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For youngsters from families in which nobody has ever gone to college, even imagining that possibility can be a challenge. A diverse group of students in Aurora, Colorado, got the nudge they needed from myself and two fellow employees who volunteered on May 6 for 'College Day' at Aurora’s Prairie Middle School.

Three employees from the Landmark Graphics Software and Services office in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, were there to help inspire the students as they represented their alma maters. Volunteers Stewart Levin (Princeton University), Cynthia Chen (Stanford University) and Bob Basker (Yale University) talked about their own career paths, answered questions about both academics and financing programs at their own schools, and helped open students' minds to the possibility of pursuing a college education.

Prairie Middle School students come from a wide variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, so one of the key messages of the day was that even at many of the top-tier schools, finances are not a barrier. More than 600 students, each armed with a list of questions, trooped through the gym, visiting booths for about 20 colleges and universities and exhausting everyone's supply of literature within 45 minutes.

The aim was to get the students thinking about going to college. We wanted to help them start to set their sights on their dreams and aspirations, not on money.

The annual Mt. Princeton climb was scheduled this year for August 1, 2009, to overlap with the Sat-Sun. Buena Vista Gold Rush Days festivities. This provided options for both climbers and nonclimbers. As planned, most of the 10 climbers, going as far back as Class of '62, that day assembled at the lower Mt. Princeton trailhead parking area at 8 AM, shifted folks into high clearance vehicles, and headed up the mountain. (A father and young son went up on the mountain the evening before and climbed separately, and successfully, from there.) I made one strategic mistake in heading up the rear of the convoy after delaying so my wife could take pictures. This resulted in the vehicles proceeding past our standard radio tower parking area and on up the very rough road to the upper trailhead. Rather to my surprise, they did manage to make it there without incident. I, in the meanwhile, parked my car near the radio tower and hoofed up to meet the group.

The weather was mostly sunny with occasional light clouds and, to everyone's relief, stayed that way long into the afternoon, allowing everyone a chance to summit. About 2/3rds of the group succeeded and, while waiting down at the trailhead to make sure everyone got back down safely, I heard from some other hikers about some crazy group dressed in orange and black standing at the summit singing. (It was Old Nassau, of course.) We also did some incremental maintenance and erosion control at the trailhead.

After the climb, most of us headed down to soak at the Mt. Princeton Hot Springs, rendezvousing with various nonclimbers who had spent their day down in the Buena Vista area. Four of us stayed around until Sunday to sightsee in Buena Vista and enjoy the Gold Rush Days events. Scott Smith entered the toilet seat races. Diane Levin wagered $5 on the Duck Race and later got a call telling her that she had won $500. (They didn't mention whether that was for the first place or the last place finish.)

Have you been wanting to get more involved with the Rocky Mountain Princeton Club but didn't know how? This is your chance. Whether you only have time to help with a single event or want to become an officer, we have a spot for you. If interested in offering your time in the service of Old Nassau and your fellow alumni, please contact me at twood@alumni.princeton.edu We're looking for help in the following areas.

* RMPC Secretary - Become an officer of the Rocky Mountain Princeton Club. The club secretary is responsible for fostering communications within the association, organizing the newsletter and contacting new arrivals to welcome them to the club. Help build membership and promote the RMPC with the help of your fellow club officers.

* Regional volunteers - Think there should be more events in your area? Tired of seeing notices of events too far away to join? Then you're the perfect candidate to join the RMPC team as a regional volunteer. Work with club officers and others in your area to plan events, work with the schools committee and meet other great alumni in your area.

* Career Networking - Help plan networking events for RMPC members. The alumni council provides help and guidance; we're looking for volunteers to take the lead and run with this in our region.

* Princeton Book Club - Help introduce the Princeton Book Club to Colorado and Wyoming. The club is a way of recognizing high achieving high school students and raising their awareness of Princeton by presenting them with a book by a Princeton author. This will be the first year that the RMPC participates in the Princeton Book Club and we're looking for volunteers to help get things rolling. If you would like to help, please contact Stew Levin '75 at salevin@alumni.princeton.edu.

* Princeton Prize in Race Relations - After a successful first year here in Denver, we're looking forward to expanding the PPRR in the coming year. If you would like to learn more about how you can help recognize students working in race relations while promoting Princeton, please contact Carlos King '72 at cwking@tigernet.princeton.edu. For more info on the prize, go to http://www.princeton.edu/pprize.

Approximately 20 alumni, family members, and friends attended the first Rocky Mountain Princeton Club visit to see 'Jack' our Adopt-a-Tiger choice at the Wild Animal Sanctuary in Keenesburg, CO, on Saturday, June 20, 2009. There, despite gusty winds and overcast skies that, thankfully, held off from raining more than a scattered drop or two, we saw and heard wolves, bears, lions, tigers and other large carnivores and learned about the operation of this worthy non-profit, largest such in the United States, and the background of how these abused or abandoned animals came there to have a chance to live comfortably and freely on the hundreds of acres of fenced-in prairie land of the sanctuary. We were also pleasantly surprised that the uniform of the volunteers that work there includes an orange shirt and some of our own group were mistaken for them by other visitors. As my wife remarked on the hour and fifteen minute drive back to Denver, that is a great place for kids of all ages. If you were unable to join us this time, we will be repeating the outing once more this year, tentatively in late September, and you may also, of course, head out there on your own. Special thanks go to Anne Merrow for graciously volunteering to serve as our tour guide, and to the American Associate of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) and their exhibitors at their recent convention here in Denver for generously donating handfuls of toys and other knick-knacks as fun prizes for the children in our group.

The Princeton Men's Lacrosse team is playing Sunday, May 10th at 3:00 Mt in the first round of the NCAA Playoffs. We don't have a viewing party set up for this game, but watch if you have access to ESPNU and root for the boys.

RMPC FACEBOOK GROUPS- We have created two groups on Facebook for the Rocky Mountain Princeton Club. One for the entire group and one dedicated to Young Alumni. If you use Facebook, please join one or both of these groups to receive updates and keep in touch with other local alumni. Search for 'Rocky Mountain Princeton Club'.

The Rocky Mountain Princeton Club needs YOU!

You're used to email from me and other volunteers informing you of the latest events of the RMPC, and I'm proud of what a relatively small number of folks have brought to local alumni over the past few years. But in this season of change, it's also time to refresh and revitalize our club.

We need you. Your ideas, your time, and your dedication help provide informative, entertaining, though-provoking and just plain fun opportunities to meet and mingle with past, present, and future Princetonians, and sustain the RMPC.

Below is a list of sample opportunities to lead or just volunteer. If have a little time to spare, and a desire to reconnect with Princeton on a local level, just let me know by reply email. You'll be contacted right away and enlisted!


