Alec Haverstick (’74 SY) spoke to classmates on January 11, 2022, about his career as a Wall Street insider, including his fateful employment at Lehman Brothers in the years leading up to the financial crisis of 2008.
Watch now [login required]
Writer-photographer Chuck Martin (’74 SM) writes: “The new year brings me the good fortune of once again seeing Revista Parêntese, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, publish an essay and photos of mine. It is a reading of the narrow way in which La Peste, the fiction of Albert Camus, visualizes a plague located in Algeria.” The essay is here (in Portuguese) and Chuck’s photos are here.
When the Russian economy crashed in the late 1990s, Philip Halperin [’74 ES] decided to shake up his risk management career by taking a job with a major Russian bank. He expected to stay 3 years, but ended up staying 14. As featured speaker at our December class lunch, Phil shared stories of his life as a Western expat during a “working adventure” in Moscow.
Carolyn Grillo (’74 JE) was guest speaker at our virtual lunch meetup Nov 2, 2021. She spoke about her time in Afghanistan between our junior and senior years, in a talk she titled “My Shoes! My Shoes! The Invisible Women of Kabul.” Runtime is 53:00.
Carolyn Grillo (’74 JE) was guest speaker at our virtual lunch meetup Nov 2, 2021. She spoke about the summer she spent in Afghanistan between our junior and senior years – what she observed then, and what we are seeing now. She calls her talk, “My Shoes! My Shoes! The Invisible Women of Kabul.”
Watch now [login required].
The Class of 1974 was pleased to sponsor “Rock & Revolution” on May 20, 2021, an online event for classmates everywhere, to explore the soundtrack of our college years. How did our music express the politics of those days, and how is it relevant now? Our speaker (and deejay) was Dr. Angharad Davis, who teaches “Music and Revolution” in Yale’s Department of Music.
Watch and listen to the “Rock & Revolution” playlist we created as part of this event.
In the video clip below, Dr. Davis unveils the songs that present-day Yalies consider to be “songs of revolution.”
Here is Dr. Davis’s full presentation [pdf]:
Master guitarist Gary Lucas (‘74 JE), “the thinking man’s guitar hero” (The New Yorker), has released a new retrospective double album which spans 40 years of his music. Gary has previously recorded more than 30 acclaimed albums in a variety of genres—jazz, rock, classical, folk, blues and world music—and has performed in more than 40 countries. The new double album, “The Essential Gary Lucas,” is getting reviews like this:
“A truly epic body of work that spans psychedelic rock, film music, classical, electronica, jazz, blues, avant-garde, and world music excursions through 1930s Chinese pop, Hungarian folk, raga, and more, all unified by Lucas’s virtuosic guitar.”
Broadway World
“Essential Gary Lucas” purchase links
Tom Strumolo ( ’74, YFES ’88), an expert on solar power and energy efficiency, spoke to classmates at our virtual lunch in April 2021. He called his talk, “Energy, Earth, Everything.”
“I started my company Energy General in 1976,” Tom said, “and have completed energy efficiency and clean power projects in and on 10,000 + buildings over the years.”
“One building was the White House on which I installed solar hot water panels in 1978-79. I met Jimmy Carter then and later did a Habitat for Humanity project with him in the South Bronx, in the early 1980’s.”
“My career was slow and steady after that, really taking off when the Germans created a whole new solar market and Obama became President. I am currently working with DOE on doing a million buildings in 4 years.”
Radio host and music reporter Naomi Lewin [TD] was our special guest at the March 2021 Class lunch. Watch and listen as she tells how she got started in broadcasting, her on-air hosting jobs at classical stations WGUC in Cincinnati and WQXR in New York City, and behind-the-scenes stories about her radio interview with Marcel Marceau, freelance reporting for NPR, and podcasts she’s produced (including one celebrating 50 years of women in the Yale Glee Club). [49 mins]
At our March Class lunch online, radio host and music reporter Naomi Lewin [TD] presided as our special guest. Naomi recounted how she got started in broadcasting (leading to on-air hosting jobs at classical stations WGUC in Cincinnati and WQXR in New York City), and revealed behind-the-scenes stories about her radio interview with Marcel Marceau, freelance reporting for NPR, and podcasts she’s produced (including one celebrating 50 years of women in the Yale Glee Club).
Watch the video (log in required)