Class of 1970

Paul Nachman

Address: 2411 Voorhees, #3, Redondo Beach, CA 90278

As I write this, I've already seen Bob Wall's (Class of 1957) contribution to this newsletter. As he says, we experienced a truly astounding coincidence. We had corresponded, following his report in the newsletter a couple of years ago, about his 22-day [!!!] canoe trip in Quetico with half a dozen other "geezers". This gave me hope that I can keep doing Quetico-Superior trips for at least another decade. Then on this last September 6th, we blundered into each other on the portage between Ogishkemuncie and Kingfisher Lakes in the Boundary Waters. But we only realized whom we were meeting because he, providentially, used the magic word "geezer" again, so I promptly asked him where he'd gone to college!

Anyway, I continue working on very applied projects at TRW and looking forward eagerly to retiring in a few years to a life of canoe trips and, once again, at last, curiosity-driven physics.

Class of 1972

Kenneth Bowen

Email: kbowenlatinschool.org

It would be frightening if Bruce Thomas remembered this, but in about 1970 I was taking electronics and fantasizing about remote controlled spotlights for the then-new theatre at Carleton. Bruce conceived an elegant sinusoidal feedback potentiometer that would have made it all possible. I never had the cash or time to pursue it and in the meantime the business has gone nuts with robotic lighting instruments: yet another million neither of us made. This all comes to mind because I'm embarking on a robotics project where I teach. This will be the latest installment in a life of agreeing to do "x" then working like crazy to figure out how.

Class of 1973

Mike Lauterbach

Email: michael.lauterbachlecroy.com

Greetings, the letter from Bruce arrived just as I was departing on 4 weeks of travel to California, Switzerland, France, Japan, China, and Korea. So I hope my reply is not too late. The pace of R&D in the world of high-speed electronics has not slowed even though the bubble in telecomm has burst. But it is definitely harder to find customers with money to spend on capital equipment. I am now finishing my 21st year at LeCroy, busily making the worlds best oscilloscopes. Margaret remains at Yale as Associate Dean of the Nursing School. So our lives are stable, though each week brings different obstacles and achievements. We celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary with a two-week trip to The Bahamas and St. Maarten. I highly recommend those islands to any Carls looking for a relaxing atmosphere.

Mark R Williams

Email: Mark.Williamsshell.com

URL: http://www.shell.com

Address: 8 Squire Gardens, London NW8 8QH, United Kingdom

Phone: +44 207 289 4994

Candace, Megan and I remain in London, where I've taken on a new role running Shell's Global Businesses. I'm wearing out a passport with businesses in 120 countries, but really enjoying the opportunity to see lots of places that have just been dots on the map. David started his freshman year at Carleton and is really enjoying his first year away from home. Candace is chairing the Class of '73 30-year reunion committee, so we'll back on campus in June. We've got a couple of extra bedrooms in London and are always happy to see old friends. Best wishes.

Class of 1974

Paul Epton

Email: paul.eptonalumni.carleton.edu

Address: 2309 25th Ave S., Minneapolis, MN 55406

Phone: (612) 276-7071

Typical of how busy the fall was, I found time to compose this message only while watching Munchkin Land: between light cues while programming moving lights for Children's Theatre's production of "The Wizard of Oz." Outside of work, I found myself meandering about 75 miles on my bicycle on one of the hotter, steamier days of last summer; my longest ride in several years. And I've been surprisingly aware that I turned 50 this year; surprising in that I don't usually pay much attention to chronological age. No new revelations, resolutions, or crises, just awareness.

Dayton Jones

Email: djsgra.jpl.nasa.gov

Greetings. I'm still working at JPL, mainly on a project to build an array of thousands of small radio antennas to increase the sensitivity of the Deep Space Network by two orders of magnitude. It's a lot of fun, and eventually should be a great instrument for radio astronomy (my interest) as well as spacecraft tracking. I still do a bit of basic research on active galaxies, but not as much as I'd like.

Our daughters Alice (10) and Ellen (8) are doing fine. We wish all of you a very good year in 2003. Cheers.

Class of 1975

Tim Brunner

E-mail: brunnersnet.net

Hello all. it seems like yesterday that I read the annual letters from all my physics friends at Carleton. It just goes to prove that time is experienced logarithmically, and at my advanced stage of old fartdom it is just screaming by! I'm doing fine, and everyone in the family is doing well. A major milestone was reached with my eldest daughter Emily graduating from college. My love and regards to all.