Officers: traditionally a president, vice-president, secretary and treasurer

Club officers serve as the link between the Alumni Council and the club. In recent years we've also often been the soup-to-nuts event planners, newsletter publishers, and all-around organizers. Read on for other positions to divide up the work of the club.

Schools committee: chair and volunteers

Our schools committee can always use new faces to help interview, encourage, and recruit the finest high school students.

Young Alumni Chair: ten years or less out of Old Nassau

Sorry to say, the current guy isn't looking quite so young any more. Help plan events that bring out the recent grads to the social gathering places most of can't even name. Invent your own fun.

Annual Giving: regional chair AND a special gifts chair

Newsletter editor: a big job for a few days each year, and among the most important since not everyone gets email (believe it or not). WE NEED HELP WITH THIS ONE RIGHT NOW!!

Careers chair

The Yale Club runs a great career program for students and recent alumni right here in Colorado, and they always ask us to join in providing opportunities and experience; we just need a couple volunteers!

Regional vice presidents (Jackson, Colo Springs, Aspen, Vail, West Slope, Durango?)
Want to plan something local? Here's your chance along with some financial support from dues to help you along.

Once again, if any of this appeals to you as a leader or an occasional volunteer, please contact me.

Thanks,
Bob Ireland '76

On the beautiful sunny, temperate afternoon of April 13th, 2008, about forty persons attended a lecture by Princeton Woodrow Wilson School Professor Harold A. Feiveson entitled 'Nuclear Proliferation and the Future of Nuclear Power.' The lecture was held in Renaissance Room South of the Mary Reed Library at the University of Denver. This room is on the second floor of the venerable Mary Reed Building (deemed the most haunted building on DU campus) and is a library in the old fashioned sense of a Reading Room, with high ceilings and windows, books lining all four walls, solid oak tables and chairs, and a working fireplace. Reminded me of my two years in Holder Hall and the Old Commons Dining Hall, now part of Rockefeller College, though with a lot more books. Not having been there before, we didn't realize until an hour beforehand that it would be difficult to find without signage. Fortunately, Melaine Easton of the DU Events and Services Office was able to pitch in and print some signs directing folks to the elevator and stairs to the room. (She also tracked down the errant audiovisual person who was supposed to show up an hour beforehand.)

Having arrived and parked (for free because it was Sunday!) at DU an hour and a half ahead of time, I was able by trial and error to find an entry to the room, open the windows to let the lovely fresh breeze air out the room, and keep an eye peeled for Dr. Feiveson's arrival. Fortunately, I spotted him and his son and daughter-in-law pulling up in front of the building and was able to hail him from the open window and direct him to the room. Bob Ireland, RMPC president, arrived shortly afterwards. Once the A/V person showed and set up a projector and portable screen, we rearranged the tables and chairs in the room, lowered the curtains, moved the projector, and placed the projection screen on top of one of the tables so that the PowerPoint slides would be more visible from the back row. All was set and Prof. Feiveson began his lecture shortly after the scheduled 3 PM published start time.

Harold's lecture provided several facts about nuclear power and weapons that most of us were unaware of. (Dangling preposition ... tough!) Only a tiny fraction (0.7%) of naturally occurring uranium is U235 and suitable as a base for nuclear fuel or weapons. Most is U238. There are some nuclear reactors, primarily in Canada that use U238. These require heavy water (deuterium or tritium) to operate, whereas the rest of the world uses ordinary (light) water. US nuclear power plants use fuel rods only once, a decision/policy that, because the rods are so lethally radioactive that even a minute of exposure is deadly, makes them extremely unlikely to be accessible for weapons, even so-called dirty bombs. These rods are then stored for a period in deep water tanks and then transferred to concrete casks similar in design, though smaller, than the concrete containing the Chernobyl ruins. In France and some other countries, though, spent fuel rods are reprocessed to refine the plutonium that is generated by the radioactive processes, and this plutonium is a much bigger concern for nuclear weapons proliferation. Dr. Feiveson continued with some history of nuclear weapons propagation via technology stolen from a multinational European nuclear facility, to Pakistan, North Korea, Syria, Iran, etc. The key to nuclear weapons is enrichment via gas diffusion or centrifuges that leverage the small differences in atomic mass between Uranium 235, Uranium 238 and Plutonium 239. Many thousands of such devices are needed to make fissionable material in a practical timeframe and Iran is suspected of having tens of thousands in operation or under construction. This is the real worry of nuclear proliferation and disarmament proponents, policy makers and international agencies.

Prof. Feiveson concluded by suggesting that the best way to halt the secret generation and refinement of nuclear raw materials and nuclear waste is to have every nuclear facility jointly owned and operated by more than one country. How this can be accomplished in the current world political, economic and social environment is, of course, unclear, but people of many nations are working towards this goal.

After the lecture, there was a lively formal Q&A session lasting a full twenty minutes, followed by a comparable amount of informat discussion. To thank the speaker, the Rocky Mountain Princeton Club presented him with a framed certificate of remembrance of the date and topic, awarding him the honorary title of 'Ecturerlay Princetoniensis Summa cum Laude' with all the rights, privileges and generally neat stuff that entails.

On the evening of Thursday, May 10, 2007, Princeton History Professor Jenna Weismann-Joselit was our featured Annual Alumni Regional University Speaker, lecturing on the topic “Etched in Stone: The Ten Commandments in Modern America.” The lecture was held in Lindsey Auditorium in Sturm Hall at the University of Denver. Professor Joselit flew out the afternoon before and returned back east the following morning.



Jenna had an enjoyable visit to our Mile High City. Bob Ireland, our RMPC President and who works for United Airlines, personally met her at the gate, maneuvered through baggage claim and drove her to her hotel. She was later picked up by some colleagues who took her to a nice, albeit popular and crowded, Japanese restaurant in the Cherry Creek Shopping Center area about a mile from her hotel. Bob had delivered her a gift certificate for an Indian restaurant in the same vicinity, but she/they opted not to use it. (I used it on Sunday for Mother's Day instead :-) Jenna made sure to drink plenty of fluids and stay clear of alcoholic beverages for 24 hours until she was sure that altitude wasn't going to be a problem.



On the morning of the lecture, after taking care of last minute emails, I picked her up at her hotel and escorted her to some museums and activities around Denver. Due to an accident on the highway, I was about 15-20 minutes late getting to the hotel from my home (being near light rail would definitely have been helpful!) but as most museums didn't open until 10 AM, we had plenty of time to track down a Ten Commandments landmark in Denver that featured in her talk that evening. Took some doing as, apparently, the City of Denver renamed Lincoln Park 'Civic Center Park' sometime in the last decade or so and then further confused the issue by transferring the name 'Lincoln Park' to another park and playground area a couple miles west of city center! Anyhow, based on the court documents Jenna had researched, we did proceed to Civic Center Park, right across the street from the Colorado State Capitol and actually found the controversial tablets.



