This was confirmed when several volunteers came up to the podium after my address and told me to transcribe what I had just said and “send it out to everyone” because “this is not well understood; yet, when one gets it, it makes great sense.” The main question for many was, “How can we go global and still have the liberal arts college in the Champlain Valley we love so much and wish to support?” Of course, this kind of misunderstanding has repercussions on a number of levels, including the ability of those very volunteers to explain today’s Middlebury as they engage classmates and others on behalf of the College. With this in mind, I’d like to explain the “Middlebury Model”—along with the exciting opportunities it presents to our students and the entire institution.

Middlebury is and always will be a residential liberal arts college, forever aspiring to do even better what it has been doing so well for 209 years. This was affirmed in the College’s latest strategic plan and is central to our thinking as we contemplate any new programs or changes to existing ones. Throughout much of our history, Middlebury has been more than a residential liberal arts college. For almost a century, the College has developed a number of graduate and nondegree programs that serve distinct cohorts of students, and many of those programs also serve our undergraduates in significant ways. None of these programs operates on our campus during the regular academic year, and therefore none of them takes away from our mission and the experience of our 2,400 undergraduates. Rather, these programs enhance our undergraduates’ education and serve to position the College in a unique and enviable standing among its peers and within higher education at a most opportune time. It is this unique combination that we are now calling the Middlebury Model.

So, what is the Middlebury Model, and what are those things that build upon and around our undergraduate liberal arts core? There are our 10 world-renowned, intensive summer Language Schools; our 8 Schools Abroad, which now operate through partnerships with universities in 34 cities on four continents; the Bread Loaf School of English, which is the largest graduate program in English literature in the country; the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the first (founded in 1926) and most prestigious conference of its kind; and now the Monterey Institute of International Studies, a graduate school of 750 students that offers professional MA degree programs in international policy and management, nonproliferation studies, translation and interpretation, linguistics, and language education.

The combination of these programs, with the undergraduate college at the core, represents a unique institutional model that should not be mistaken for a university. The size, nature, and feel of the College remains small, intimate, and caring, focused on the undergraduate student with a definitive spirit that runs through our 209-year history. At universities, undergraduate students compete with graduate students for the faculty’s time and attention—and usually lose. This is not surprising: graduate students provide important professional support to university faculty in both the time they spend with undergraduates and the work they do as research assistants.

Though the College has developed a number of graduate and nondegree special programs since 1915, it has done so in a way that preserves the centrality of undergraduate education and ensures that our undergraduate students remain at the center of attention. That is, none of the nonundergraduate programs alters the special environment we have created for our students over two centuries: the Language Schools, the Schools Abroad, and the Bread Loaf School of English, all of which award graduate degrees, operate either during the summer months, or far away from campus, either in Monterey, California, or at 34 sites around the world. There is no time when our undergraduate students are in session and must compete with graduate students for our faculty’s attention or campus facilities.

The Middlebury Model is also unique in the way in which our undergraduates can enrich their education by taking advantage of the College’s graduate and special programs. Our 10 intensive summer Language Schools enroll 1,450 students each summer; approximately 10 percent are Middlebury undergraduates, most of them rising juniors who are preparing to study abroad during their junior year. The intensive immersion summer program covers a full year of college course work in seven or nine weeks, and prepares our students well for learning a new language and culture.

Our Schools Abroad enroll about 550 students each year. Approximately 450 of those students are undergraduates. (The rest are graduate students pursuing MA degrees in French, German, Italian, Russian, or Spanish.) Among the undergraduates, 58 percent are from Middlebury and 42 percent are from other leading American colleges and universities. The non-Middlebury students say they choose Middlebury programs because of their rigor, the intensive immersion approach to learning, and their proven effectiveness.

Our Bread Loaf School of English (BLSE) enrolls nearly 500 students each summer. Currently, no undergraduates study at BLSE, though there are routinely 25–30 recent Middlebury (BA) graduates enrolled at the School of English each year. In addition, many of the 2,100 MA degree holders teach in secondary schools across the country. Many are doing groundbreaking work in inner-city and poor, rural high schools, and often send their very best students to Middlebury, serving as incredibly valuable, unofficial admissions officers. The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference awards approximately 20 fellowships each summer to Middlebury rising seniors who have shown great promise in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction writing so they can attend the 11-day conference.

And finally, there is Monterey, which will become a legal part of the College on June 30, 2010. Come next year, Monterey will, first and foremost, serve a population of approximately 750 graduate students from around the world, but, because it operates 2,600 miles away, it will not interfere with our undergraduate program in Vermont. It will, however, offer our undergraduates a range of opportunities that will enhance their undergraduate academic experiences at Middlebury, something no other liberal arts college can offer its students.

Within the next two to three years, we expect to offer several “4+1” dual-degree programs that will allow Middlebury undergraduates to complete their BA and MA degrees in five years in a number of international policy related areas. In addition, a number of Middlebury juniors will be able to spend a semester in Monterey to take graduate-level courses in areas that complement their undergraduate studies—for example, students who major in international politics and economics, international studies, and environmental studies will be able to take courses in the School of International Policy and Management. Similarly, students who are majoring in a foreign language, or those who are interested in linguistics, might very well spend a semester at Monterey and take courses in linguistics, language education, and, for the truly advanced students, translation and interpretation. And students from a wide range of majors who are interested in the scientific or policy aspects of biological, chemical, and nuclear nonproliferation will be able to study at the Institute’s renowned James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

What we will not see following the integration of Monterey into Middlebury is a change in our focus on undergraduate education. Our model is designed to encourage the development of outstanding graduate and nondegree programs that can serve their respective student populations without sacrificing the focus of our core enterprise—the undergraduate, liberal arts college in Vermont. In fact, the model allows us to reinforce that focus while creating new opportunities for our undergraduate students’ four-year experience.

