November 2008

In Ethiopia, there is one doctor for every 40,000 people and never enough medicine. In a nation with a per capita income of $220, modern treatment is reserved largely for the rich. But at Mother Teresa’s Mission, Rick Hodes, MD, devotes himself to healing the poor.

“I like helping people nobody else is interested in,” says Hodes, 55, the senior attending physician at the mission, in Addis Ababa. A native of Long Island [and a member of the Middlebury Class of 1975] who trained at Johns Hopkins University, he sees 20 adults and children a day at no cost to them. Many travel hundreds of miles from remote villages, sometimes in the backs of trucks, to his one-room clinic, where he stops at nothing to get them what they need.

[ Read more and see a video slideshow ... ]

The Middlebury College women’s cross country team won its fifth NCAA championship with a convincing victory at the race held in Hanover, Indiana. The Panthers previously won titles in ‘00, ‘01, ‘03 and ‘06, and their win this year is the 29th national title for Middlebury College since ‘95. Among those are eight titles for men’s hockey, and five each for women’s lacrosse, women’s hockey and now women’s cross country. 

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The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) have named Middlebury College Professor of Environmental Studies and English and American Literatures John Elder the 2008 Vermont Professor of the Year.

Elder specializes in American nature writing and pastoral literature, as well as Basho and the Haiku Tradition, contemporary poetry and environmental studies. He has received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship and Guggenheim Fellowship. He received his bachelor’s degree from Pomona College and his doctorate from Yale University.

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CORNWALL — In 28 years leading the Middlebury College football program, retired Panther head coach Mickey Heinecken’s teams won 126 games.

But none of those victories may have meant as much to the 69-year-old Cornwall resident as did Democratic President-elect Barack Obama’s surge to victory on Election Day. 

Heinecken spent a month living in his camper in Berlin, N.H., as a volunteer for the Obama campaign, knocking on doors and seeking votes on Nov. 4.

[ Read more ... ]

Thanks to the student-administered blog, Midd Blog, we can read about reaction around the world to Tuesday’s presidential election. The Midd Blog staff has collected reports from Middlebury students studying abroad, in Egypt, China, India, Italy and France.

[ Read all about it here ... ]

Congressman Frank Pallone Jr. ‘73 [ http://www.house.gov/pallone/ ] wins 11th term: ”The senior Democrat in New Jersey’s Congressional delegation, Rep. Frank Pallone, has won an 11th term in the House, defeating Republican Robert E. McLeod, a retired municipal court judge. With all the votes counted in New Jersey’s 6th District, Pallone had 66 percent and McLeod had 31 percent.” [ Read more ... ]

Congressman William Delahunt ‘63 [ http://www.house.gov/delahunt/ ] was unopposed in his bid to represent the 10th Congressional District in Massachusetts. The Democrat will begin his seventh term in 2009.

Jim Douglas ‘72 [ http://governor.vermont.gov/ ], a Republican, was elected to his fourth term as governor of Vermont, easily winning a three-way race against Independent Anthony Pollina and Democrat Gaye Symington. Symington, a former speaker of the Vermont House, is a 1976 graduate of Williams College. [ Read more ... ]

If you’re aware of other Middlebury alums who competed for federal or statewide office, please use the comments section to let us know.

Two Vermont teens were nationally recognized for their work as environmental leaders [on October 21] in San Francisco, Calif., where they each received a Brower Youth Award.

Selected from 122 applicants from across the country, 18-year-old Phebe Meyers, of Woodstock and 17-year-old Jessie-Ruth Corkins of Bristol make up one-third of the award winners.

Meyers, a sophomore majoring in environmental studies at Middlebury College, received the award for her work to purchase, conserve and reforest land critical to indigenous birds and neotropical migrant species in Costa Rica.

Her work began well before going to college. In 1998, Meyers and her twin sister, Nika, co-founded the nonprofit organization Change the World Kids, made up of middle and high school students undertaking humanitarian and environmental efforts to make a positive difference in the Upper Valley area and across the globe.

[ Read more ... ]

[ Profile and video at Brower Youth Award site ... ]

Other towns get more attentions says the renown novelist, but this is a place where things get done

By Julia Alvarez, Middlebury College writer in residence
Smithsonian Magazine, November 2008

You’ve heard of towns like ours. The kind of place about which city folks say, “Don’t blink or you’ll miss it!”

You might as well go ahead and blink, because you are going to miss it. There’s no real town center in Weybridge, Vermont, unlike our postcard-pretty neighbor Middlebury. No quaint town green surrounded by shops full of trinkets to clutter up your house and a sweet little gazebo to make you dewy-eyed for the olden days.

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Skier Bode Miller is wearing the bright-green sweatband. Cyclist Adam Craig sports one. Surfers, speed skaters and hockey players have picked up on the trend. And if Andrew Gardner reaches his goal, exactly 350 world-famous athletes will soon be wearing the eye-catching color.

Each wristband bears the number 350, the same as Gardner’s goal. And he wants it all to be done by December 24, 2008, 350 days before the United Nations convention in Copenhagen. The number represents the parts per million (ppm) of carbon emissions that climate scientist Dr. James Hansen says we have to return to in order to sustain life on Earth as we know it. It’s also the name of the umbrella campaign that Gardner’s work falls under—a worldwide network of people and climate change organizations committed to following Hansen’s advice.

“The culture of athleticism is imitation and idolizing, and we’re hoping to take that network of people and turn them into folks who are spreading the word about 350,” Gardner says.

Gardner, a nordic skier and environmentalist [and the nordic ski coach at Middlebury College], is also friends with [Middlebury scholar in residence] Bill McKibben, author of the first book on global warming and founder of the larger 350 campaign. McKibben and a crew of recent graduates from Middlebury College in Vermont launched www.350.org earlier this year to make the importance of the number stick. Although there are a few offices scattered throughout the country, the largest in San Francisco with a staff of four, the campaign depends on the ground efforts of people as far-flung as India, Poland, the Maldives and Mongolia.

[ Read more ... ]