Sally Fairman Mills

Email: fermionexecpc.com

It has been a busy year, mostly because of the kid's schedules! Leslie is a freshman at Beloit College this year, planning to major in creative writing, and studying Japanese as her foreign language (she is already into the 3rd alphabet of characters!). Kelly is in 8th grade majoring in friends, organizing parties, and doing downhill skiing in winter. She and Kyle both still sing with the Milwaukee Children's Choir, performing with the likes of Doc Severinson and the Milwaukee Symphony. They are so accustomed to using the stage door that they feel funny entering the building as audience! Kyle has entered the theater world by storm this year, performing in "The Hobbit" with the professional First Stage Children's Theater, and in youth productions as the Prince in Rogers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella", the annoying younger brother Randolph in "Bye Bye Birdie" at school, and finally as Rooster Cogburn in "Annie, Jr.". He also fell in love with Interlochen Arts Camp this summer doing singing and theater, although being independent and away from Mom's watchful eye was surely another bonus!

My news is not so happy, however, as Blair and I have decided to get a divorce. There are no bombshells, just a realization that we don't belong together. It will take awhile to get the house ready to sell, so I expect to be at this address at least until summer. I will be moving out of Cedarburg with the kids, but we're staying in the area.

Here's hoping that 2003 will be a great year for everybody!

James K. Tusa

Email: jtusamindspring.com

Address: 125 Dorris Road

Alpharetta, GA 30004

Phone: (770) 664-7110

Greetings Carletonians! Having been "acquired" three times, I've now been spit out a second time because our R&D site is being closed. Worked as VP R&D and CTO for 10 years at a start-up developing disposable fluorescence sensor systems for various blood analytes such as pH, CO2, O2, Na+, K+, Ca++, Cl-, glucose, urea, creatinine. These "biosensors" worked quite well, were amenable to placement on fiber optics, and ultimately, got the attention of Roche who bought us. Life was good for 6 months or so, (your typical 'honeymoon phase'), and then the big company bureaucracy and "synergizing" and stupid professional decision making started. You can fill in the rest. I'm now consulting with a local company here in Atlanta trying to develop glucose-sensing contact lenses for diabetics, a truly non-invasive measurement that falls into the holy grail blockbuster category because there are 100+ million diabetics walking around who hate to take their own blood measurements, many of whom happen to wear contact lenses.

Meanwhile back home our 4 kids ages 8-15 are happy here, so we'll try to stay. I'll even try teaching a few college chemistry courses next January at the local state university, as a sort of "contingency internship" in case the consulting gigs dry up. We just have to figure out how to pay for college without completely disrupting retirement fantasies. My European friends laugh when I tell them it might cost us half a million Euros to pay for our kids' college, should they all decide to go to nice private schools like Carleton. Atlanta is really a wonderful place&endash;reasonable house prices, mild 4 seasons, lots of hills and trees and lakes, and all those stories you might have heard about the humidity and mosquitoes and traffic are no more than 50% true. Please visit (but not in July).

Class of 1976

George J. Jelatis

Email: gjelatispropoint.com

Address: 422 Marshall Street, Duluth, MN 55803

Greetings! I have not written in many years, always postponing it for a "better time". But when I read "do it now" in Bruce Thomas's letter I knew I had to act. So, there is such a thing as action at a distance.

This summer, after living for the last 7 years in Minneapolis, aka The City of Lakes, my wife Sarah and I moved to what I might call the City of One Really Huge Lake. The Duluth city vehicles have a square-rigger icon painted on their doors, while those of Minneapolis have a sloop logo. I figure I have discovered the true constant in my life with that observation, or else some kind of example of scaling theory. We now call going to Minneapolis going "Down South". Sarah finished her full decade of medical training and got a job as a pathologist at a hospital here. We bought a house on the edge of a city park a few miles up the hill from the lake. It is very quiet. I can take cloud photos off the deck by day and stargaze at night. For me, I am still employed by Productivity Point International (http://www.propoint.com) a national software training and consulting company, in my seventh year. The Minneapolis office closed late last year, a product of the economic times, by and large. So I became a virtual employee, managed remotely. I still love doing good old instructor led training. I have found that I can make pretty much anyone understand pretty much anything that I know about computers and software. I do a bit of that in Minneapolis as needed. However, I now work almost exclusively at creating web-based, self-paced training materials for a document management system used by the Health Care division of a large company "Down South" (think tape). I convinced everyone that I should be able to work from home, and so I do, connecting via a cable modem and remotely accessing the systems I need to work with. So, I mostly stay here and watch the deer out in the backyard while I work, and Sarah gets home-cooked dinners.