In addition to the increased curricular opportunities for our students, we will also see the benefits of a larger and more interconnected global alumni network. If we view our alumni network as the graduates of all our programs, it would grow from the 28,000 who currently make up our living alumni of the undergraduate college, to more than 45,000. This larger number includes the 8,500 advanced degree holders from the Language Schools; the nearly 2,100 MA degree recipients from the Bread Loaf School of English; and Monterey’s 8,400 alumni. In addition, more than 25,000 individuals have attended the Language Schools as nondegree students, and many, including myself—I attended the School of Russian for two summers prior to joining the Middlebury faculty in 1984—feel great loyalty to the College for the opportunities the Language School experience made possible.

The expanded alumni network is another example of how Middlebury differs from all of its peers: The College remains committed to providing the personalized, undergraduate experience one expects at the very best liberal arts colleges in the country, while, at the same time, providing some of the benefits one usually sees only at a much larger institution—benefits that redound significantly to our students academically, professionally, and socially.

The Middlebury Model, then, is very different from the traditional university model. It allows the College to become the global liberal arts college for the 21st century—to prepare our students for the century’s big challenges—while, at the same time, preserving and strengthening its core, the undergraduate liberal arts program, in ways that no other liberal arts college can match.

These days, no one’s too surprised to hear about parents who write a high school daughter’s college entrance essay, or even call a young adult son’s prospective boss to discuss the terms of a job offer. That’s parenting, 21st-century style. But as Wendy Mogel ’73—author of the perennial bestseller, The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children—was gathering material for her forthcoming book, The Blessing of a B-, she heard a tale that pushed the limits even further. It was about parents who got a divorce but didn’t tell their kids, worrying that it might upset them. The explanation for Dad’s absence? He was on an extended business trip.

Such stories distress, but no longer surprise, Mogel. The clinical psychologist and author has spent much of the last decade traveling around the country talking to worried parents from all walks of life. Her primary objective is to help parents understand how important it is to let their children make—and learn from—their mistakes and to understand that shielding them from life’s lessons can be counterproductive.

Mogel lives in Hollywood and is married to the successful producer, screenwriter, and novelist Michael Tolkin ’74. She has found that parental anguish is particularly intense in the perfection-obsessed private schools and palatial homes of Los Angeles. These are the kind of parents she saw in her clinical practice and the kind she feared she was becoming when her children were little.

“I was a regular old clinical psychologist—and then I had little children and I found Judaism,” Mogel says, of the faith that changed her view of parenting. With a friend, she began attending services and found herself moved, and supported as a parent, by what she found there. Suspending her practice, she spent a year studying Judaism full time; her young family began celebrating the Sabbath at home. (Today, she and Tolkin belong to Temple Israel of Hollywood and have supported the Jewish community at Middlebury College for many years.)

“When I began studying Judaism, one of the first things that struck me was how directly it spoke to the issue of parental pressure,” Mogel writes in Skinned Knee. “According to Jewish thought, parents should not expect their children to be anyone other than who they are. A Hasidic teaching says, ‘If your child has a talent to be a baker, don’t tell him to be a doctor.’”

Skinned Knee, which grew out of the lectures Mogel developed for a Jewish parenting class, started out small. “They printed 5,000 copies of what they thought was a nice Jewish parenting book,” Mogel says. In spite of a rave review in Publishers Weekly, news of the book traveled mainly through word of mouth, from parent to parent, teacher to teacher, school to school. “Some independent schools give a copy to every new parent, others to every teacher. I’ve heard of acting classes using it, and it’s used in seminaries. So sales do remain brisk!”

Ten years after that first modest press run, there are some 300,000 copies of Skinned Knee in print, and the book has gone back on press 28 times. “The surprising thing is that it became an important book in the non-Jewish community, especially in the world of independent schools,” she says. “People overcame their prejudices about a parenting book that used religious thought as its foundation. They were willing to embrace traditional Jewish thought, and see it as universal, as something that is old and true—and that’s how I felt when I stumbled upon the Talmud.”

In Skinned Knee, Mogel writes that modern parents tend to be like “cruise ship directors who must get [our children] to their destination—adulthood—smoothly, without their feeling even the slightest bump or wave.” That overprotective approach means parents deprive children of essential experience: “Those bumps are part of God’s plan.”

Mogel’s bestseller counsels parents to let their children take risks and make their own mistakes. It also turns to traditional Jewish teaching to explore a series of “blessings” that enrich family life and create stability—including honoring parents, valuing work, embracing tradition, and experiencing gratitude.

Jewish tradition was not part of Mogel’s childhood in Manhattan. “I was not from a religious family at all,” she says. “Michael had a bar mitzvah and was confirmed, but neither of us had anything to do with religion until our first daughter, Susanna, was three.”

As interest in Skinned Knee grew, Mogel was asked to speak all over the country, at schools, synagogues, and gatherings of professional organizations. “I was surprised and very gratified—and I found out that my true calling was not being a therapist or even being a writer, but being a public speaker,” she says. “It’s my favorite thing to do. I am a circuit preacher.”

Mogel’s dance card for speaking engagements is sure to be even fuller when The Blessing of a B- is published in September. “The working subtitle is something like ‘raising resilient teenagers in a nervous world,’” she says. “I started this book five years ago, and my kids are now 18 and 22.” Older daughter Susanna is a Haverford graduate and teaches nursery school; younger daughter Emma, who enjoys playing bluegrass music and songwriting, is at the University of Chicago.

Stories about the girls abound in Skinned Knee, but for B- Mogel has drawn instead on the stories that administrators, teachers, and parents have told her as she travels the country. She is well aware of parents’ anxiety—indeed their terror—about their children’s futures.

