A choice of recent mentions of Bates and Bates people within the news.
Alexandra Cherubini ’99
Making the proper fit: Alexandra Cherubini & EquiFit — Sidelines Magazine
Britney Grover of Sidelines Magazine checks in with Alexandra Cherubini ’99, founder and president of EquiFit, a Massachusetts-based company that designs and sells gear for equestrian riders and their horses. EquiFit has turn out to be probably the most successful providers of equine gear, from equine boots, to saddle pads, to girths.
Taking a look at her profession, Cherubuni offers some advice: keep a learning attitude and don’t be “afraid to walk away from a project that isn’t working and apply what you’ve learned to the subsequent project. Be willing to receive feedback and receive it with grace. Ask for feedback, and ask for it often. It’s a key a part of growth and emotional intelligence.”
Liz Strout ’77
At 66, Elizabeth Strout has reached maximum productivity — The Recent York Times
Lucy by the Sea is the ninth book from Liz Strout ’77, and the most recent in her series featuring the character of Lucy Barton.
“I’m getting older, and I’ve taught myself easy methods to get these sentences down, easy methods to know once they’re value getting down,” Strout told Elisabeth Egan of The Recent York Times. “It’s like I’ve been training for a marathon my entire life and now there’s an acceleration happening.”
Strout compares her writing process to flattening out a sheet of crumpled-up wax paper, or a wad of bubble gum, attempting to “just stretch it out so far as it could go.”
She takes inspiration from the places she visits — Maine landscapes and waterfronts feature often in her scenes — and current events, just like the COVID-19 pandemic, which Lucy and her ex-husband, William, are in search of to flee. “They leap off the page together with their creator’s salty wit and a phantom scent of hand sanitizer,” writes Egan.
Read the story: “At 66, Elizabeth Strout has reached maximum productivity,” The Recent York Times, Sept. 3, 2022
Nathan Lundblad, physics and astronomy faculty
The good experiment within the universe — Houston, We Have a Podcast
Professor of Physics Nathan Lundblad joined the Johnson Space Center podcast, Houston, We Have a Podcast, to speak about his ultracold research being conducted aboard the International Space Station.
In easy terms, his experiments within the station’s Cold Atom Lab take a look at what happens while you cool atoms to close absolute zero in a zero-gravity environment.
You possibly can make shapes from these ultracold blobs of atoms, referred to as Bose-Einstein condensates. In Lundblad’s case, the form they’ve succeeded in making is a bubble.
Making latest shapes means scientists can test “laws of quantum mechanics and the wave nature of matter but in a extremely strange environment.”
C.L. Quinan ’00
Rise of X: Governments eye latest approaches for trans and nonbinary travelers — Migration Policy Institute
Following the cues of Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, and others, U.S. passports now feature a 3rd gender option. As much as this can be a step towards acknowledging nonbinary identities, it doesn’t make international travel or migration any safer for nonbinary, intersex, or transgender people, said C.L. Quinan ’00 in an article for the Migration Policy Institute.
“Even though it could seem a minor bureaucratic matter to those whose gender presentation aligns with their documentation, transgender and gender-diverse populations often experience harassment and disenfranchisement while traveling internationally,” writes Quinan.
Inconsistencies across documents, differing government requirements, and security procedures that don’t recognize nonbinary or transgender identification may end up in travelers being stopped for alleged falsification of identity, or other complications.
“Some trans and nonbinary people have developed strategies to forestall questioning or actively conceal their gender identity by traveling as a gender that matches their documents but not their true identities,” adds Quinan. “Many transgender individuals also experience high levels of hysteria and stress before, during, and after traveling.”
Seulgie Lim, politics faculty
Best & worst states for girls’s equality — WalletHub
The gender gap in pay, in health and survival, and in political empowerment is greater than an issue of cash “but somewhat really an issue of value as a member of society that’s being imposed on women, no matter their selections,” Seulgie Lim, assistant professor of politics, tells WalletHub in an article the state of girls’s equality within the U.S.
The gender pay gap isn’t a latest problem, but it surely’s compounded by aspects like inflation, or a world pandemic. “One might imagine that a difference of 10–20 cents for each dollar shouldn’t be much,” says Lim. “But when we bear in mind the variety of years one is within the workforce, that gap of just a number of cents will exponentially increase through the years.”
The U.S. is ranked 83rd on the planet for girls’s health and survival, while “Black women and other women of color within the U.S. proceed to be at the underside of healthcare and repair,” says Lim.
“The treatment of girls’s pain and health continues to be seen not as a matter of healthcare but somewhat as a political issue, which the recent decision of the Supreme Court clearly shows — women’s bodies proceed to be seen as something that ought to and might be regulated by the federal government.”
Lisa Genova ’92
A Neuroscientist explains when it’s time to start out worrying about your memory— Inc.
Inc. columnist Jessica Stillman admits that “the pandemic was not kind to my memory.” So she went “digging around online and discovered I used to be not alone. There are very real neurological reasons why two years of confinement, boredom and stress can result in a foggy mind and forgotten permission slips.
Which is why a TED-Ed talk by Lisa Genova ’92, a neuroscientist and bestselling writer, offered helpful ways to inform the difference between normal forgetfulness and dementia.
Forgetting where you parked on the mall can occur to anyone, but forgetting the way you got to the mall, and even not recognizing your automotive might be a symptom of Alzheimer’s, says Genova. The type of forgetfulness that points to Alzheimer’s probably the most is forgetting routine activities, or habits which have built muscle memory around them.
Genova advises having conversations with a health care provider about brain health and memory, caring for it “just as you do together with your heart health or reproductive health.”
Mark Erelli ’96
Losing his vision has opened Mark Erelli’s eyes — The Boston Globe
Two years after the primary symptoms appeared, singer-songwriter Mark Erelli ’96 is taking in every sight he can, before his eyesight is gone completely. Erelli talked with The Boston Globe’s Lauren Daley about his diagnosis — an inherited retinal disease called retinitis pigmentosa — his journey since then, and the way he’s learning to see life in a distinct light. He’s also writing through the experience, and his latest album, Lay Your Darkness Down, is releasing in February.
“This material is probably the most intimate thing I’ve ever done,” Erelli says. “Songwriting and singing, generally, is probably the most vulnerable things you may do. So to sing about something you’ve lost — there’s an additional layer of vulnerability.”
Bill Jeter ’76
Alumni Feature / Bill Jeter MFA ’98 — Minneapolis College of Art and Design
Science, social activism, jazz, etymology, and history can all be present in the art of Bill Jeter ’76. He spoke with student Amanda Rose on the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, where he received his M.F.A. in 1998, about being a “manufacturer of meaning.”
Jeter is a resident artist at Homewood Studios, a gallery, studio for artists, and community meeting space in North Minneapolis. His annual show, the Black History Month Emporium, provides an area for people to create and encounter elements of Black history and culture.
He likes to work with on a regular basis objects — like a $20 bill — and provides them a distinct context.
“I’m fascinated by Harriet Tubman and I actually have done several pieces focused on her, just like the screen printing of a Harriet Tubman $20 bill,” he said. “The thought of Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill is ironic because in 1857, Harriet bought her own mother for 20 dollars. Twenty dollars, are you able to imagine that?
He created a poster that takes the concept of “black” and turns it into the element carbon. “I began these items on a cosmic scale. There’s so much more happening, and this atom of carbon looks like a goal. We’re all manufactured from carbon, living black matter. So we’re all manufactured from black matter, carbon.”