1978

Two months without a newsletter and I have more news than I can print. Please don't let that be an excuse to procrastinate sending in news...

Deborah Sontag has been named Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times. She will be the paper's first female bureau chief in Israel. Deborah joined The Times in 1992 and has written about immigration, housing, and the underground economy. She is now learning Hebrew to prepare for her new assignment. Deborah's three children David, Emma, and Adam will be joining her along with her husband, William Orme Jr., executive director of The Committee to Protect Journalists, an internatinal advocacy group.

Rick Spier (a.k.a. Cracker) sent me news of his wedding to Patricia Rovzar last July in Seattle. The wedding and reception were held in the art gallery Patricia owns in Kirkland, Wash., which was also the place they met. As Rick put it, "I was a client of the gallery initially, having just walked in off the street one day to browse, little suspecting that I would find in the owner the masterpiece I just couldn't live without!"

Jeff Weeks is a stay-at-home dad married to a professor at St. Lawrence University. Jeff has a Ph.D. in math from Princeton and has gotten a grant to continue his research. Jeff was recently quoted in Science News (February 21, 1998) in an article on alternative views of the shape of the cosmos. Jeff was also the subject of the culminating tento 15-minute segment of the one-hour PBSTV documentary Shape the World. The segment focused on how Jeffs work in non-Euclidean geometry helps shed light on the possible configuration of the universe. Jeff, alongside his 10-year-old son Adam, used spoken words and computerized color graphics to explain how it could be that an observer moving in a straight line through the space-time continuum might return to their original starting point. The segment conveyed not only Jeffs excitement for the way mathematics helps explain the world, but also his excitement about exploring that world with his son Adam and the way that he has set his life priorities to allow him the time to do this.

Jeff Ward has been named athletic director of Bowdoin College. He was previously the assistant athletic director at Brown University. In his new position he will oversee an NCAA Division III program of 29 intercollegiate varsity and five club teams. In addition he will manage departmental budgets, supervise the College's athletic facilities, and continue to integrate athletics into Bowdoin's educational mission.

Rob Fleming writes: "My wife, Gail, and I and our two children, Kristen 12 and Matthew 13, live in Sherborn, a small suburb west of Boston. We moved here in '93 after a five-year stint in San Diego. We're still trying to get used to New England weather again." (I would like to have that chance.) Rob says he has been in the venture capital industry since 1985, investing in technology and health care. In 1995 he put together a team and started a new venture firm, Prism Venture Partners. "It was quite an adventure, but we were successful, and it has been an incredible amount of fun to be out on our own. I would love to hear from any of my Dartmouth friends via e-mail or otherwise. My e-mail is and Prism's Web site is www.prismventure.com>."

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