“This was a much, much harder book to write because it’s a harder topic,” says Mogel. She sees teenagers today as both pressured and pampered—a poisonous recipe for raising confident, independent human beings. “We’re constantly taking their emotional temperatures. The reflex is to overprotect, overindulge, and overschedule.”

But being protected from reality makes kids much less able to cope with it. School administrators and teachers find that girls these days are anxious, boys emotionally shut down. “They call them ‘teacups’ and ‘crispies’ because they’re so fragile, dependent on their parents and burned out from APs and worries about burnishing their transcripts,” says Mogel. “But I want kids to be able to range free a bit and to be around knives, matches, divorce, cancer, death. I want teenagers to have to make choices about alcohol, drugs, and sex.”

Parents have to make tough choices, too—including ethical ones. “When someone calls from school and asks, ‘Is this late slip forged?’ you have to say yes, even if it gets your child in trouble,” Mogel says.

There are qualities in this generation of teenagers that give Mogel hope. “They’re so passionate. There is exuberant, tender, relaxed, collegial mutual support between the genders. They are worldly, and they’re not as prejudiced as we were. And when they’re not too stressed, their entitlement shows itself as energetic idealism and can lead to creative solutions to social problems.”

Mogel says that she again drew on Talmudic wisdom for the new book, but in a less prescriptive way. Rather, the religious framework of the book gives parents something to lean on themselves—the potential for pleasure in watching the circus of adolescence, a sense of the sturdiness of reality, and the power of human resilience. Says Mogel, “Jewish teachings are really about having faith in the future.”

During my four years at Middlebury, I pledged my allegiance to the Panther. I woke up before sunrise on J-term mornings, merging with other bundled figures slinking along the unplowed sidewalks to track practice, ran the workouts and the meets, even captained the team my senior year. I was dedicated. But, deep down, I daresay, my loyalty was with the Great White Yak.

The Great White Yak was a mascot dreamt into being by my sports-happy intramural friends. We rallied behind the yak, of all animals, because it was fearsome and obscure, an animal whose potential for mascotdom was untapped in the realm of professional sports. We chose white yaks to reflect our pure, angelic sportsmanship, and our white yaks were “great” because, well, we were a confident bunch.

To cement the fraternal bonds of our members, we tagged two Greek letters, chosen simply based on their aesthetics, to the team’s name, making us the Xi Omega Great White Yaks. We even designed a logo, the symbols for xi and omega encircled by the outline of a yak, for our uniforms. We wore that insignia like a tattoo, and three years, three Yak jerseys, a hat and a pair of shorts later, we were a bona fide franchise—some 30 players that, in different permutations, fielded a hockey, soccer, broomball and softball team.

Our players ranged in ability from a kid from India who had never seen ice before, let alone played hockey, to two Minnesotans and a Canadian, retired from the men’s and women’s varsity hockey teams (Division III national champions, mind you), who had ice in their veins.

The energy my friends put into the team was contagious. As a varsity athlete, I was torn between the two levels of play. I thought it was against my better judgment to play in intramural games, for fear that I could injure myself and jeopardize my track season. But, while I managed to abstain from a few sports (hockey and softball), soccer and broomball were my guilty pleasures. Of course, concealing my closet intramural addiction was tricky, and I, admittedly, didn’t do so well at it. I lined up on the indoor track decorated with bruises from broomball spills. And just as I had feared, I jammed my foot enough in indoor soccer to cause a season- and career-ending (since it was my senior spring) stress fracture that secured me a few months in a supportive boot.

At the time, I was devastated by the injury (and to this day still have pangs of regret), but I was recently reminded, albeit bittersweetly, of what I had sacrificed my varsity career for—an indelible bond among Yaks. When one of our own lost his father to cancer, a core group of us flew to his hometown in Nebraska for the funeral. Not a second thought was given to what we’d do after the service. We played a game of Wiffle ball in his backyard and reverted right back to our Yak ways, heckling whoever was at bat and never, of course, forgetting the score. As close as we are, it was a sad day, the saddest most of us had ever experienced in our 24 or 25 years, and yet, we found comfort in that game. It was our way of showing our friend that we were there for him. And the simple, Norman Rockwell-esque scene of us playing showed me that I was wrong in ever thinking it was against my better judgment to be a Yak. As ridiculous as the Yak bond can sound, we’ve gone from being teammates to extended family, and being a Yak was the best judgment call I’ve ever made.

Megan Gambino ’06 is an editorial assistant at Smithsonian magazine.

Often the most illuminating books of social history serve two purposes: They dissect past events with clear understanding, and they reveal how those events inform the present day.

So it is with Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took On New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City (Random House, 2009), an engaging and instructive work by Anthony Flint ’84. While focused on a compelling conflict over the fate of a few blocks of Manhattan in the late 1950s, this book also establishes a context for today’s battles over how—and especially where—the U.S. economy grows. Flint, a longtime reporter at the Boston Globe now working for the Boston-based Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, reveals how preserving communities enables both strong local economies and a flourishing local spirit.

The Moses of the book’s title is not the leader from Scripture. But in the realms of urban development following World War II, Robert Moses was something of a minor deity. His city of the future was all streamlined modernism, sleek towers and efficient highways. Moses dominated the field of city planning and provided structures that stand to this day, especially in New York City: the Henry Hudson Bridge, the Triborough Bridge, the Cross Bronx Expressway, and more.

This medicine for urban congestion, however, had side effects. Neighborhoods were butchered, communities broken, and thousands of families driven from their homes. As head of an independent transportation agency, Moses had the power to designate properties as fit for condemnation, build projects, and levy tolls without government oversight or public accountability. As Flint convincingly argues, Moses answered to no one.

