July 21, 2015
VOL. XVII NO. 4
Tuba, Cuba and Weeden
A VIDEO ISSUE

MUSIC
Tubalicious

Click the arrow below to get your ears smiling - and watch a gen-u-wine washboard virtuosa.

Find more smiling tunes here. And comment here.

Eli Newberger's music jus' keeps a-goin'. His website makes it easy to hear the hot, easygoing Dixieland produced by his bands (try "Hello, Dolly" here), all backed by his own silver tuba instead of the usual string bass. Fine musicians clearly harken to his pied pipe: He once had a band called "Udderly Tuba" that posed for a photo with a Jersey cow named Faith and players including Harvey Cox, the noted professor of divinity {"faith," get it?) at Harvard, and tubists from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New England Conservatory, and the U.S. Air force band. Furthermore, as a Los Angeles jazz critic recently wrote, all this takes place in addition to Eli's "day job" as one of the country's best-known pediatricians. As you saw, Eli's wife Carolyn often plays washboard (with obvious enjoyment in this big solo once she gets over the jitters).


If you're in New England this summer, Eli is hanging out in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, where the band plans to perform at the Primavera Ristorante in Millis, Mass on August 20. A free preview will take place the night before with Eli and two band members billed as "the Jazz Tuber Trio," at the Lilac Park in Lenox. They're riding the momentum of this spring's release of a recording by "Eli and the Hot Six," as his latest band is billed, with a CD showcasing a rising jazz vocalist whom Eli mentored during her studies at the New England Conservatory, Rebecca Sullivan. You can catch cuts that Eli specially selected for us here. In June, the band performed "Swingin'Gershwin!,"a concert gig at the Barrington Stage Company's Pittsfield auditorium.

Tubular, man!

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TRAVEL
Cuban Spring

Just before President Obama announced the current thaw in relations with Cuba, Jonathan Ater and his wife Deanne spent time there "with six other folks - not previously known to us - under the auspices of the First Unitarian Church in Portland." He says "this was a less formal trip than most of the tours now being advertised," as you will see.

Click below for five minutes of excerpts that your CorSec selected from the 53-minute video the Aters made from their own and others' live footage and slides. The seductive, peaceful soundtrack is from their own collection. (For the whole video, click here.) In the excerpts, you'll find:

• a view, from a "Co-Co" taxi, of the Melocón, Havana's spectacular bayfront, showing its mixture of gentle decay and new construction;
• a brief view inside the modest clinic of one of the country's "neighborhood doctors," who are vaunted for making health care "universal";
• a brief profile of Mirta Rodriguez, a Castro partisan who the Aters say "fiercely defends the accomplishments of the revolution: Universal health care, housing, education and suffrage."

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SATIRE
Veni, Veeden, Vinci

Click on the arrows below for not one but two, two-minute spoofs - the first, of obtuse white parents' jitters about their kids' interracial dating, the second, of those "homespun" juice commercials.



As I hope you saw, this features Bill Weeden and his wife, Dolores. Bill is regularly acting in short videos and off-off Broadway productions. This one "went viral," with more than a million viewers in its first few days on the progressive website Upworthy. Because your unhip CorSec had to ask, Bill explained: "The last line is my ad lib, 'The Notorious OMG,' which is my clueless white man character's mishearing of 'The Notorious B.I.G.,' a famous African-American rap artist." (The writer is Phoebe Robinson, the black woman in the video; the director is Trevor Williams.)

Next, click below to learn the meaning of plaid shirts.



(Directed by Trevor Williams, co-starring Timothy Dunn and Johnathan Fernandez, photographed by Daniel Zimmer.)

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RISING TO THE OCCASION
Heroism Among Us? A Request

Grant them grace to develop the habits of heroism, lest, looking back on their springtime fifty years gone, they say, "Those were the days," and be right.*

That was the wry prayer the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr. delivered at the Senior Dinner of the class of 1964. It was two years after we graduated, but the issue is fitting for us all. Did any of us develop those habits?

