1983

Dear Diary—oops, I mean, hello again, fellow classmates. As you might recall, last month I promised you an update on Kevin Connolly. Fortunately, his latest CD (his fourth), LittleTown, arrived in the mail just in time for me to listen to it and consult my jazz singer younger sister and record producer dad (you didn't know I had such groovy roots, did you?), both of whom happened to be in town. Most of the songs have to do with growing up in a.. .little town. We all loved it, and wish Kevin the best of luck in his search for new management and wider distribution. Kevin, wife Elizabeth, a corporate chef, and bulldog Lucille recently relocated to Arlington, Mass., which, according to Kevin, "is the cliche move from Cambridge," where they'd been living. Is there any portent in this move to a more family-oriented locale? Only future columns will tell. (If Dickens and Trollope can tell their tales serially, why not Michel?)

When Dan Zelikow got wind of Kevin's new CD, his voice grew hoarse, his eyes misty (okay, I'm exaggerating; we spoke over the phone). "Ah, how well I remember," said Dan—or something to that effect "busking for Kevin in the Paris subways. He'd play, I'd throw a five franc piece in the hat to encourage others preferably cute French girls."

Today, Dan is still helping out the needy in money matters, just on a bigger scale. He works in the Treasury Department, as deputy assistant secretary for Asia, the Americas, and Africa. TimGeithner, he adds, works right across the hall from him. He's deputy assistant secretary for international monetary affairs. "I do the poor countries, he does the rich ones," Dan explains. Tim, by the way, is married to the former Carole Sonnenfeld.

Dan remains single, though we're sure we don't know why he hasn't been snapped up. Perhaps he doesn't stay in one place long enough. After college he went to Oxford for his dissertation (George Stephanopoulos was a contemporary there), which he finished after some research in Nigeria. Then he did the New York, Goldman Sachs thing when his research grants ran out, and from there to Washington, D.C., although one assignment had him living parttime in Albania, advising the minister of finance.

Both Dan and Maria Olson (more on her next) inform me that Peter Kilmarx has recently moved his family (pregnant wife, Melanie, and their first child) to Thailand, where Peter, an epidemiologist with the CDC, will be studying AIDS in Thai prostitutes. Peter has also done AIDS research in Africa.

Maria, herself—although, really, she prefers "Marika," a Russian diminutive (she's half-Russian, in case you didn't know that either, and it turns out she's been called Marika all her life except at Dartmouth. "I guess I was trying to sound more grown-up there," she explains). As I was saying, Marika herself is a producer at CNN, where she's worked the past seven years. She recently returned from a mini-sabbatical, which she spent in Kazan, capital of Tatarstan. She went to teach objective journalism (ha ha), which it turned out is still a very foreign concept in Russia. "It was the best time of my life," Marika says wistfully, and well she might. We hear she left a handsome and surely broken-hearted Tatar behind. Meanwhile, she was just offered a three-year contract with CNN, so she'll be there a while longer, working on "CNN Presents," at 9 p.m. Eastern time. "My first assignment back was the seven-part home video version of the O.J. trial," she relates. "I thought the only thing worse than putting it together would be if anyone actually bought it."

Coming to you soon: The Michelle Ott update.

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