When I think of the people I went to Carleton with, the students I met when I taught there back in 1984-85, and the students I know that are there now, I am overwhelmed with their humanity, intelligence and humor. I cannot begin to say more, since I fall silent, overcome with emotion, if I try. Know that I am thinking of you. Plus, Bruce said, "three sentences", and that is long since past. Happy Holidays!

Thomas Moore

This has been an exciting year for us. Our youngest daughter Allison matriculated at Trinity University (in San Antonio) in August, so Joyce and I were able to leave Claremont for my sabbatical this fall. We spent two and a half months in Bozeman, Montana, where I did research on gravitational wave detection with a colleague at Montana State University. Joyce and I had a great time in Bozeman, and got in visits to Yellowstone and Glacier before things got too wintry. The end of October was very cold (single-digit temperatures, 30-mph winds), which really reminded me of dear old Northfield. I have also been working on the final proofs for the second edition of my introductory physics textbook "Six Ideas That Shaped Physics" (which should be in print by the time you read this), and Joyce completed the manuscript for a book of children's sermons. We are now back in Claremont, where Joyce is resuming her work as a pastor for the Southern California Conference of the United Church of Christ. In May, our other daughter Brittany graduates from Berkeley on the same day as our 10th wedding anniversary, so we are looking forward to that. (PS. there is no time dilation involved here: Brittany and Allison are my stepdaughters.)

Tom Polgreen

Email: TomMelandTom.net

After putting up the good fight in Corporate America (Texas Instruments, 1984-1990; Dallas Semiconductor, 1990-1997), I went out on my own as a consultant in 1997. ESD Solutions (ElectroStatic Discharge) was my moniker. This worked for a few years until technological obsolescence took its toll. In 2000, I shut down the consulting and gracefully retired. Retirement was only feasible because my partner of the past 23 years, Mel Rushton, co-founded a software consulting firm before we met.

Mel and I have enjoyed traveling a lot. If you have a few minutes, take a look at our latest trip at http://home.earthlink.net/~polgreen/crossing/. We spent 4 weeks this past summer flying our airplane from Dallas to Greece and Finland and back. We stopped in at Carleton on the way back home for the annual Heywood lunch at reunion.

Class of 1977

Gail A. Cederberg

E-mail: gacederbergimation.com

2002 has been a busy year for Nick, (Nick Schlotter, '74), Sarah (12), and me. I attended our 25th Carleton Reunion in June. It was wonderful to see everyone and "reconnect". Since the reunion I've been working with the Alumni Office in contacting potential students. I haven't spoken with any potential physics majors--yet. Sarah and I are continuing our yearly tradition of taking a spring break trip together. This year we visited the Grand Canyon (lots of snow) and Sedona. We spent our summer fishing and the fall continues with our ever-present house projects. Nick is teaching chemistry at Hamline University and I continue to work as Imation's environmental manager (Imation manufactures those floppy disks and magnetic storage tapes). It's great to hear the Physics Department continues to boast a healthy crop of majors. I wish everyone a happy holiday and wonderful 2003.

Roger Johnston

Email: rogerjlanl.gov

URL: http://pearl1.lanl.gov/seals

Greetings! I continue working with the Vulnerability Assessment Team at Los Alamos, breaking into security devices, ridiculing security programs and managers, and just generally creating havoc. The team includes a couple of techs, 2 undergraduates, a graduate student, and a new postdoc from the Physics Department at Portland State University.

This was sort of a sad year. Janie's father, grandmother, and favorite old horse died. I had to deal with one of the carcasses. (Jerky, anyone?) The drought and the bark beetle continue taking out a lot of the Pinon and Ponderosa trees that the fire missed. Basically, I've come to the conclusion that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics sucks.

On the other hand, the cold weather brings a lot of spiders, crickets, mice, sage lizards, and snakes into my lab (marching around like they own the place) reminding me that life is inexorable.

On the upbeat side this year, none of my former students turned out to have been involved with the DC sniper shootings, plus I got to travel a lot for fun and profit: Ireland, Scotland, Austria (Vienna and Salzburg), Luxembourg (very nice!), DC, Minneapolis, Kentucky, and Philadelphia. (Ok, maybe the latter more properly belongs in the depressing section.) Have a great 2003!

