1983

I was interested in the effect of 9/11 on New Yorkers two years-plus later, and e-mailed Ellen Shonfeld Bienstock to get her perspective. She says that New York is as great as ever and actually feels normal again. Ellen and her husband are in the midst of renovating a brownstone in the Kips Bay/Murray Hill section of the city, and advise anyone considering such a project to heed the old adage that construction will take twice as long and cost twice as much as the initial estimate. I also sought Ellens thoughts on TheNew York Times Sunday Magazine article a few months ago, concerning educated women who step out of promising career paths to stay home with their children. When her first son was small, Ellen juggled his care with grad school at NYU, where she studied the sociology of revolutions and other means of societal change. With two children, she found she could not be the kind of parent she wanted to be and continue a 50-hour commitment to graduate school. She describes her life, currently centered on her two boys Max (10) and Ben (6), as busy and wonderful, but like many of us would now like to find a career that is both mom-friendly and fulfilling. I would love to get feedback and perspectives on that topic from any of the women in our class, or men for that matter, and if you have found such a job, let us know what it is. If anyone is interested in hearing about mom-friendly and flexible but mindnumbingly boring, I can tell you about my job.

Jim Allen recently passed the 10-year milestone mark in the following categories: (1) same town (Larchmont, New York); same house ("it's modest but it's not broken so I don't need to change it"); same job (executive director of the investment banking division at Morgan Stanley ("it was broken for a while but seems to be coming back to life now"); and same wife ("the lovely Patricia Reeves Allen '84"). Jim has two children, Carina (8) and Jeffrey (4), as well as a grandfather, Art Allen '32, who is still going strong and living in Hanover! Jim, be sure to let us know if you surpass your grandpa's milestone, if any of us are still around to tell. Check the class Web site for photos of Peter Swann's street band, the Doc.commers. Peter is a doc living in Walnut Creek, California, and the other band members, including Jack Oswald '84, are dot.com guys. His son, Conner, functions as barker and hat passer, and the proceeds go to the American Cancer Society. I missed their Christmas gig in Union Square this season, but promise I will make it and put something in the hat next year. Speaking of Christmas, how lucky for me that I ran into Bill Cummings at a children's Christmas Eve service at St. James in San Francisco right before this column deadline. The beauty of this particular service is that the reverend starts out by saying she expects the kids to be loud and jumpy and excited right before Christmas, and that's just fine with her, and they get to run up to the altar and put little cow and shepherd figures right on the manger scene. If you're lucky enough, you could get a "rare one" as my son called Joseph the first time he got to pick from the basket (applying Pokemon card lingo to the holy family). Also, it's short. Bill brought his three boys, wife and mom into the city from his home in Kentfield, Marin County. On the work front, Bill started Pharos Technologies, a leading provider of supply chain management solutions for the health care industry, and continues as president and CEO. In January of 2000 Neoforma.com Inc. acquired Pharos and Bill joined their content services group. Apparently Pharos' Java-based Product Information Management Solution (PINS) allows suppliers to increase their presence as well as enabling buyers to easily compare and keep track of thousands of products.

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