He therefore found an unexpected nemesis in Jane Jacobs, a writer on architecture who with her husband had purchased and restored a simple home in Greenwich Village. Moses proposed building a highway through nearby Washington Square Park, with the demolition of 130 buildings, elimination of local streets, and forced relocation of 150 families and countless businesses. Jacobs went to work, organizing neighbors, printing pamphlets, and winning friends in the city’s political organization (including a young Ed Koch, the future mayor, who sometimes played his guitar in Washington Square Park).

When Jacobs thwarted the highway, Moses returned with a grander scheme—an urban renewal for the Village that would drive 600 families from their homes for what he called “the larger good” of new housing towers. Having seen identical displacement when Moses built Lincoln Center, Jacobs redoubled her efforts to ignite community opposition.

With that framework, Flint’s story becomes about more than two development adversaries; it reveals a unique moment in history. America was used to following the lead of powerful white men like Moses, who scoffed that the opposition was only a bunch of, well, mothers. The nation was unaccustomed to reckoning with smart, determined women like Jacobs. In fact, her resistance led, predictably, to investigation for possible communist sympathies. And yet, by invigorating a community on its own behalf, she defeated the urban renewal plan—
a success that presaged the outspokenness that soon swept America. Only five years later, those same streets Jacobs had rescued birthed a blend of creativity and protest that redefined the individual’s relationship to institutional authority, rewrote the rules of public discourse, and led a young troubadour to conclude that the answers to life’s uncertainties were blowing in the wind.

Flint’s narrative is convincing in part because his reporting is thorough. His characterization of Moses’s ego, for example, is supported by quotations from his unpublished poems (so horrible they’re guaranteed to make a reader cringe and grin). Likewise Flint captures Jacobs’s gift for protest symbolism, for example holding a ribbon-tying ceremony at a site where the community hoped to prevent new construction.

One of the book’s strengths is that its position is not absolute, noting for instance that history has been kind to Moses. Methods aside, his roads and bridges continue to serve millions of people. Similarly Jacobs’s activism never fully addressed New York’s chronic shortage of affordable housing.

Still, their conflict offers meaningful lessons for today. America is littered with big-box stores in former farm fields, while downtowns struggle to remain economically viable. New urbanism seeks to reaffirm the notions of sustainable economy and colorful community that Jacobs espoused. The streets Moses called “blighted” are now homes to NFL quarterbacks and their supermodel girlfriends. Community, as Flint ably proves, is worth the inefficiency.

**

“We all live in two worlds: the world we physically inhabit, and the world we carry within us,” muses author Stephanie Saldaña ’99. The newly minted Harvard Divinity School graduate arrives in Syria in September 2004 for a year’s residence as a Fulbright Scholar. The Iraq War has thrown the entire Middle East into turmoil; Damascus teems with refugees. The city of outcasts and exiles seems a good fit for the 27-year-old as she flees fresh heartbreak and starts to question her own belief system.

In The Bread of Angels: A Journey of Love and Faith in Damascus (Doubleday, 2010), Saldaña beautifully details how she navigates two odysseys simultaneously. She confronts the external challenges of living as a stranger in a strange land, while facing even more daunting inner trials. Threads from her family’s dark past, woven into the story of her year in Syria, illuminate how the shy Catholic girl from Texas ends up a restless voyager who feels “at home in countries with a history of war.”

Buzzing with religious, ethnic, and linguistic diversity, Damascus welcomes the young American woman warmly. Saldaña’s nuanced portrait of the vibrant Middle Eastern city contradicts stereotypes of Syria as anti-American and Islam as intolerant. As she explores the tangle of ancient religions and modern politics, she befriends a fascinating array of people. From them, she gains strength and wisdom that help her along a difficult emotional and spiritual path.

Her Fulbright mission is to study the Muslim view of Jesus. (In Islam, Jesus is a much-loved prophet who is human, not divine.) She must tackle practical matters first, however: finding lodgings, improving her knowledge of Arabic, and preventing her mind from wandering back to Boston and the man who suddenly stopped loving her.

She rents a room in a sprawling Ottoman-era house in the city’s old Christian quarter. Her landlord becomes a grandfatherly protector, her 73-year-old “knight in shining polyester pants.” At Damascus University, she joins the post-9/11 flood of foreign students—from American Mormons to radical Iranians—taking Arabic language classes. (At $200 a month, its intensive immersion program is the world’s fastest, cheapest path to fluency.) Chatting with local street vendors becomes a way to practice vocabulary and to make the loud, energetic city feel like home.

But Saldaña also seeks refuge in the desert, at the remote Christian monastery of Mar Musa. Although she and God are “for the most part . . . no longer on speaking terms,” she decides to undertake a grueling program called the Spiritual Exercises. During a month of silence and prayer, the desert becomes a mirror for deep inner reflection. She tries to understand why she carries “the broken world inside of [her] heart.” Abbot Paolo and novice monk Frédéric patiently support Saldaña through her spiritual journey. When she returns to Damascus to study the Qur’an, she shares her lessons in letters to Frédéric.

The memoir encompasses “a year of such impossible richness” that it needs “no embellishment,” the author notes. Saldaña has published previously as a poet and journalist, but this is her first book-length project. Her grace, wit, and unsparing honesty make The Bread of Angels a compelling chronicle.

Insights tumble forth as Saldaña witnesses history, learns Arabic’s subtle gradations of meaning, and discovers surprising compassion and beauty in the Qur’an. Most moving is how profoundly she longs for a “partner in loneliness.” And how God answers her prayer in a most unexpected way.

Saldaña’s sweeping tale would work gloriously as fiction. Poignant and powerfully told, the story takes your breath away because it is true.