Please write us to nominate, anonymously if you prefer, any member of our class who you think has been a hero or had a heroic moment or impact — in business, culture, politics, child raising, simple decency, or anything in between. Public figures may be the easiest to spot: a researcher who bucked convention to help put us on the moon? A once-ostracized doctor who changed childrearing? A businessman whose judgment bucked a bad market and yielded a college endowment? A dad whose selfless intervention rescued a doomed child? Please don't neglect quieter, unsung heroism, either.

With all due modesty, have you been a hero yourself?

Sharing such heroic or quasi-heroic moments might benefit us all. Please send your stories, which we'll keep anonymous if you request it, in a couple of hundred words to any of us: Chris Cory, John Stewart, and Steve Buck.

* Quoted by Howard Gillette Jr. '64 in his newly-published social history of his class, Class Divide: Yale '64 and the Conflicted Legacy of the Sixties.

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WHAT'S IN A NAME?
Shall We Overcome Calhoun?

This may have been settled by the time you read this note, but during the week when the Confederate banner was removed from the grounds of the statehouse in South Carolina, Steve Buck become an early advocate of removing the name "Calhoun" from Calhoun College. He emailed the Yale alumni fund, the AYA, and the Black Alumni association. Three weeks later he'd had no responses, but other wheels were turning and within a few days, Bloomberg News and others reported the existence of a respectful petition urging the same thing, which had collected over 1400 signatures, many alumni and former Calhoun residents. Mr. Calhoun (Yale 1804), it allowed, was "respected during his time as an extraordinary American statesman. But he was also one of the most prolific defenders of slavery and white supremacy in American history." Add your name here. And comment on this issue here.

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REUNIONS UPDATE
Mini Reunions Coming Up in New York and Boston

That's A. Whitney Griswold peering down from the wall in the first picture, Bart Giamatti in the second.

Though by now you probably have seen these photos, shot by Bill Weeden, they are to remind you of the intense dedication and extraordinary concentration that your Class Council brings to its counciling.

As we hope you have heard from an earlier e-mail, but for the record, the results of this session are that:

• The mini-reunion celebrating our collective 75th birthdays is taking place in New York City on Saturday, September 19th. If you'd like to come with your wife or friend, email David Honneus (dhonneus@comcast.net) or Roman Weil (Roman.weil@chicagobooth.edu). They'll give you details about paying. A good number of us already have signed up, but if you can encourage roommates or friends please make calls, send e-mails and beat gongs to be sure they don't miss out.

• Save the dates and start thinking about attending our mini reunion in Boston in spring of 2016, co-chaired by Whit Knapp (wknapp@gtbinsights.com), Murray Wheeler (murwheels@gmail.com) and Mike Kane (mkane40@gmail.com). It is being set for a weekend between Easter and college graduation weekends, i.e., sometime between March 27 and May 29.

• We also hope to develop a mini reunion in Los Angeles in fall, 2016, possibly in association with Yale in Hollywood. Metro Los Angeles area has the second largest concentration of '62 alumni anywhere, including a number of show-biz biggies. Stay tuned.

• Our 55th reunion will be in New Haven in late spring of 2017, chaired by Peter Sipple (sipplemp@gmail.com), Peter Clark (pelaclark@aol.com), and Dan Koenigsberg (suedan@optonline.net).

Please get in touch with any of these chairmen to tell them what it will take to get you there. As information evolves, we will post and update it in a standing place on the left-hand column of this site. This will be updated even when the website isn't.

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REMEMBRANCE
Passings

Bob Oliver and his team recently posted obituaries for James E. Bayne and Dr. Robert C. George.

We regret to announce the deaths, since our last edition of this publication, of John Cavo, Jack Templeton and Roger Reese. Full obituaries will appear in due course.

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NOTIFYING CLASSMATES OF SERVICES

If you would like classmates to be notified about your funeral or memorial activities, if we get the information in time the Class of 1962 will send information to the names on our class email list. Please ask those who will be in charge to send the details to Bob Oliver at oliver@moglaw.com, 203-624-5111, and for backup to John Stewart, Co-Corresponding Secretary, at johnhargerstewart@gmail.com, 845-789-1407. We will not send out information unless someone makes this request.

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PLEASE LET US KNOW HOW WE'RE DOING

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