16 July 2008

Class Notes

Beth Zalusky-Finkelstein ’83 with a Parisian waiter
(who may be a Johnson & Wales alumnus)
Photo by Stuart Finkelstein


William V. Madison ’83:
Greetings, fellow Brunonians! The Class of ’83 had a mini-25th Reunion here in beautiful Paris last weekend, when Beth Zalusky ’83 stopped off after a cycling tour of the Dordogne. Sporty, artistic Beth is still the funniest woman at Brown, even when she’s not on Thayer Street, and she introduced me to her husband, Stuart Finkelstein, who is not a Brunonian but a very worthwhile person nevertheless. There was much merriment, sightseeing and festivity. Also, Will Ladislaw ’83, Marge Gunderson ’83 and Adelaide Wesendonck-Ruckert ’84 will want to know that we talked about you ceaselessly behind your backs. (Just kidding!) Other Brunonians traveling through France will want to contact me — but too bad for you, because the weekend was so great that I have no choice but to move back to the U.S. immediately. It will never get better than this. I enclose a snapshot of my latest creation, five jars of homemade black-currant preserves! They look good enough to eat, don’t they? But frankly, it was such a pain in the neck to make them that they are now too precious to eat. I prefer just to sit and stare at them.


Jocasta Schonwald ’83, MD ’86:
Sorry I couldn’t make it to Camp Bruno for the big 25, but it’s been a busy year in our household! After discovering the cure for cancer in August, I received the Nobel Prize for Medicine. You could have knocked me over with a feather! The whole family — life partner Alice Waldschon ’82 and kids Dylan, Ryan, Nelson, and Willow — enjoyed a fun-filled trip from sunny Phoenix to Oslo in December. (Brrrrr!) Since then, I’ve heard from Jasper Gilcott ’65, Marlene Smithy-Orlovsky ’73 and Lisa Lisastein-Stein ’81, who all write to say I saved their lives with my cure. You’re welcome! Next up: the common cold! Would love to hear from classmates any time at all — even if you’re not sick!

Josh Lacrosse ’83:
Thoroughly enjoyed Reunion™ this year and getting together with so many Psi Psi Iota brothers. “Iota kill you guys!” Shared buttloads of happy memories of that crazy couch fire and that wild night around the pinball machine in the frat house. (Whatever happened to Muffy Partyr ’86, anyway?) Enjoyed the time so much that I whipped out the old checkbook and am now sole and exclusive owner and proprietor of Brown University™. Look forward to a few changes, starting in the fall: lap dancers in the lecture hall, anyone? I figured buying the place was the only way my kids (Jake, age 16 or so; Gwyneth, around 9, I think; and the other one) would ever get admitted — to say nothing of my girlfriends! When not acquiring new investment properties or accumulating obscene amounts of wealth, my current hobbies include yachting, divorce, and staring at my money. Not enough hours in the day! Would love to take a meeting with any classmates who couldn’t make it to Reunion™; have your people call my people.

Herman Dwiebelmann ’83:
I have recently completed a 17-year study of “Be-plus Verbs” in English and German and, upon its submission, I can be-gin looking forward to a doctorate in Comparative Western Philology be-stowed by Yale. This will be followed by my application for tenured teaching positions at academic institutions in states where I would never want to live, the search for related study topics that will permit me to publish instead of perish (since the field of “Be-plus Verbs” is already overcrowded and intellectually exhausted), the repetition of my findings in mind-numbing lectures to half-empty classrooms of resentful undergraduates, and the eventual paying-off of my student loans. I am currently living on ramen noodles and thin gruel in an apartment I share with 18 cats and an indeterminate number of coke-snorting Yalies half my age whose daddies buy them freaking Porsches but who do not pay the rent on time. I have no social life or personal interests outside my studies. I do not have time to enter into correspondence with former classmates, but you can speak to me if you order a Venti at Starbuck’s #347, New Haven, CT.

Sarah Arzner-Godard ’83:
Still living and working in Hollywood and loving it! My latest film, Rape and Pinball: The Buffy Portyr Story, opens in the fall. Boffo Buffy biopic creds Randall Quahog ’82 (screenplay), Nate Uomobuono ’84 (lens master), Angela Foley ’93 (sound), Toby Greaves ’02 (best boy), Tom Fender ’79 (score), Victoria Klein ’83 (PR), and Estelle Baxter-Partyr ’54 (consultant). And that’s not counting all the alums who work in the front offices at the studio! Who needs Reunion? I just show up for work!

Evangelía Duarte ’83:
Following Reunion ’03, I returned to the tiny Central American nation of El Mirador, where I continued to work with underprivileged children while actively engaging in armed revolutionary resistance to the U.S.-backed fascist regime that oppresses its people. Much though I enjoyed previous Reunions, I was unable to make it to Providence this year, since I am currently being held as a political prisoner by the junta. Would enjoy hearing from former classmates who send cash (preferably Euros, as the U.S. dollar has no value here), cigarettes, and porn with which I can bribe the guards in order to obtain enough food to survive. It may take a little while for me to respond, since I am shackled in solitary confinement most of the year, so ¡Gracias! in advance.

Hiram Eumenides ’83:
Having won the prestigious Manner Book Prize for Fiction for my sixth novel, She Drinks, I have exhausted my own personal history and am now seeking new material for my forthcoming thinly disguised Bildungsroman à clef. I would enjoy hearing from any former classmates; please contact me at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, California.

(Note: The words “Brown,” “Reunion,” “Providence,” and “University” are all registered trademarks of the Lacrosse Corporation, a Cayman Islands holding company and subsidiary of Lacrosse Industries.)