—Elisabeth Crean

How to Argue
By Jay Heinrichs ’77

How to Make a Cell Phone Call at Bread Loaf
By Sandy LeGault, MA English ’87

How to Tell a Story in 140 Characters
By Sarah Franco ’08

How to Save Money on Your Heating Bill This Winter
By Jamie Hand ’08 and Thomas Hand ’05

How to Make the Perfect Sheet of Ice
By Butch Atkins

How to Take a Nap
By Judith Dry ’09

How to Take a Damn Good Picture
By Casey Kelbaugh ’96

How to Dance the Tango
By Ana Maria Wiseman, DML Spanish ’96

How to Bring Happiness to Yourself—and to Those Around You
By François Clemmons, Alexander Twilight Artist in Residence

How to Feed 2,400
By Middlebury’s Dining Services

How to Make History
By Jane Chaplin, Professor of Classics

How to Bake a Cake—Using Electrical Currents
By Noah Graham, Associate Professor of Physics

How to Spot an Art Fake
By Richard Saunders, W. Cerf Distinguished College Professor

How to Keep Stress Out of the Workplace
By Hanni Guinn ’99

How to Read a Poem
By Brett Millier, Reginald L. Cook Professor of American Literature

How to Find a Job—When You’re in Mid Career
By Jaye Roseborough, Executive Director of Career Services at Middlebury

How to Cry on Cue
By Mathew Nakitare ’10

How to Roll a Kayak
By Christian Woodard ’11

How to Beatbox (Come on, you’ve always wanted to know how, right?)
By Patch Culbertson ’09

How to Argue

By Jay Heinrichs ’77

The rhetorical question I like isn’t “How can I win arguments?” but “How can I win agreement without anger?” Some hors d’oeuvres to stimulate your argumentative appetite:

Set your goal. Your biggest mistake is to try to win for the sake of winning. Unless you’re debating for the fun of it, the argument itself is no goal. What do you really want? To talk your audience into making a particular choice? To get them to do something you want? Or to strengthen the ties that bind? (You know I’d do anything for you, even if it means spending vacation with your mother.) Win your goal, not the argument.

Switch to the future tense. Aristotle’s favorite form of rhetoric, deliberative argument, deals with choices, which are all about the future. The past is the realm of forensics—crime and punishment. (It’s the Republicans who got us into Iraq in the first place.) And the present? Values. (A good husband would pick up after himself.) You see what happens when our nation’s “blowharderati” favor blame and values over choices. The same holds for households and school boards.

Use your audience’s beliefs and expectations. To persuade a political independent to vote for gay marriage, don’t lecture her on homophobia. Play on most independents’ dislike of Big Brother in our private lives.

Most important, to gain agreement, be agreeable. Be someone your audience likes and trusts. Aristotle noted that trust carries more persuasive power than the most airtight logic. And Aristotle was a man to be trusted.

Jay Heinrichs ’77 is the author of Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us about the Art of Persuasion.

How to Make a Cell Phone Call at Bread Loaf

By Sandy LeGault, MA English ’87

Stand in the parking lot in front of the Bread Loaf Barn, closer to the Barn than to the row of pine trees. Check for a signal.

If there are no bars, put on your walking shoes and cross Rte. 125 in front of the Bread Loaf Inn, holding your cell phone aloft. With the Inn to your back, walk around the left end of the stone wall and head for the field. At any moment you might get a signal.

Or, you might not.

In pleasant weather there will be a mowed path that bisects the field and will take you to the top of the hill. In the winter it might be a little trickier. Check your phone as you proceed up the path (you might get lucky). When you’re at the top of the hill, make a sharp left and walk about 10 feet, heading east.

Right about . . . THERE. If you have the right cell phone company and if the winds are blowing your way and if the sun and moon and stars are in alignment, you should have enough of a signal, probably only one bar, to make your call or check your messages. Good luck!

Sandy LeGault is the director of admissions for the Bread Loaf School of English. She lived on the Bread Loaf campus for 25 years, during three of which she owned a cell phone.

How to Tell a Story in 140 Characters

By Sarah Franco ’08

Hemingway once told a story in six words: “For Sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.” In the Twitterverse, tweets and twits get 140 characters.

Coleridge might say that a tweet is a lot like an epigram: “A dwarfish whole, its body, brevity, and wit its soul.”

It doesn’t seem like much, but one should never underestimate the power of a short, declarative sentence or a pointed question.

One could tweet on the banality of life in the face of death and be just as masterful as though one had written an essay. To wit:

While I agonized over toilet bowl cleaner, her friend called to say she was dying. The friend settled on Heaven; I settled on Mrs. Meyer’s.

Sarah Franco ’08 tweets under the moniker @sarfrancisco

How to Save Money on Your Heating Bill This Winter

By Jamie Hand ’08 and Thomas Hand ’05

1. Attics: There are often many leaks from the living space into unconditioned attics. These can be sealed with materials like caulk or spray foam. Also, it is often cost-effective to add additional insulation. We generally recommend cellulose for open attics.
2. Doors: Add weather stripping to exterior doors. Don’t forget basement doors.
3. Programmable thermostats: These allow you to set back the temperature automatically, for when you are not home, not using certain rooms, or asleep.
4. Regular maintenance: Having your heating system serviced annually will improve its efficiency and decrease potential safety issues.
5. The chimney: Try to avoid using open fireplaces on the coldest days. When smoke goes up the chimney, the same amount of outside air is sucked into the house, resulting in a net loss of heat.

Jamie and Thomas are the owners of Hand Energy Services, an energy-efficiency company. They say that it is typically cost-effective to cut heating costs by around 30 percent through efficiency. An energy audit from a BPI-certified contractor will help you evaluate the exact costs and savings of these and other projects. Also, check out dsireusa.org for information on financial incentives in your state.

