“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 ... ]

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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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Steve Hauschka has had quite the ride over the last two years. He started his journey as a three-sport varsity athlete at Division-III Middlebury College in Vermont, and he now stands in an NFL locker room, preparing for whatever job might be tossed his way.

At Middlebury, Hauschka played football, soccer and lacrosse, but he really made his mark as the Panthers’ place kicker. He spent three seasons kicking for Middlebury, and in that time, broke the school’s single-season and career field goal records.

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This coming February 17, all television broadcasts in the U.S. will switch to digital. Vermonters who currently receive over-the-air signals with a pair of rabbit ears will no longer receive a signal. But chances are, most people already know of the impending change. The government’s outreach effort has been huge, with public service announcements made during popular programs, newspaper ads, and coupons for converter boxes.

Jason Mittell, professor of American Studies and Film & Media Culture at Middlebury, speaks with VPR’s Jane Lindholm about what’s behind this massive outreach effort, and what it says about our culture’s attachment to the tube.

[ Read more and hear the interview ... ]

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.

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[ Read all about it here ... ]

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.

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.

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

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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