Newsmakers

QUOTE/UNQUOTE: "The job of Office of Management and Budget director is a really important post, and Rob Portman ['78] is the right man to take it on." PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH IN HIS APRIL 18 NOMINATION OF U.S. TRADE REPRESENTATIVE PORTMAN TO THE BUDGET DIRECTOR POST

that despite the success of DVDs, the films success shows that "the communal [movie-going] experience cannot be replaced."... Joanne Herman '75, formerly known as Jeff, is The Advocate's new columnist on transgender life. Herman, who transitioned from male to female in 2002, wrote in her first column last April that she hopes "to cover all of those questions that you were 'afraid to ask.' " Read her at: www.advocate.com....Twins Angie and Maggie Kim '99 have teamed up with Mandalyn Begay '97 to launch a fashion design business called Oda. Specializing in "wearable art," the trio debuted its first collection, Bedouin Princesses, last August at San Francisco Fashion Week. Their designs, which reflect the Kims' Korean background and Begay's Native-American heritage, are also "tinged in Edwardian tradition and incorporating a Tokyo-pop flavor," according to their Web site (www.odastyle.com). 'All of us wear funky clothes in our everyday lives, and we are always getting stopped by people, especially when all three of us are walking together. We get a lot of orders that way and also through word of mouth," they told Fibemrts magazine last winter....Mike Markaverich '71 told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that his love affair with jazz began with an "Oscar Peterson moment" during his freshman year at Dartmouth. "I heard Peterson's recording of 'Night Train' and that was it—it changed my life," said the pianist. He's been playing jazz piano ever since, and currently has a regular Thursday and Friday night gig at Caragiulo's in Sarasota. Last March he played the Charlotte County Jazz Society's concert in Port Charlotte, playing selections from his new CD, So inLove... .Sarah Wayne Callies '99 got her start in television playing Jane in the 2003 WB series Tarzan, but she's now turning heads as Dr. Sara Tancredi on Fox's Prison Break. The show was one of the few new hits this past season, yet Callies is rarely recognized on the street. "It's all about the lab coat," she told the Boston Herald last March. "When I take it off, I become much more anonymous." Look for Callies in two movies later this year: The Celestine Prophecy and Hellion.... A visit to Arizona's Sonoma Desert inspired the latest work by Twentieth Century Fox animation chief Chris Meledandri 'Bl scored big at the box office with Ice Age: The Melt down. The Ice Age sequel had the largest-ever March opening and was the top movie in the country two weeks running, with a 10-day take of $116.4 million. Meledandri told USA Today Moses Pendleton '71, founder and choreographer of the dance company Momix. "I was enthralled by the giant saguaro cactus. It has a mystical presence," Pendleton told the Montreal Gazette prior to a performance of Opus Cactus last February. ...Dr. Anne McLaughlin, DMS'98, a pediatric asthma specialist at the Wellborn Clinic in Evansville, Indiana, is seeking to become the area's first certified pollen counter for the National Allergy Bureau. After noticing that she had more patients when the weather turned warmer, she started collecting pollen with the clinics roof-top pollen-collector. Her patients are already benefiting. "When they know the count is really high, they know maybe it's not a good idea to go camping this weekend," McLaughlin told The EvansvilleCourier.... Last April the North Dakota Humanities Council hosted a week-long series of free screenings of Waterbuster, a documentary produced and directed by J. Carlos Peinado '88. The 78 minute film chronicles the challenges members of the Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikara Nation (known as the Three Affiliated Tribes) faced in the 1940s and 1950s when their livelihood and way of life was threatened by construction of the Garrison Dam. "In the story of my people, water is a force of nature, as well as a force of human history it is a thing that both creates and destroys," Peinado, an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes on the Fort Berthold reservation, told the Associated Press last March. "Waterbuster is a film about these forces and how my people have responded to them."...ln a letter to a friend, 19th century statesman and orator DanielWebster, class of 1801, wrote that his farm alongside the Merrimack River near Franklin, New Hampshire, was "the most beautiful place on this earth." Webster's beloved farm,The Elms, landed on the National Trust's list of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places for 2005 after a local real estate developer purchased the property last July. Fortunately, the Webster Farm Preservation Association rescued the 141-acre farm from development four months later (a plan for senior housing was already before the zoning board), paying $1.75 million for the land and buildings. "I can't think of another property in New Hampshire that contains more historic and environmental value," Concord lawyer Howard Moffett, one of the groups leaders, said in the March-April issue of Preservation magazine. "It's the history of New Hampshire writ small."...When Skip Cummins '76 took over as CEO of Cyberonics in 1995 one of his goals was to win FDA approval for the company's vagus nerve stimulator (VNS), which had been successfully used to treat chronic epilepsy. Two years later Cummins won the government's approval for the implant device. Now he's trying to win FDA approval for a new VNS application-to treat depression. As U.S. News &World Report reported last February, about 550 people with "treatment-resistant depression" now have VNS implants and more than half have reported benefits, with 60 to 70 percent finding their better moods have remained constant for at least two years. "We have a track record of fixing things like this, and that would suggest a bright future for patients with treatment-resistant depression," Cummins, who is also conducting experiments on VNS' effectiveness in treating Alzheimer's and bulimia, told Continental magazine.... Generations of New Englanders know that a Fluffernutter is a peanut-butter sandwich made with Marshmallow Fluff. Now, much to the bemusement of Don Durkee '49, president of Durkee-Mower, the Lynn, Massachusetts-based company co- founded by his father that creates Marsh mallow Fluff Fluff has become "intellectual property." Durkee-Mower filed suit last March against kitchen retailing giant Williams-Sonoma to halt sales of its "Fluffernutter" candy bars. "They're trying to trade on the nostalgia for the classic Durkee-Mower product without acknowledging our trademark rights," company attorney Peter Sloane told the Boston Globe.

QUOTE/UNQUOTE "It only had. four ingredients—com syrup, sugar, .dried egg white and vanillin. You could almost accidentally invent it." DON DURKEE '49, SON OF THE MARSHMALLOW FLUFF CO-FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT OF MANUFACTURER OURKEE-MOWER, TO THE BOSTON GLOBE MARCH 29