Newsmakers

QUOTE/UNQUOTE "Rob Portman was better at being Lieberman than Lieberman." —REPUBLICAN VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE DICK CHENEY

U.S. attorney for New Mexico Norman Bay '82 has logged a lot of air time on GoodMorning America, The News Hour with JimLehrer, CSPAN and other news forums as spokesman for the Justice Departments case against Wen Ho Lee, the physicist accused of stealing nuclear secrets from Los Alamos National Laboratory. Bay got a surprise after a Nightline remote interview in September when the voice grilling him said, "You know, Norman, you and I went to the same college." That voice belonged to Emmy Award-winning correspondent John Donvan '77. But Donvan hadn't let the Dartmouth connection soften the interview. He pressed Bay on a concern that has dogged the departments handling of the case: that the 59 charges against Lee were based partly on his ethnicity. Bay, a career federal prosecutor and a Chinese- American himself, insisted that Lee was arrested for illegal activities, not his ethnicity. "What he did was to compile a personal library of highly sensitive nuclear secrets," Bay told Donvan. "This information represented a complete design portfolio for nuclear weapons." Bay most recently delivered the same message before the Senate Intelligence Committee with U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh. When a plea-bargain agreement released Lee in September, Bay took on another role in the case: participating in Lees debriefing ....A different sort of confrontation took place far from the cameras a few weeks later. Down a wooden sidewalk and behind a pressed-tin facade, the Jackson Hole Playhouse—with an adjoining saloon that has stuffed elk heads on the walls and leather saddles for bar stools— looks like the kind of Wyoming hangout John Ford might have chosen for filming a gunslingers' brawl. It was there that vice- presidential candidate Dick Cheney faced off against Ohio congressman Rob Portman '78, who played Cheneys Democratic rival Senator Joseph Lieberman in a dry run for the veep debate October 5. "When we walked in," recalls Portman, "they were playing the theme song from Bonanza." After 90 minutes running through a raft of issues, Cheney "cleaned my clock," says Portman....Gunslingers beware: Matt Cirulnick '98 and Miramax are poised to blow away the box office with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall 2, a follow- up to the 1990 blockbuster space thriller. Cirulnick finished penning the script last summer and is now waiting for filming to begin for the movie, due out sometime in 2001. As he hammered out his draft in late 1999, Cirulnick was taking calls twice a week from Ah-nuld—who was calling with script suggestions, of course. Since then Cirulnick has written Harlem Project, about the advent of crack and rap in the '80s, for Dimension Films and tackled a Wes Craven project about the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe. Aside from talks with Arnold, Cirulnick seemed most giddy about his latest television deal with Miramax. His pitch: a series based on Scream meeting Seven on a college campus, with aspects of 21 Jump Street and Miami Vice thrown in. Big screen, small screen, watch for Cirulnicks name in the credits, especially when Schwarzenegger roars back to Mars in TR2... .Those trying to make Earth more homey can now turn to The Fledgling, a mail-order venture by Alex Buck '98. It's full of must-haves for undergraduates and those of us pining for the dorm days. "I remember what a pain it was freshman year finding a ride to West Lebanon to buy stuff for my room," he says. "This is for all those freshmen who still need to buy desk lamps, coffee makers and bed sheets, and have no otherway of getting them." Last year Buck developed a Web site (www. thefledgling.com), where he offers everything from appliances to advice on choosing a major and dealing with a new roommate. In November The Fledgling merged with the CollegeBound Network, which offers information and products to college- bound students. The Fledglings top sellers to the first-year set: "Laundry bags with washing instructions printed on the outside and 'banshee' alarm clocks, which were designed for the hearing impaired but have found a large following among college students," says Buck....For those with more discerning eardrums, there's the sound of Jim Foster '86. From rock to folk, he can be found across the dial. Foster first hit the airwaves in 1996 with the Boston-based alternative rock band Vision Thing. His compositions for the band's CD of the same name earned him four consecutive