After finding the tablets, we visited the Denver Art Museum, which had expanded to a new modernistic building last year and caused enough strong pro and con sentiments that it even made the New York Times. Jenna alerted me that I definitely need to bug my son, who is graduating with honors from Northwestern next month, to take our family to Chicago's Millennium Park to see some more striking work by one of the artists exhibited in the DAM's modern art collection. BTW, Jenna insisted on paying her admission fee herself, unaware, as was I, that they ding you an extra $3 if you are not a Colorado resident!



Next stop was lunch at the Wynkoop Brewery and Restaurant, owned by the current Mayor of Denver, John Hickenlooper, who was just reelected with 7/8th of the votes in his favor. On our way in we ran into Rutt Bridges, a friend of mine and a big name in Colorado politics. He made his fortune in oil and gas software and sold his company to Landmark Graphics, shortly before I joined the latter. It being a beautiful day, we ate out on the shaded open air patio, overlooking Denver's Union Station railroad/light rail/bus/shuttle terminal.



After our leisurely lunch, we took the free 16th Street pedestrian mall shuttle back to where I had parked my car and opted to close out the sightseeing with a tour of the Hammond Candy company factory northwest of town. Hammond has been in business since the 1920's and continues to make all its sweets by hand. They are famous for their ribbon candy and their old fashioned candy-canes and have expanded their territory nationwide over the last decade. (I purchased dark chocolate almond bark for my wife for Mother's Day and a ribbon candy for my daughter.)



We got back to Jenna's hotel on time, i.e. around 4 PM and ran through some logistics for her multimedia presentation. I proceeded home to do a quick change and to load up the back seat of my car with a couple of platters of seed cake made according to a couple of recipes from an 18th century mss in the Princeton University Library Special Collections. Another volunteer, Lunden MacDonald, made Gingerbread Wafers from that same receipt book. As inbound traffic was backed up several miles on the highway, I maneuvered my way through back roads and managed to pick of Jenna for dinner at 5:45PM as promised. Unfortunately, the same highway backup had diverted excessive traffic onto the same side roads, so it wasn't until almost 6:15PM that we got to the restaurant for our 6:00 PM reservation, where we met up with the rest of our dinner party and were seated. The restaurant was very accommodating and managed to get us served quickly (though we all would love to go back to Le Central and spend a leisurely dinner there) allowing Jenna and me to hightail it shortly after 7 PM to the University of Denver lecture hall I had arranged with their Religious Studies department.



At this point, some things went south. First, the AV person apparently showed up before we got there and got a call requiring his urgent attention elsewhere on campus. So there was no podium or lapel microphone set up. That was not an absolute disaster as I was able to hook up the laptop myself and Jenna's multimedia content was mostly from a silent film by Cecile B. DeMille. Second, we only had about two dozen people show up for the lecture. This is a clear lesson to me and the Rocky Mountain Princeton Club that we cannot rely on email to get people to put items on their calendar, however attractive the topic. Third, the DU Religious Studies Department, while facilitating the arrangements, seemingly didn't follow through on at least announcing the lecture to their faculty and students at either of the two events they held the prior two days. In hindsight I should have gone to the department in person in the days prior to the lecture rather than relying on telephone and email communications. (No criticism of DU intended here.)



In any event, Jenna got beyond the glitches in masterful fashion and was both pleased and surprised at the gifts we presented her after the question and comment period. The gifts consisted of 1) a recent book by a '63 alum 'Good Bread is Back' highlighted in a recent PAW, 2) a recipe book published by the Rocky Mountain News at an indeterminate date, though most likely in the post-WWII to mid '60s era, of the results of their first ever recipe contest, (The recipes were tested and evaluated by the Emily Griffith Opportunity School. This Denver-plus-alternative school connection dovetails with Jenna's focus on the study of culture through everyday life.) and 3) a transcription of a manuscript 'Book of Receipts' in the Princeton Library Special Collections which I, with the help of the PUSC librarians, deciphered and printed up in a 19 hole bound book on nice parchment-style paper and with covers scanned from a leather bound family bible on my bookshelf.



I did send home some plates of cookies and brownies with most of the attendees and returned Jenna to her hotel at about 10 PM. (I brought the seed cake leftovers to work today and they were _greatly_ appreciated.) I set my alarm and picked her up at 5 AM to drive her to the airport to ensure she was able to catch her 7 AM flight. (From prior experience, I just don't trust the taxi or shared ride companies to follow through with an early morning pickup.) We arrived at the airport in good time and, presuming Jenna's 1:41 PM email of this afternoon was sent from NY or Princeton, she caught her flight and made it back home without undue hassles.



I do want to re-thank the Princeton Alumni Office for their support of the alumni regional speaker program. And the RMPC will be submitting a request soon for possible speakers/topics for this coming year. One of the attendees at our recent planning meeting is a Dean at the CU Health Sciences Center, which has just recently opened a gorgeous new facility, is eager to see if we can dovetail with one of Uwe Reinhardt's periodic visits to Colorado to arrange a combination open house and talk on health care issues and reforms this coming year.

The annual climb of Mt. Princeton was held on Saturday, August 26. Things started off a bit rocky when one of the two dogs that David & Heather Larson brought decided to jump out of their car window (open only a short ways) while their vehicle was moving. Poor Sampson, a yellow Labrador, got a nice trip to a local Buena Vista vet, who examined him, sedated him, took some nice X-rays (no broken bones or hip out of socket), stitched up some cuts, and provided some doggy pain meds and antibiotics. They then spent a leisurly couple of hours at a local coffee shop, ambling around town and the Mt. Princeton Resort Hot Springs. They then took a nice drive through the mountains home. Sampson will be under observation of a week to see if there was just some muscle strain, or whether he has ligament (ACL) damage to his knee. We've all got our fingers crossed that he'll be fine and won't need ACL surgery.

After the excitement, the six of us who were left (three others were stuck in traffic and we couldn’t wait any longer) left contact info with the wives of two of the climbers, one my spouse, Diane, who stayed behind and did some sightseeing, hiking and eating out instead, with instructions to rendezvous with us climbers at 3 PM at the Mt. Princeton Hot Springs Hotel and Resort for a relaxing soak in the hot springs. That soak was not to be. Of our half dozen climbers, half were back down at the trailhead before 2:30 PM but the other half didn't get back down until 4 ...... AM!

