Newsmakers

QUOTE/UNQUOTE "They don't let you bring a bottle of water onto a plane, but they let you bring a huge, sharp brass object. I wasn't about to check my first Emmy." SAM MEANS '03, ON FLYING HOME AFTER WINNING AN EMMY FOR COMEDY WRITING FOR JON STEWART'S THE DAILY SHOW, IN THE WASHING TON POST, AUGUST 31

As an undergrad Anthony Webb '03 and some friends founded Boys Speak Out, a series of workshops that allowed area teens to talk openly about depression, sexuality and family problems. "We showed boys how to use the proper channels to discuss these issues with peers, guidance counselors and parents. So many times when they bring up an issue like this, they're just told to suck it up," Webb told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last August. Now the 2006 University of Chicago Law School grad is taking the idea nationwide as head of the Adanta-based nonprofit Boys Speak Out Inc. (www.boysspeakout.org; Stanford University assistant dean of admissions M. Kiyoe Hashimoto '95 is on the board of directors)...."You just have to accept the fact that you re no longer 21 and that you're becoming more and more pathetic," Andy Rayburn '77 told The Plain Dealer last August prior to "Geezeroo," the fundraising concert he organized through his Human Fund charity. Featuring Pure Prairie League and Poco, the concert benefited the Cleveland school districts All-City Arts Program. "The idea was to present an alternative approach to philanthropy in the Cleveland area and draw in more people like us. Less formal, more personal, less structured, with a focus on the arts and on kids."... .The August issue of Smithsonian featured an essay by novelist Louise Erdrich '76 about her hometown, Wahpeton, North Dakota. "For generations, my family has been knitted into the fabric of Wahpeton," Erdrich wrote. "So much of who I am is wrapped up in the town that it is impossible to imagine what I could have written had I not had the luck to live there and grow up aware of its dramas, riding out its wild blizzards and ducking its tornadoes, wading in the spring floods, working in its restaurants and hoeing the main crop, sugar beets, in hot sun until my shoulders blistered." Her new novel, The Plague of Doves, will be published next year....While serving with his Marine Reserve unit in Iraq last year Jonathan Kuniholm '93 lost his right arm when an improvised explosive device hidden in an olive oil can detonated. A Ph.D. candidate in biomedical engineering at Duke University prior to his deployment, Kuniholm is now focusing his research on prosthetic technology. He's also started a nonprofit organization called the Open Prosthetics Project, as he told The Dartmouth last July. Essentially an open-source design forum, www.openprosthetics.org allows medical equipment designers to post their computer-aided design files and ideas for new prosthetics to the Web site, where other designers and prosthetic users can download it for free. "Now I'm looking toward the service I can offer to people with disabilities in the larger global community," Kuniholm wrote in an essay for Microsoft's online Accessibility Update Newsletter last summer. ...Maurissa Horwitz '98 worked as first assistant editor on the recent Dreamworks animated film Overthe Hedge. "You're really involved with the story and shaping things the whole way through," the native Hoosier told indystar.com of the three-and-ahalf-year project. "Everyone got to pitch in their ideas of how to make the movie better."...Hillary SmithGoodridge '78 and Julie Goodridge have split up, two years after winning the groundbreaking Massachusetts court case that legalized gay marriage and allowed the longtime couple to marry. "As always their No. 1 priority is raising their daughter, and like the other plaintiff couples in this case, they made an enormous contribution toward equal marriage," their spokeswoman Mary Breslauer told The Boston Globe last July. ...Ronald Chen 'BO is New Jerseys new public advocate, the first person to hold this post since former Gov. Christie Whitman disbanded the office 12 years ago in a cost-saving move. Chen, an associate dean of academic affairs at Rutgers University School of Law-Newark, won approval after promising to use litigation only as a last resort in this watchdog job designed to protect the public. "They just don't come any smarter or more committed to justice and equality," Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the ACLU's New Jersey chapter, told The Star-Ledger last winter....ln real life Shaun Peet '98 is a jack man for Nextel Cup driver Reed Sorensen (he's also a part-time firefighter in Summerfield, North Carolina). In last summers hit film Talladega Nights the former Big Green and minor league hockey player played actor Will Ferrell's jack man. "Ferrell was absolutely a great guy," Peet told his hometown newspaper, the Nanaimo (British Columbia) Daily News...."l got to the WNBA and they said, 'You are too small,' " Katharine Hanks '03 told the Vail Daily News last July. "I was playing against Karl Malone's daughter, who was about one inch taller than me and a good 50 pounds heavier. That's a lot of weight to move." Then she found opportunity abroad, joining a team in Italy. Since then she has played almost nonstop for teams in Switzerland, Sweden, New Zealand and Australia, and earned MVP honors in Portugal for leading her team to the Portuguese Cup....Oscar Arslanian '61 worked at Capitol Records for years. Now Arslanian has tapped into the market for oldies rock. He promotes such 1950s artists as Fabian, Bobby Vee and the Chiffons, whom he packaged for the Original Stays show at Dick Clark's American Bandstand Theater in Branson, Missouri. "They're like fine wine," he told Music Connection Magazine last summer... .Melinda Konopko '86 traded in a successful investment banking career to start Plum Party.com with Risa Meyer. Now the pair has a booming business, stocking more than 4,000 party items relating to more than 60 themes. "We're a one-stop shop," Konopko told The NewYorkSun last summer. "The Internet has so much depth that it gives the consumer not only choices but power.". ..After 18 years as executive director of the Institute of Current World Affairs in Hanover, Peter Bird Martin '51 is stepping down—though he'll continue his affiliation with the Hanoverbased institution. "I want to set up a new program, associated with the institute, to help lawyers become international savants, help them learn about foreign cultures and important current issues such as international property law," he told the Valley News last July....When Robert Clark Corrente '78 was appointed Rhode Island's top federal prosecutor in 2004 by President Bush, his mandate was to root out corruption. So far this year the U.S. attorney's office has put Survivor TV star Richard Hatch behind bars for tax evasion and won two high-profile public corruption cases. "If you allow that kind of activity to take place and ifyou don't go after it aggressively, you allow for the perpetuation of the idea that it's just politics as usual in Rhode Island," Corrente told the Associated Press.

Ronald Chen '80

Maurissa Horwitz '98

aiioTE/unoooTE "The even larger loss is a regular outlet for the eloquent, often maddening, always thought-provoking words of Robert Christgau." —JODY ROSEN IN SIATE.COM ON THE FIRING OF 37-YEAS. VILLAGE VOICE ROCK CRITIC ROBERT CHRISTGAtT '6a AUGUST 31