annual Songwriters Awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and are heard on MTV and radio stations around the world. For pop with an edge, check out his recent project, Bound for Venus, which released its debut CD, PublicityStunt, last April. If you like contemporary folk, turn to the just- released CD Illustrious Day by the Providence, Rhode Island- based band of the same name, on which Foster plays guitar. Between his recording-studio bookings he performed as featured vocalist in the Boston Rock Operas theater debut of Preservation, written by Ray Davies of the British band The Kinks. To hear Foster sing "Shepherds of the Nation" a performance that earned him a "Good show, mate" from Davies—point your browser to the Preservation site at www.rockopera.com....Linda and Les Davis '41 were honored for their time on the trail last spring. They were inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City, receiving the coveted bronze Wrangler sculpture for their lifelong devotion to ranching. After graduating from Dartmouth, Davis moved to the CS Ranch in Cimarron, New Mexico, to work with his uncle. The fourth-generation rancher has been in the saddle ever since. Along with his wife and six children who are all involved in what has become the family business—Les has seen the 200,000-acre ranch grow and prosper. As president and general manager he oversees 2,300 Hereford cows and 25 quarter horse and thoroughbred brood mares....ln an unusual class project, Will Sogg '56 and Flint Ranney '56 have corrailed a whole community. They led the class of's 6in adopting the town of Fifty- Six, Arkansas. "The concept is that by buying the banner on the town's Web page (www.pe.net/~rksnow/arcountyfifty-six. htm), and by naming Fifty-Six the class's adopted city, we establish a bond with the city," says Sogg, who first heard of the tiny town (156 residents, 2 square miles) when it showed up during a television weather forecast with readings from around the country. "It has been fun; the people in the town are thrilled," says Sogg. Last year, on New Year's Eve, the Fifty-Six post office sent Sogg the town's last postmark of the millennium, and 10 days later the town council accepted the adoption by the class. "Cities and states adopt flowers and mottos and animals," says Sogg. "We adopted a city."...A Big Green presence isn't always welcome, though. Some of the working-class residents and small- business owners of San Francisco's largely Hispanic Mission district are protesting what they see as the gentrification of their community—and the target is Andrew Beebe '93 and his Bigstep.com. Ten years ago he stood up for the oppressed by joining an antiapartheid sit-in at Dartmouth's administration building. Last fall protestors occupied the offices of his burgeoning company, which recently moved into five floors of office space in the Mission district's 1960s-era Bay View bank building, inadvertently displacing some of the tenants.The Bay View sit-in was part of an Internet backlash that placed two initiatives on the November ballot to limit the high-tech industry's growth in the city. Voters supported one of the measures, to limit office growth in the Mission district and nearby areas and make it difficult for landlords to evict nonprofit organizations. "It's been a bit of an 'aha!' to realize that we all have responsibility, no matter what our size," Beebe, a five-year Mission resident, told The Wall Street journal in October. His company has set aside $100,000 to finance community projects and has cleared space on one floor for nonprofit groups.

John Donvan '77, left, interviews Norman Bay '82.

Rob Portman '78, right, faces off against Dick Cheney.

Hall of Fame Cowboy Les Davis '41 rides Bootlegger during a cattle drive.

"I like the challenge of trying to take a time and place that is special and express, it," says Brian Walsh '65, who in 1992 began devoting half his time to painting watercolors (he also continues as executive vice president of an ink-jet product manufacture) based in Hanover). Snowbird I (previous page) captures a moment Walsh saw while Skiing in Snowhiid. Utah, last February. He was struck by the quality of the overcast skies that turned evert: bright ski parkas to shadow.

QUOTE/UNQUOTE In. a recent alumnae survey of the College's 1,300 female science majors, 80 percent reported that their current job was in the sciences. —DARTMOUTH WOMEN IN SCIENCE PROJECT

Contributors: Davida Dinerman '86,Michael Glenzer '01, Heather Killebrew '89,Liam Kuhn '02, Lily MacLean '01, RandyStebbins '01, Simone Swink '98, KevinWhitcher '99 and Jen Whitcomb '00