We started by piling into two high clearance vehicles, drove up to the radio tower where we left the SUV’s and headed up on foot to the actual trailhead. By that time the sun started peeking through the fog and we took trailhead group pictures. We then hit the trail at about 9 AM and headed up. (It’s about 2 ½ hours at a moderate pace from there to the top.) After crossing the initial tundra and entering the boulder field, I, myself, turned back and parked myself at the trailhead to do erosion control instead when I felt twinges as rocks shifted underfoot due to a ligament strain that I incurred some months ago in my foot. Didn't want to risk getting hobbled way up there. The remaining five, after receiving instruction on how to follow the trail to the summit, continued on up to the summit, with clouds lifting and sun shining down for periods but closing in when they were at the top. They waited about 20 minutes too long (i.e. 20 minutes after hearing a rumble of thunder) for the last climber to reach summit and take a couple of pictures before scrambling down as rain, sleet, and lightning and thunder suddenly started up in earnest. Christine's hair started to stand up, too, a surefire sign to skedaddle. In the scramble back down from the peak, the five split into two groups, one was Shannon and her father Brian, the other was Dick, Anwell and Christine. Shannon and Brian came down the fast way (a more or less controlled slide on their behinds) from the ridge line back down to the trail and hotfooted it the rest of the way down to the trailhead, arriving there about a quarter past 2PM. They rested there for another 15 minutes getting some scrapes cleaned up and then headed down to the radio tower with my car keys so they could hang out, grab bagels and OJ and listen to the radio in climate controlled comfort.

Meanwhile, I waited back at the trailhead until about 3 PM for the other three to show up and then headed back up the trail to see how far down the trail they were and to offer assistance if they were being held up by a twisted ankle or other injury. I didn't see them on the tundra part of the trail, so I continued gingerly up onto the rocky part where I had previously turned around. Following that around a shoulder on the mountain, I still didn't see them, so I continued past the next shoulder. Still didn't see them. Went past a third shoulder, reaching an elevation of just under 13,000 feet and giving me a clear view of the rest of the trail and the summit. They weren't anywhere on the trail! Nor did I get any response besides echos for my shouts in case they were hidden behind some obstacle. At least there was no sign of anyone elsewheres on the slope below the trail. So I hotfooted it (well call it a fast limp) back down to the trailhead and then down to the cars, where Brian and Shannon were waiting. This was around 4 PM.

Brian informed me my wife had just called to say she had heard from Anwell on her cell phone and to call Anwell back as they had clearly lost the trail. Anwell described a view that was not familiar and did not contain any glimpse of the wide open valley in which Buena Vista is situated, so I told her to sit tight and I'd contact the Forest Service or similar local experts and have them contact her about locating where they were and guiding them to safety. I then called Diane back and she and Mary Cuyler flagged down a member of the sheriff's office and explained the situation. Officer Palmer called in Search and Rescue, who took charge. S&R got out to the parking area about 5 PM, i.e. with about 3 1/2 hours of daylight remaining. Once the found out that Dick had a GPS device with him on his wrist, they were able to pinpoint exactly where they were and instruct them via cell phone (which continued to get reception, a small miracle in the mountains) to turn around and ascend back up towards the low saddle on the ridge. They were on the wrong side of the ridge and, had they continued descending, would have most likely found themselves in a steep, narrow canyon requiring ropes to get them out. Even knowing where they were, it took until after 10 PM and nearly 1200 feet of vertical reascent, some of it in snow flurries, before they met up with the rescue party. It was fortunate that Christine, a mountain climbing veteran, was well prepared with both a powerful flashlight and a whistle.

The rescue team then wrapped them in warm, dry clothing (Dick was hiking in shorts and was somewhat hypothermic by then) got some food and warm liquids in them and started a slow, careful descent, with Dick roped to one of the Search and Rescue personnel for safety. It wasn't until 4 AM that they were back safely and transferred to vehicles for the rest of the trip down to the parking area. One of the rescue patrol drove Christine’s Highlander down to the parking area, where it was left for pickup the following day. After debriefing, Mary, Dick’s wife, put them into her car, drove them to her home in Salida, packed the two women into bed and swung over to the local hospital to have Dick checked out as a precaution. They gave him an A-OK and she brought him back home and put him and herself to bed for a nice long sleep!

Actually, that's not the end of the story. Christine and Anwell had discarded they hiking poles at the summit for fear of being human lightning rods. The following day I got an email from another alumnus who had gone up on Sunday instead and wanted to know how things went for the group. In passing he mentioned he had found a nearly brand new pair of hiking poles at the summit! These were Christine’s and I put the two in contact so he could get them to her. He said Anwell’s had also been found by another climbing party, but they didn’t bring them down, assuming, I presume, that the owner was temporarily out of sight answering the call of nature. We are all thankful that everyone got down safely, though scraped, bruised and very tired. The Search and Rescue team has asked me and anyone reading this to get the word out about the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Search and Rescue card which may be purchased at many places around the state (http://www.dola.state.co.us/lgs/fa/sar/Documents/vendors.pdf) to cover most expenses of a Search and Rescue operation for $3.00 for a one year term or $12.00 for a five year term. (Those having current Colorado Division of Wildlife hunting or fishing licenses or hiking certificates are already covered, as are owners of Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation registerd vessels, snowmobiles or off-highway vehicles.)

Our second annual Adopt-a-Peak Mt. Princeton trail maintenance project with the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative was held on Saturday and Sunday, July 15-16, 2006. CFI leaders Dan and Kieran and leaders-in-training Carol and Jimmy met us the first morning at the Princeton Hot Springs Resort parking lot where we finished the requisite paperwork and shuttled over to the trail parking area at the base of Mt. Princeton. From there we reshuffled folks into the available high clearance vehicles and made our way up the road to the campsite a few hundred yards past the radio towers. (Yes, even my Subaru Forrester made it without incident.) We deposited all but two vehicles at the campsite and hiked or rode up four more switchbacks to the Mt. Princeton trailhead area we worked on last year as well. Our volunteer crew consisted of John Karakoulakis '03, Dick Cuyler '58, Kate Andreae '90, myself '75, Mike Kaplan '77 with his two sons Jason and Joseph, and Bob Basker (a colleague at work from Yale!) '79.

While not the hundred degree heat people back in Denver suffered through that weekend, it was plenty toasty anyhow up above treeline near 12,000 feet, with strong sunshine, few clouds, no rain, and desultory intermittent breezes. We used up about 50% more water than normal for this time of year and did wind up a shade early on Sunday to be sure no one ran out of H2O before leaving the mountain. As in our previous year, the majority of the work was in collecting large slab-shaped rocks from a nearby talus slope, pushing them down to the trailhead, and then pushing them straight uphill to form a series of 18 steps from the roadway up to the main trail. We also added a retaining wall adjacent to these new steps, built out a narrow section of trail about 50 feet from the trailhead, and added further erosion control in the nearby trailhead area we worked on last year.

