for science.
Alpher taught at Union from 1986 to 2004 and was administrator of the Dudley Observatory. He also spent more than 30 years at the General Electric Research and Development Center in Niskayuna.
In 1948, as a young doctoral student, he wrote the first mathematical model for the creation of the universe and predicted the discovery of cosmic background radiation that proves the Big Bang theory.
Hundreds of people showed up at George Washington University for his dissertation defense, but the work of Alpher and his colleagues went largely unrecognized. In 1965, two radio astronomers in New Jersey who were tuning their equipment stumbled on proof of Alpher’s background radiation and were awarded the Nobel Prize.
In 2004, when a student at Emory University doing research for Background, her one-act play about Alpher’s life, asked if he would have done anything differently, Alpher replied, “I would have worked harder to get the credit I deserved.”
Philip G. Kosky, a colleague of Alpher’s at both GE and Union, said he was thrilled his good friend was honored with the National Medal of Science.
“He has earned every bit of it,” said Kosky, the distinguished GE Research professor of mechanical engineering. “This is yet more recognition after the miscarriage of scientific justice. His work is the window on the cosmos and to not win the Nobel is truly one of the great black marks on the Nobel committee.”
Kosky used to speak weekly with the 86-year-old Alpher, who resides near his son in Austin, Texas. But Alpher's health has deteriorated in recent months, making it unlikely he will be able to attend a ceremony at the White House later this summer to receive his medal.