How to Make the Perfect Sheet of Ice

By Butch Atkins

Acquire a Zamboni. Start by shaving off the exact amount of old ice. Add the precise amount of hot and cold water to the surface, making sure your blade is sharp. Mix everything while maintaining the correct speed. Add a wave and a wink to an excited crowd.

Butch Atkins is a fixture at Chip Kenyon Arena, where he joins Stan Pratt in operating the Zamboni at Middlebury hockey games.

How to Take a Nap

By Judith Dry ’09

First, scope out your spot. Naps can happen anywhere! At the library, push two comfy chairs together so you can stretch out. Mix it up by napping in a friend’s bed. Adventurous earthy types: try sleeping in the grass!

If in private, take your pants off. Waking up with jeans on is hot and really confusing.

Silence your phone. You’ll sound groggy if you answer, and the person who wakes you up will be too polite and will insist on calling back later.

Clear your mind. If you’re this exhausted, you’re probably pretty stressed out. Fuhgeddaboutit. You’re napping now. That’s all that matters.

Judith Dry’s favorite napping spots at Middlebury were the brown leather couches in the Mahaney Center for the Arts.

How to Take a Damn Good Picture

By Casey Kelbaugh ’96

The most important thing to consider as you reach for the camera (or iPhone, Blackberry, etc.) is, what exactly you are trying to capture? In other words, you want to pre-visualize what you want the image to look like within the four corners of your frame. It’s a big world out there, and when pressing the shutter, you are deciding what is in and what is out.

It’s important for you to know what your subject is because you want to fill the frame with that subject. If you are taking a picture of your kids, get in close and really make the picture about the children, rather than their chaotic or distracting surroundings. Sure, placing them in their environment is important in many cases, but it should be clear, in an instant, what or whom the picture is about. There are many ways to isolate your subject from the background—such as focus, lighting, color, contrast, and depth of field—but regardless of the tool, your images will only benefit from clarity of purpose. Keep it simple.

Taking pictures is a physical activity, and it is important for you to move around and experiment with different perspectives and angles. Suppose you are on holiday in Tuscany. You are overwhelmed by the beauty of your surroundings and don’t want the moment to pass without some photographic documentation. There are many ways to capture this, so try a number of approaches. If you want to highlight the plump lemons hanging from the tree limbs, then get right up under those lemons and capture them beaming against the clean blue sky. If you want to get a shot of your travel partner walking along the trail beside you, then try shooting right over your shoulder as you walk. Or perhaps you want to capture the totality of the scene: the silver olive trees, the hills tumbling to the turquoise sea, the distant islands, and your partner in a bright red shirt. In this case, pull back, climb high, get low, zoom in, zoom out, shoot through the vines or between the leaves, but think about the various layers that make up the scene and make that your subject.

Without light, we have no photography. Ideally the lighting conditions in your photograph should work to emphasize your subject. Let the existing light do most of the work, and if you have to augment it with a little flash to delineate your subject, then do so. But try to think about keeping the existing light, and the artificial light from your flash, as balanced, or similar, as possible.

Photographer Casey Kelbaugh’s work can be seen at www.caseykelbaugh.com.

How to Dance the Tango

By Ana Maria Wiseman, DML Spanish ’96

*A must: good posture.

*Never look down, but if you must, try not to be too obvious about it. *Hold on tight, but know when to let go. *Keep in mind that slowing things down is always more difficult than speeding them up. *It’s always harder without a good pair of shoes. *Never force anyone to jump unless you plan on being there to catch them. *Maybe my feelings for the tango are like Lunfardo (Argentine slang): I can’t describe them; I just have to show you. *One last universal thought I learned from this experience: When in doubt, improvise. *Exit, and start again.

Ana Maria Wiseman is the dean of international programs at Wofford College. She teaches the tango each summer as a faculty member in Middlebury’s Spanish School.

How to Bring Happiness to Yourself—and to Those Around You

By François Clemmons, Alexander Twilight Artist in Residence

When you wake up in the morning, smile.

Exercise.

Eat modestly.

Sing. Loudly!

Though he achieved fame as Officer Clemmons on the Emmy Award-winning public television program Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, François Clemmons is best known in Middlebury for his rich tenor voice and his booming laugh. How does he stay so happy? He says: “I sing to the coaches and lifeguards at the natatorium, my peers, my friends, and I sing to myself. At night I even sing to my little doggie! She seems to like it, and it calms my day.”

How to Feed 2,400

By Middlebury’s Dining Services

OK, you have the perfect meal for six: chicken with a cider glaze, roasted fingerling potatoes, green-bean sauté with mushrooms and red pepper, and mixed green salad. Great. Now adapt it to feed 2,400.

Menu Design

Our recipe may be perfect, but can we access enough of the ingredients to feed more than 2,000? “When we use Misty Knoll poultry, we have to include a five-week lead time to grow chickens and eight weeks for turkey, to acquire the volume that we need,” says Middlebury’s executive chef, Bo Cleveland. “Seasonal fluctuations in price need to be factored in, as well. Prices can change without reason, but often they follow patterns of peaks and valleys that you have to include in your calculations. Produce has availability issues that we have to consider also, when selecting a vegetable, salad, or garnish. Changes in weather patterns are crucial when trying to predict when to purchase fresh products for them to arrive at the peak of their flavor. We have to order, receive, and store these large food quantities, which traditionally overlap with our regular business of feeding the College community.”

The Execution

“It takes the manpower of our three kitchens to turn the raw ingredients into items ready for service,” Cleveland says. “We do as much as we can in advance and then calculate the remaining time sequences for what has to be finished the day of the event. Salad greens are washed, tossed, and dried; desserts are finished; bread is baked; sauces and soups are prepared.”

Of course, Cleveland adds, timing is key. “Items that hold well are cooked earlier, allowing us to wait closer to service for more delicate items to come out. Volume also comes to bear, as you have to calculate the rotation of cooked food in the oven with the time it takes to cook serve.”