This year we all wore hardhats and suffered no injuries beyond the usual small scrapes and sore muscles. Our resident veterinarian, Kate, did, however, render first aid to a dog which had abraded its pads in the hiking trail and had to be carried down by its owner(s). Remember, summiting a mountain can be equally hard on pets as people, both in strain, potential for injury, and the need for adequate water and sustenance.

There is plenty of work left to do next year and indeed, for years to come and I look forward to enthusiastic RMPC volunteer participation in the future. I myself just returned the favor and assisted the Yale Trail Detail on Mt. Yale, July 29-30.

As a followup on the Mt. Princeton trail maintenance effort in conjunction with the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative, we were mentioned in an 11/4/2005 article in the Salida Mountain Mail newspaper. To access the full article, go to http://themountainmail.com/Search.asp?SearchBox=1 and enter the above date along with the keyword FOURTEENERS to pull up the article 'Collegiate Peaks receive maintenance, trail work from their Eastern namesakes’ alumni.'

The Annual Mt. Princeton climb on August 27th 2005 was preceded by an eventful (blood and sweat, if not tears) two day trail maintenance project in conjunction with the Colorado Fourteener’s Initiative. This was the first time that www.14ers.org group has had any projects on Mt. Princeton. While planning for this event got started fairly late, the Rocky Mountain Princeton Club was able to field half dozen volunteers to assist the three incredibly capable and strong CFI participants: Greg Seabloom, Taryn Olson and Mike Tatro. One of the Princeton volunteers, Sandy Harris ‘74, came all the way from Philadelphia to get partially acclimated to the altitude before the Saturday summit attempt. In addition to Sandy and myself, my son Andrew Levin, his friend Kelly Schneiderman, professional photographer David Mejias ‘98 and his companion Scott Vanyek rendezvoused with the CFI group at the Mt. Princeton Hot Springs Hotel parking lot and headed on up a 4-wheel drive road to establish a base camp a few hundred yards beyond the radio tower from which summit hikes have started the last couple of years. Combining vehicles, we proceeded on to the (lower) Mt. Princeton trailhead and, after the requisite safety lecture, got started.

Trail maintenance has several facets. Our particular group worked on three tasks: 1) building a natural staircase at the start of the trail to prevent erosion, 2) constructing a large cairn to clearly mark the improved trail entrance, and 3) repairing and reinforcing a short section of trail, about 50 feet above the roadway, where two separate paths to the summit join. The staircase effort, which involved the collection and solid placement of large slabs (weighing 200 lbs and up) by sheer muscle power, was the hardest task. And the most rewarding.

On the first day, the weather was fickle, with half a dozen intermittent short rain showers. At about 4 PM that afternoon, lightning and thunder threatened, and we called it a day, returning to base camp. Andrew and Kelly bid us adieu (Andrew is spending his Fall junior semester abroad in Paris, France this year) to speed back to Denver to help a buddy pack and move. The rest of us managed, despite the rain showers, to get a nice campfire going and relaxed with food, song and a small glass of decent made-in-Colorado plonk.

The next morning we breakfasted on OJ and scrumptious muffins (you could hardly believe they came from Sam’s Club) , and, with the exception of Sandy who, due to the altitude, remained at camp to relax and recover, headed out early to the trailhead to tackle the remaining work. Needing several more large flat slabs to complete the trailhead entrance staircase, we all walked or drove up the roadway a few hundred feet to a large talus slope in order to locate these beasts and compel them into rolling down to the road so we could load them onto the back of a CFI pickup. A couple managed to roll right across the road and down the mountainside below, but we managed to get a handful of suitable candidates. Then we heard from Scott that he had injured himself trying to dislodge a boulder. He, fortunately, managed to make it down to the road on his own motive power where he explained that the boulder had slipped and fallen back on his middle finger. Taryn, trained in first aid, stopped the bleeding and David drove him down to Buena Vista to get stitches. Yours truly spent the next three hours as the remaining RMPC volunteer that day. Despite the illness/injury induced shortage of volunteers, we (mostly CFI) managed to complete the planned lower trailhead improvements. It was my special honor to make “Princeton Diploma” certificates of appreciation for those folks to thank them for the incredible job they did under such extraordinary circumstance. I look forward to working with them in the future.

Finally, Saturday morning, the day of the summit attempt, arrived. The remaining four of us (the CFI personnel had to sail off the previous afternoon to drive to their next project) began our climb to the top. Sandy, sad to say, just was not able to acclimate to altitude in the brief period he was out here, and had to turn back. David and Scott sped on ahead, and I, after ascertaining that Sandy would be OK returning at leisure to base camp, followed after them. David and Scott, despite Scott’s bandaged hand, had no problem reaching the summit well before 11 AM. I, however, was still on the trail when the weather closed in before 11:30 AM, an hour or more ahead of schedule. Hail, thunder, lightning, the works. Sensibly, everyone at or near the summit headed back down (I, myself, was working my way up the ridgeline at about 13,800 ft elevation) and, as far as I know, no one was seriously hurt, although several people had scrapes and bruises from slipping on hail-covered rocks. I did hear, secondhand, from other descending hikers that the electric charge near the summit had built up so strongly that some people’s hair stood on end. Scary stuff! A warning that Mother Nature will try to have the last word.

Next year we will again be working with the 14ers group on further trail maintenance, specifically the upper trail entrance. I hope y’all will be able to help out this coming year. Stay tuned for further information.

Just got a new job title at work giving me a chance to work on some really interesting new things. Company blurb follows.

- Stew

'I am pleased to announce the appointment of Stewart A. Levin as Landmark’s new Geophysical Research Fellow. Landmark Research Fellows are given a very high degree of autonomy to work closely with peer scientists and customers on innovative concepts and ideas. Research Fellows are recognized by our industry and the scientific community as being among the top scientists in their fields. They have an international reputation for the research and development of technology relevant to our products and services.

Stewart certainly carries this reputation for excellence and achievement. He received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Princeton University, along with a master of science degree in mathematics and a doctorate in geophysics from Stanford University. He later returned to Stanford University as acting director on the Stanford Exploration Project for one year.

Stewart has been with Landmark since 1998 as a senior geophysicist. His experience includes positions at both Western Geophysical and at Mobil Research and Development, where, for more than 10 years, he wrote over 50 papers and presentations.

In addition, Stewart holds two U.S. patents and was Halliburton’s “Chairman for a Day” in 2003. He is a member of several professional organizations, among them the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers, and the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

Please welcome Stewart in his new fellowship role.'