Elaine Gregory McCluskey

Email: aemccluskeycs.com

Address: 27 W116 Bolles St., Winfield, IL 60190

Phone: (630) 653-7430

On the job front this year, I am still working as construction manager for the last phase of the NuMI Project at Fermilab. We will be constructing two buildings and outfitting the rock tunnels and halls underground with facilities to house the neutrino experiment that is scheduled to come online in 2005. We are just starting our part of the construction, and hopefully will be completing that when I write next year's news. On the home front, my oldest started college out east. Attending the reunion in June was lots of fun, and I was glad to see some old friends there. Call if you're coming to Fermilab!

Amy Rogers

Email: amyrgateway.aps.k12.co.us

This has been a busy year. I'm now teaching 3 sections of college prep physics, (along with one section of special ed physical science, and sheltered physical science (for students who do not speak English.) So I have the entire range of high school possibilities. Each one has it's own challenges and joys.

I came out to Carleton last June for the 25th reunion, and then stayed to take a physics class during the summer teaching institute. I got to meet and take the class from Nelson Christensen, and also visit with some of my professors, Bob Reitz and Rich Noer. The campus is beautiful, and the new dining and sports facilities are incredible.

My husband and I are signed up for the Class of '77 trek to Mt. Kilimanjaro with Eric Simonson. We're doing a lot of hiking, and hoping to be ready next fall!. Best Holiday wishes to everyone!

Richard Snodgrass

Email: rtscs.arizona.edu

Address:, Department of Computer Science

University of Arizona

P.O. Box 210077, 1040 E. 4th St., Tucson, AZ 85721-0077

Phone: (520) 621-6370,

It was wonderful getting back to Carleton last spring for the reunion and seeing fellow physics alums! We even peeked into the labs at Olin where I spent a cumulative year or more working on problem sets. But the nonair-conditioned dorms were just too hot and humid for this desert dweller.

My son Eric and daughter Melanie both greatly enjoyed the reunion; they found Carletonians to be a diverse and very interesting lot, willing to talk to kids at their level. We managed to visit Duncan MacArthur and family in Los Alamos on the way back.

I'm on sabbatical starting in January, which I am eagerly awaiting. My wife Merrie has been on sabbatical since August. She is working on getting back to health while adjusting to a particularly debilitating form of Lupus. Her illness is teaching me to focus on the important things in life. I'm spending more time with family, especially with Eric who will be off to college in a few years.

I'm very proud of one accomplishment this summer: I back-packed with Eric for two weeks at the Philmont Boy Scout Ranch in northern New Mexico, hiking for 65 miles, reaching 11,000 feet at one point.

Best wishes to everyone for health, happiness, and tranquility in this troubled world.

Class of 1979

David Buettner

This year is not much different from last year. I am still at Lucent Technologies and have survived the latest cuts, which were last week in my division. Unfortunately, some of my neighbors were impacted by the latest cuts. Last year I was able to transfer to the wireless division. The specific project is 3G wireless that will bring broadband types of speed to mobile stations. So, on your laptop or PDA, you can get DSL or cable types of data connections. I still do the same kind of work in software quality. The 3G data is an exciting technology, but I hope the market quickly turns around.

As happens with all us parents, the kids are a year older. My daughter has now started middle school (6th grade) and my son is now in 1st grade. My daughter is still developing nicely musically and my son still is a boy playing with his trucks. She still is in Girl Scouts; he started Tiger Scouts. She is doing fine in school; he has started to read quite well. At home, all is well.

Since we have full day students now, my wife has found a job. She takes care of getting them off to school. I shifted my hours to get home in the middle of the afternoon. So far, it's working out.

I wish for everyone a happy holiday season and take care.

Rand Swanson

Hello all, this year finds me in the first year of my second start-up company. I've found that I truly enjoy this gig. There are four of us involved and we are working on compact and inexpensive electro-optic sensors, which is a polite way of saying, "whatever comes our way that we get excited about."

I work closely with the physics department at Montana State U, which gives me a chance to poke around the research labs and cause trouble. We're also working with Montana Tech.

Otherwise, life in general is good. I'm still remarried to my first wife, go figure, and happily settled in Bozeman MT, with no kids. I've managed to sneak out into the local mountains a bit this summer and fall, and we might even get some decent snow for skiing this year. Best wishes, and have a Happy New Year.