What You’ll Need

4,800 chicken breasts

75 gallons of cider, reduced

500 pounds fingerling potatoes

400 pounds green beans, trimmed

75 pounds mushrooms, sliced

90 pounds red pepper, chopped

108 pounds butter

240 pounds mesclun lettuce

15 flats cherry tomatoes

100 pounds carrots, grated

15 gallons balsamic vinaigrette

Bon appétit!

How to Make History

By Jane Chaplin, Professor of Classics

The phrase “making history” is most obviously taken to mean “doing something that is certain to be remembered.” In practice, however, a great deal of history is made after the fact, by the rememberers rather than by the actors. The German title Kaiser and the Russian title Tsar (most recently echoed in the appointment by American presidents of various administrative “czars”) are versions of Caesar, but this name was immortalized not so much by Julius Caesar himself as by his posthumously adopted son, who for the first 17 years of his public life (up until the Roman senate bestowed on him the honorific name Augustus) styled himself Julius Caesar. This act of preservation and perpetuation led to the inclusion of “Caesar” in the imperial nomenclature and hence to its availability as a designation for executive authority in the modern world.

This spring, Jane Chaplin will teach a first-year seminar titled Making History. In the course, students will look at the ways everyone, from the Greeks and Romans to Oliver Stone, has made Alexander truly “Great.”

How to Bake a Cake—Using Electrical Currents

By Noah Graham, Associate Professor of Physics

Disclaimer: We know that we’re telling you how to do this, but please Do Not Try This At Home! 1) Preheat oven. Connect electrodes to 120 volt Variac power supply. 2) In a bowl, combine 2 boxes of cake mix, 2 eggs, and 2 cups of warm water. Mix well. 3) Place electrodes into ungreased 13″ x 8″ Pyrex pan and pour in mixture. 4) Set power supply to 100 volts. 5) Cook for 50 minutes; current should be approximately 5 amperes. 6) Disconnect power supply, remove electrodes, and enjoy!

This cake is cooked with 100 percent organic electrons and is energy-efficient cooking at its finest: 100 percent of the electrical power goes into the cake. Noah Graham would like to credit Bob Prigo for bringing this demonstration to Middlebury.

How to Spot an Art Fake

By Richard Saunders, W. Cerf Distinguished College Professor

• First of all, it is important to know that by fake we mean a work of art that is being sold with the goal of intentionally deceiving the buyer.

• An art fake may be a work that is recently made, but advertised as being old.

• An art fake may be an object that is old, but has been intentionally modified (such as adding a fraudulent signature) to enhance its value.

• An art fake may be an object that is recently made to simulate a legitimate work of great value (a mass-production print made to look like a rare, limited edition)

• In other words, art fakes abound.

Keep in mind:

• Fakes have been around almost as long has there has been commerce.

• If there is money to be made by selling some type of object, then a fake probably exists.

• If lots of money can be made by virtue of selling something rare and desirable, then you can be assured fakes of it exist.

• When buying at auction read the fine print so you understand your legal recourse if a disagreement develops later regarding the object’s authenticity.

• When buying from a dealer, ask for a written explanation of the return policy. It probably will be of greater value to you than any “guarantee of authenticity.” And, remember, art dealers can go out of business, too.

Ways to avoid be taken:

• Read and look (a lot).

• As with most things in life, it helps to seek advice before taking action.

• If you are going to spend a lot of money, hire an art consultant to help guide you.

Caveats: the buyer’s mantras. Each of these should be said out loud by anyone reaching for his/her wallet, checkbook, or VISA card:

• If it is too good to be true, it probably is.

• “If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?” —Thomas Huxley (In other words, anyone can make a mistake, even knowledgeable collectors, dealers, and others in the art trade.)

• “There is a sucker born every minute.” It has been long thought that this expression originated with P. T. Barnum, but its origin is now disputed. Regardless, it still rings true.

Bottom line:

• If you cannot afford to buy it, then don’t.

• Buy only what you are prepared to live with and enjoy, even if it turns out to be a fake.

• Beware hubris: there is always someone out there smarter than you are.

• Skip the whole challenge of how to detect art fakes and read Edward Dolnick’s The Forger’s Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century (2008), a fascinating account of the Dutch painting forger Han van Meegeren. If you borrow it from your local library, it won’t cost you anything!

Richard Saunders is the W. Cerf Distinguished Professor and director of the Middlebury Museum of Art. He says that the museum would be glad to consult with readers about works of art they own. Though the museum is prohibited by law from giving monetary appraisals, the staff can provide names of people who offer this service.

How to Keep Stress Out of the Workplace

By Hanni Guinn ’99

Start your day right.

Relaxation begins before you get to the office. Give yourself time in the morning to sit down and eat breakfast. Before you start to eat, take in 10 deep breaths and set your pace for the day.

Meditate

Meditation can be done anywhere and is proven to relax your body and mind. Breathing techniques can be done throughout the day to help relieve you from the building stress of the workday.

Breathe deeply

Breathing isn’t just for meditation. Every breath you take should be full and deep.

Create a clutter-free environment

Clutter is distracting and adds to your stress. Tidy up your desk and see how this changes your mood.

Wear headphones

In work environments where you are sharing space, wear headphones to mute out distractions and let people know not to bother you. Play music that boosts your concentration and has a calming beat.

Use your lunch hour to relax

Take the full lunch break. Don’t eat and work at the same time. Think about your food and chew it completely. When you are done, either get up and take a walk or lie down and take a mini nap.

Avoid distractions

Turn off your IM and avoid checking e-mail when not necessary. By eliminating distractions, you are able to concentrate and create a flow. Being focused and productive can be quite calming.