I was there for a time as well [at The Colorado Historical Society new high-tech
Colorado dioramic relief map exhibit at the Colorado History Museum] but had to leave early...

The RMPC is credited with its sponsorship of Mt. Princeton on a display of
donors facing the map. We were THE ONLY alumni club to sponsor its
14er!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I know the others were approached, but their names
are absent.

Bob Ireland

The Colorado Historical Society unveiled a new high-tech Colorado dioramic relief map exhibit at the Colorado History Museum last night (3/25/05). Funded in part with generous donations by Rocky Mountain Princeton Club members, the map is the center of a 10 minute video, sound and laser light show spans human history in the state boundaries from the early Pueblo Indians through to the present day. Well worth the visit.

As the ranking Rocky Mountain Princeton Club officer in attendance, I had the pleasure of being interviewed for a DVD recording about RMPC participation in the project and my own impressions and suggestions. As it turned out, the interviewer is the proud mother of a daughter who is a high school junior and so mom and I chatted about Princeton's financial aid program and the activities of Princeton's Alumni Schools Committee volunteers in the Rocky Mountain area.

The 8/29/04 Annual Mt. Princeton climb was a great success. Approximately a dozen and a half hardy Princetonians and companions tackled the ascent of this fourteener on a gorgeous day for hiking. You could visit the Rockies for years and never see such a fine day. Sunshine, light breezes and wispy white clouds all day and evening. Wow!

Eleven of us managed to rendezvous for dinner at Sophie's on Highway 24 in Buena Vista the evening before the hike. According to plan, we met for an early dinner (drinks and conversation until about 7 PM, then table seating) and got out in time for folks to be back at their motel rooms by 9 PM for an early bedtime. The next morning started with coffee, juice and bagels in the Alpine Lodge parking lot and we headed over to Mt. Princeton around 7:50 AM. Reshuffling passengers at the lower trailhead parking area, we drove up a bumpy, dusty 4 wheel drive road up to the radio tower (elevation 10,800') we also used last year as our starting point.

Heading up the road on foot from the radio towers we regrouped and joined up with a few folks who hadn't met up with us at the breakfast parking lot. After 4 zig-zags along the road, the trail to Mt. Princeton heads off steeply to the right, marked with an arrow on the road surface. About 100 feet further is a less steep entrance to the trail, which several of us took advantage of on the way back down that afternoon. The trail runs up through alpine tundra and quickly enters into a rocky path. From that point on, the path is almost all the same: walking among, around and over boulders across the eastern face of the mountain. After a while one then turns upwards, scrabbling up a steep area to gain a hundred feet or so elevation to reach the ridge line. Actually there are two suggested ways to reach the ridge line, the first one being the one most people took going up, and the second, farther on path, was used by several to get back down. The general consensus was that the latter is a better choice. Having reached the ridge, hikers then follow it along to the north, gaining a few hundred more feet of elevation, first clearing a false summit and then attaining the real summit. Pictures from the summit will appear soon on the RMPC Images web page. The first summiteer was Ted Burghardt, who received the Rocky Mountain Princeton Club 'First to the Top' orange-and-black tee shirt as his reward.

Thanks to the cooperating weather, everyone who wanted to had an opportunity to climb up to the ridge line and summit, getting fantastic views in all directions. While there were the usual small handful of minor scrapes, ankle twists and muscle pulls, everyone got down to the parking lot safely before sundown. I'm looking forward to continuing this RMPC tradition next year, augmenting it with some other activities next summer such as river rafting or horseback riding.

The RMPC Browns Creek trail hike, while thinly attended, was a wonderful trip. The weather was spectacular (must be because of the Kosher hot dogs we cooked over the campfire the night before :-) and the trail has about the widest variety of scenery and grade one could hope for. (Pictures to appear on the RMPC website.) We (myself, Stephen and Eleanor Long, and Roland Gunther, a summer intern working with me who just graduated from Stanford) started off at the trailhead at about quarter to 9 Sunday morning and gained elevation fairly rapidly over the first half mile or so. Thanks to advance scouting, we did not make the mistake of following the trail straight a short distance past the entrance gate, but remembered to turn sharply to the right and head up the hill. At the crest of the hill, there is a great view to the east. Proceeding on the trail, we met up with the famous Colorado Trail and followed it (to the left) for a short distance until we encountered another trail sign. Here we signed up in a registration book and split (right) from the CT back onto the Browns Creek Trail. This brought us into fairly densely wooded pines. Shortly after the split, we crossed Little Browns Creek and entered a flat wooded area for about a mile. At the end of these woods is a sign at ground level directing hikers to a waterfall off to the left. Well worth the short detour. Returning to the trail, we then gained elevation on switchbacks to the north of the falls, entering an alpine meadow as a reward for our exertions. Crossing the meadow, we reentered the forest, gaining altitude fairly steadily as the trees started to thin out. The final short traverse to Browns Lake is across and up a section of trail strewn with small boulders. Cresting that final hill, 5.5 miles from the trailhead, the lake comes into view perhaps 50 feet away. From the lake one has fantastic view of the surrounding mountains, including Mt. Antero (a fourteener), though not Mt. Princeton.

At Browns Lake, which is apparently man-made with a log dam held in place by chickenwire, we rested and snacked (and snacked and snacked). About 15 minutes later, Lori Williams '81 and Gary Sliger zoomed in, having arrived at the trail about half and hour later than our initial party. We managed to prevail on a group that had come up to the lake by 4-wheel drive to take our collective picture. Ten or 15 minutes later, we began our downhill descent. Personally, I find the descent is usually less perspiring but more tiring than the ascent, especiallly when chasing my teenage son down the slope. This time, as luck would have it, Gary wrenched something in his leg on the initial descent from the lake, so the return trip took somewhat longer than planned. Fortunately the weather held out throughout the afternoon, so his descent, while necessarily uncomfortable, was not compounded by rain or high winds. We are all relieved they made it back home safely and wish Gary a speedy recovery. With any luck, they will be able to join the RMPC at the end of August for the annual Mt. Princeton assault.

Wow. What a great evening we had with President Shirley Tilghman on October 28th! I received a note from her shortly afterward. She writes, 'It was truly exhilarating to meet with so may enthusiastic Princetonians in Denver... I am grateful for the warm hospitality.' We learned Shirley is a new homeowner in the region (Summit County).

