Give A Rouse

Gobin Stair '33 has documented the development of the alphabet in a six-by-2 5-foot mural in his hometown library in Kingston, Massachusetts. Stair, with the help of local schoolchildren, spent two and a half years on the project. The mural depicts the history of written Western language. It opens with cave drawings, leads to Egyptian hieroglyphs and an angel dropping a Bible from the sky, and closes with military-like alphabet stencils and a looming skyscraper. The printed word is a subject Stair knows well, having been a former director of Beacon Press in Boston. He gained national recognition in 1971 when the firm published the Pentagon Papers after other major publishers bowed to governmental pressure and refused them. He is now at work on a mural of a more spiritual theme. It's designed to "help people understand who they are and their connection with the world as a whole," he says.

• Mortimer Mishkin '46, given Karl Spencer Lasher Award by the American Philosophical Society for "his pioneering analysis of memory and the perceptual systems of the brain"

• Jonathan Moore '54, author of The UNand Complex Emergencies: Rehabilitationin Third World Transitions

• Bruce Miller '74, whose advertising agency, Suissa Miller, was named Small Ad Agency of the Year" by USA Today

• Jackie Kaiko '78, chosen as one of nine Rockefeller Fellows (a leadership program sponsored by the New York City Chamber of Commerce/NYC Partnership)

• Filmmakers Jonathan Nossiter '84 and Julie Davis '9O, whose movies, Sunday and I Love You, Don't Touch Me, respectively, were screened at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival. Nossiter's film won the Grand Jury Prize.

Muralist Gobin Stair stands with his back to the wall of letters.