Laugh

Pretty self-explanatory, isn’t it?

Hanni Guinn ’99 is a licensed massage therapist and owner of Green Mountain Body Works.

How to Read a Poem

By Brett Millier, Reginald L. Cook Professor of American Literature

Reading poetry is different from reading prose. A poem is a concentrated experience, and so is reading one. Because of this strict economy, poetry must use multiple strategies to convey meaning. If prose makes meaning primarily from words, poetry makes it through the shape of the poem itself, the length of the lines, rhyme, meter, rhythm, and sound, as well as the words themselves and the images and ideas they express. William Carlos Williams said that a poem is “a machine made of words.” Reading poetry involves recognizing the working parts of the machine.

First, remember that most poems are written in complete sentences. Find the sentences (subject, verb, object) that make up the poem. Remember that a single sentence may stretch over several lines or even stanzas. Then try to paraphrase the general meaning, paying attention to verb tenses and word choices. Ask yourself: What moved the poet to write? What is the problem being described? What kind of poem is it? (A plea? A prayer? An apology? A description?) Try to describe its tone.

Consider the poem’s form, its architecture of rhyme and meter. What patterns emerge? Is it a sonnet? An ode? A villanelle or sestina? How does the poet use these strategies of form to add meaning?

Now read the poem again. Let it resonate. Poet A. R. Ammons suggested that meaning in poetry works like “a bell rung in a gold surround.” Or you can think of a pebble dropped in a pond, with expanding rings of meaning—always a mix of your own experience and the poet’s—moving out toward the edge of consciousness.

Brett Millier is the author of Flawed Light: American Women Poets and Alcohol

How to Find a Job—When You’re in Mid Career

By Jaye Roseborough, Executive Director of Career Services at Middlebury

Follow the “80/20 Rule” Spend 80 percent of your available job-hunting time (40 hours a week?) in outreach and networking activities and only 20 percent— at most—searching the Web and applying for advertised positions (should be easy to stick to below 20 percent for this!)

Avoid spending much time going to gatherings set up for job hunters. Networking groups are full of other job hunters, not people who can get you to the people who hire.

Avoid “ain’t it awful,” negative types of people. You need to surround yourself with people who are upbeat. Make discussion of your job search off-limits to those who aren’t.

It is a JOB getting a job. Pretend that you are a sales rep and that everyone you meet with is a potential customer down the line. Focus on developing good relationships, not getting the sale.

You are not your former job title or field. Stay open minded. ID some possibilities. Remember to focus on your problem-solving skills and not just on your last job title or field.

Treat yourself to some “time off.” Evenings and weekends are for recharging your battery. Exercise is important for keeping your spirits up. Laughing is mandatory.

Jaye Roseborough has been offering career advice for BLANK years. She encourages all job seekers to make use of Midd resources at www.middlebury.edu/administration/cso/alumni.

How to Cry on Cue

By Mathew Nakitare ’10

*Develop an awareness of your body and your breath and be able to free yourself of muscular and vocal tension.

*Notice what your body naturally does when you cry. The greater awareness you have about this, the easier it will be to cry amid the pressure of performance.

*Find the stimuli in the play that causes your character to shed tears.

*Determine what kind of crying it is and see if you can have the same physical physicality and energy without the tears. This can help take your focus off the tears as the end product and allow you to develop a better sense of your body in “cry mode.”

*Exterior stimuli—a certain light, a light change, a music cue—can help you to trigger the tears.

*Rather than trying to cry, try not to cry. Seeing a character struggling not to cry is often more believable to an audience.

*If, at the end of the day, you still find that you cannot summon tears, just do what a director once told me, “Cover your eyes with your hand so the audience can’t see, screw up your face, quiver your bottom lip, and pretend.”

Mathew Nakitare ’10 recently appeared in a theatrical reading of the play After Darwin.

How to Roll a Kayak

By Christian Woodard ’11

So, you’re underwater, upside down, and strapped in a kayak. Don’t panic.

1. You’re probably blowing bubbles. Stop. Now count to three.
2. Tuck forward to keep your face away from any rocks.
3. Reach the paddle out to the side until you feel air on your hands
4. Imagine a calm, happy place—breakfast in Proctor with the Economist and a gourd of mate, for example.
5. Sweep your paddle down, and use that brace to snap your hips in one movement.
6. Your obliques will contract, rotating your butt from pointing at the sky to pointing back toward the bottom of the river. You should be sitting upright, breathing air.
7. Blow water from your nose and check to make sure no one saw you. If they did, call out “I was just getting a little warm!” and throw a big fist pump to the sky.

Christian Woodward ’11 is a veteran kayaker, who counts PLACES as some of his favorite places to paddle and roll.

How to Beatbox (Come on, you’ve always wanted to know how, right?)

By Patch Culbertson ’09

Hydrate. They call it “spitting” for a reason. In fact, you may want to laminate this page

before commencing your lesson. Repeat the following phrase: “do ts pft dobuh ts buh do pft.” Repeat. Again.

Repeat until your roommate or family gets mad and kicks you out of the room/house.

Once you’ve mastered step two, let’s review another technique, scratching. For a simple scratch, say “kiwi” with a great deal of air: “kehhweh.” The other simple scratch is called a vocal scratch. Try saying the following phrase: “ebideh wha eh woah.” That’s it! You’re doing great!

As for making trumpet sounds and all that jazz, those discoveries come randomly on a chairlift or in the shower while listening to the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. The only tip I can provide for instruction makes me sound like a language workbook: listen and repeat.

Remember—beatbox practice makes improvement, not friends. Know your surroundings, and only perform vocal percussion in designated areas. Those include a cappella practices, a cappella concerts, and solo car rides.

Patch Culberson ’10 is one of the best vocal percussionists ever to grace Middlebury’s campus.