This is a letter from Jacqueline Leahy '06, the recipient of the RMPC scholarship:
_____________
To The Rocky Mountain Princeton Club,

I chose to come to Princeton because of the superior academic opportunities that it offers, but looking back on my first year I can see that I have really valued the time I spent out of class as much as the time I spent in lectures and precepts. I graduated from a class of 505, and although my class here at Princeton is 1066, I feel like I have many more close relationships and friends now than I ever did in high school. After making it through my first year I can say and really mean that Princeton is an amazing place. I had so many wonderful experiences, and even those experiences that weren't quite so wonderful (such as pulling my first real all-nighter or being locked out in eight inches of snow in my socks with no coat or prox for that matter) have taught me a lot.
I took the basic pre-med requirements of math and chemistry, and also pursued some two hundred level French classes as well as a comparative politics course and a writing seminar on Health and Illness. I was hoping that taking these classes would at least narrow my focus for finding a major, but so far (apart from deciding that math will not be my life's passion), I have found too many subjects compelling. If asked which class was my favorite, I would have to respond that it depended on which precept I happened to be exiting at that moment (although I have to admit that there were some chemistry exams that made me want to cry). My classroom experiences have included everything from getting attacked by a cockroach in the middle of a 150-student lecture to having serious debates about the University's alcohol policy in seminar. Some people have claimed that Princeton's intellectual climate has disintegrated, but what I have grown to love about my time here is that topics from classes even carry over into games of pool or meals at the dining hall (well, most often at late meals at Frist). People are always more than willing to share their opinions on most issues.
Over the course of the year I lived in a single in 1915. This enabled me to experience the joys of living in Butler - without the waffle ceilings. The other girls in my entryway were very nice and in fact, three out of seven of them will be sharing a suite with me in the fall. They provided great moral support and as well as the help I needed integrating inverse tangent problems on my math homework. They could always tell when I had had a bad day (there was one day in particular where to make a long story short I was not only locked out, but also broke some glassware in lab, dropped my dinner, and hit my head on a protruding part of a bus) and kept me going with many notes and laughs. When I arrived in the fall I thought that Princeton would be an extremely competitive environment and prepared myself for another round of the loneliness of high school, but actually found it quite the opposite. I am so lucky to have met such amazingly caring people.

I am on the fencing team, and spent most weekends during second semester on a bus going to various schools on the East Coast. In fact, I also compete nationally and internationally, so when I wasn't on a bus, I usually could be found on a plane in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. This year was a particularly great year for me in fencing; I finished the year ranked second in the US Junior point standings, as well as second in the World Junior point standings. This was followed by a 9th place finish at the Junior World Championships, as well as a team bronze medal in the Junior Women's foil team event. I was undefeated in the regular season of NCAA fencing, but was not all-Ivy because I missed the meet against Columbia in order to compete in a world cup in Germany the same weekend. I won both the regional and IFA championships. At NCAA championships I finished 7th and was All American. In the national senior circuit I also had a great season, with a third place finish in December, followed by two fifth place finishes at the proceeding two circuit events. Just last week I took my second bronze of the year at our Division 1 National Championships. I was hoping to make the US Pan American Team, but unfortunately I missed several of the senior world cups in order to study and best prepare for finals. Thus, I ended up moving down on the senior point standings. In the end I was only 35 points short of the team (which considering the grand total is quite trivial), but I know I did my best and am not disappointed at all.
I spent most of my other spare time participating in activities related to the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship. The support, friends, and knowledge that I have gained as a result over the course of the year are immeasurable. It has been a great way for me to meet new people as participants come from all different departments and backgrounds. PEF has really helped stretch me almost as much as my classes have; I have done many activities that I thought myself too serious to do before and have learned that having a good time (in appropriate ways of course) is a necessary part of life.
I have been involved in several reunion activities, such as the Princeton Christmas lunch in Denver, the fencing team's reunion and initiation day, and PEF reunions right after school got out. I always love hearing about the amazing things that Princeton graduates are doing with their lives. It was also a ton of fun watching the P-rade (although the transition from the campus I love full of my favorite people to fenced in courtyards housing strangers was quite shocking and sad) and I cannot wait to become part of this tradition after (my friends and I usually say 'if') I make it through the terrors of orgo, writing JP and the joys of a senior thesis.
I was also involved in L'Atelier, a French acting program, throughout the year. We met once a week as a group and then had private rehearsals with Florent Masse, who ran the program. I worked on two scenes from the French play Tartuffe and ended up presenting them to an audience in April. This was very different from any activities that I have ever done in the past and thus was particularly challenging. I am used to people watching me as an athlete, but the focus of an audience is completely different on stage. I now have amassed a lot of respect for people in this line of work.
Over the course of the year I worked in the French department, which I liked a lot because I had a chance to work on my language skills when professors came to the office with requests and jobs for me. My plan is to continue working there in the fall. Over the summer, I was given a position in Professor Bocarsly's fuel cell lab and joined the chemistry department's SURP group, which has been a lot of fun so far. I have been working mostly with thin membranes, which I prepare for tests in the lab's fuel cells.
I am currently living nearby at an Aunt's house, so I bike to work in the morning, and then after work I take the train up to New York City to practice (fencing). Then I come back, sleep and commence again the next day.
Overall, my life at Princeton has been extremely busy, but I am thankful for every minute of my time here and couldn't possibly imagine myself fitting in better at any other school. I am so grateful to have the honor of living among such excellence and am glad that I have this opportunity to thank the Rocky Mountain Princeton Club and that I could share just a fraction of the ways this contribution has influenced and made possible my transition into the world.
Sincerely,

Jacqueline Leahy

Dear fellow Princetonians,
In October, I will be running the Chicago marathon as a charity runner for the American Cancer Society. To date, I have raised over $1000 to fund cancer research, advocacy, education, and patient support programs. But I'd love to raise more, and would really appreciate your help.
Donations may be made online by going to www.charityrunner.org and clicking on the 'sponsor a runner' link, where a first name (Michele) and last name (Nelson Hurst) search should bring you to my charity page. An alternative is to make out a check to the American Cancer Society with my name (Michele Nelson Hurst) on the memo line, and you may mail it to me as I will be collecting donations and mailing them to the ACS. My address is:
Michele Nelson Hurst
3045 25th St.
Boulder, CO 80304

Thanks for your help!

Gratefully,
Michele Nelson Hurst '95

My wife Diane and son Andrew had a good time down in Houston (at company expense:-)
receiving his Halliburton Foundation Scholarship to use at Northwestern. Diane was
recognized immediately by several of the attendees as a result of our previous
trip where I was 'chairman for the day'. I, however, did not get to attend
because I was still in Stavanger, Norway attending the European Association of
Geoscientists and Engineers Annual Convention and Exhibition. Stavanger is a center
for the petroleum industry in Norway and is a suprisingly compact town. I could walk
almost everywhere I wanted to go. (Except the airport and, sigh, the dentist.) Quite
expensive, though. I gave a workshop presentation on some recent geophysical work
I have done, managing to get through everything important in only two PowerPoint
slides, much to the delight of the workshop organizers who had really packed the schedule
and were very worried about running way overtime.

I went to Norway directly from my brother's wedding in Schenectady, NY, not even
having time to change out of my 'Sunday best'. Being the best-dressed person on the
plane didn't buy me anything as I still ended up being randomly selected for gateside
secondary security screening!

Being out of town at the time, my wife and I had to postpone celebrating our 20th
wedding anniversary until last night where we attended a fine wine dinner sponsored
by the Lukas Liquor Superstore folks at the Cool River Cafe in the Denver Tech Center.
Very nice. The menu was completely off-the-menu and paired wines from the small
August Briggs winery (Calistoga, CA) with several courses, most notably cinnamon-smoked
Cornish game hen on a nest of fried leek, grilled ostrich with grilled yellow squash,
and roasted kangaroo loin with mashed purple potatoes and sweet zinfandel thyme reduction.
Because it was our anniversary, we were served our chocolate mousse dessert on one plate
with 'Happy Anniversary' written in chocolate lettering around the rim. Fabulous. This
was one e-mail list I don't regret signing up for!

Looks like the submit-your-own-news works.

I got email from our company HQ in Houston yesterday
inviting our son Andrew, accompanied by Mom & Dad,
to be flow to Houston to attend an awards breakfast
for this year's Halliburton Foundation Scholarship
winners. Turns out I'll be in Norway (I'm giving
a presentation at a workshop during the European
Association of Geoscientists and Engineers annual
convention), but that's not going to stop my wife
Diane from going down with Andrew. In addition
to the scholarship award presentation, they'll get
free tickets to an Astro's game that evening.

Should be fun, unless the weather is inordinately
hot and humid!

I have changed this web page. You can now enter member news directly to the page as I have done with this submission.

Did the "Chairman for the Day" gig the week before last. It was interesting, nay, absorbing, following around the actual company Chairman during a day at the office. I'm legally a "corporate insider" as defined by SEC rules. My wife and I were flown to HQ on the company jet (I could get used to that:-) along with the "CEO for the Day" and his wife. That evening we got to attend a volunteer appreciation event at the new Houston Reliant stadium, watching some rodeo events and listening (briefly) to Clay Walker. We had the privilege of handing out awards to the volunteers in attendance, representing over 10,000 company employees who participate in community volunteer activities without thought of recognition and reward.

After my interesting day at the office, during which my wife and the other spouses hit the Galleria for shopping and the hotel spa for relaxation, we closed out the day with a reception and dinner with several of the executives and their spouses, each of the "for the Day" participants giving a short speech on their thoughts and ideas for the day. Naturally, we now have the charge to draft up an action plan to follow up on those ideas.

All in all, I was quite favorably impressed by the executive team we worked with, both for their innovative thinking as well as for their high ethical standards and, for lack of a better word, class in their dealing with others. Hopefully, they, in turn, were favorably impressed by us!

Hello everyone,

My name is Lindsay Downs, class of 2006. I'm a freshman this year from Trinidad,CO and was planning on coming back to the state for the summer. Trinidad- as some of you may well know, has a population of less than 10,000 and it will be virtually impossible for me to find an interesting job or internship for three months. I know it is a bit early, but I would be extremely grateful to be alerted of any Denver interships or employment opportunities that come up before this summer- I'll fax a resume! Thanks so much. My email address is ldowns@princeton.edu ldowns@princeton.edu

The SEG Research Committee meeting I chaired was quite an experience. For the first time ever, we gathered votes from committee members who, due to conflicts or distance (some live as far away as Australia!), couldn't be physically in attendance at the Austin 2 day meeting. I handled this by juggling the normal agenda to place drafting a list of possible research workshop topics the very first activity of the first morning of the meeting. Just prior to lunch I posted the list of topics on the committee web sitehttp://research.seg.org and fired off an email to the 75+ members asking them to provide 8 votes for the topics of their choice, as well as providing supplemental workshop topics. Votes were due by 7:30 AM the next morning. Any vote for a topic that made it through the first round of voting would carry double weight in a second or third round as this would be their only chance to vote. In the end, one workshop was both proposed remotely and carried into the final approved list by weight of remote voting. A very good start and we'll do it again next year, though with some changes.

Another bit of news is that a few months ago the CEO of our parent company (Halliburton) sent out a call for good ideas open to all employees. The carrot was for the winner to spend a day with the CEO and get his salary for that day as well. As it turned out there were nearly 2000 suggestions and they expanded the program to include a Chairman for the Day, a President for the Day, a CFO for the Day, etc. My suggestion was selected for the Chairman for the Day slot and early next month a company plane will swing by Denver to pick me and my wife up to bring us down to corporate HQ in Houston for Management Team for the Day activities. [No, I'm not allowed to give out raises for the day :-() ]

Other than that, I've been scrambling to get some manuscripts into shape to submit to refereed journals on some work I've presented at conferences over the last 2 or 3 years. Interested readers may consult the SEG web site www.seg.org site for my name in the SEG Digital Cumulative Index. My most recent SEG convention presentation is actually online at the SEG web site, part of a new program they're doing to improve outreach and communication. Good publicity for the company I work for, too.

Oh yes, as a hobby interest, I've done some reading and writing on Descartes Rule of Signs, which is a factoring aid they used to teach in algebra class before the days of personal computers and graphing calculators. It came up for some reason back in 1993 in some work I was doing and, for the life of me, I couldn't remember why it worked so I scribbled a bit for a couple of weeks until I figured it out. As it turned out, I had managed to rederive a proof due to Gauss. Late in 2002, someone in Indiana working on a master's degree emailed me about the topic and I was inspired to translate the original Gauss article, which I had in my files, from German into English. A colleague of mine at the office, who hails from Germany, corrected my translation and I have posted it on my Stanford web page sepwww.stanford.edu/oldsep/stew for anyone who's interested in it. The Rule of Signs proved useful to me just last year when I needed to solve for a particular 8th order equation equation arising in elastic wave travel time analysis.

I'll be out of touch most of this week, chairing the Society of Exploration Geophysicists Research Committee winter planning meeting down in Austin.

Although the event announced below conflicts with the RMPC annual holiday luncheon, we are sure friends of Jerry Mc Hugh '51 will want this news, and may wish to attend (congratulations, Jerry!):

The City Club of Denver will present Jerry Mc Hugh '51 and his wife Anabel the James Grafton Rogers award for their life time commitment to education in Colorado. There will be a luncheon in their honor on Tuesday Dec. 17th at the Brown Palace at 11:45am. For reservations call 303-433-4446 before noon on Friday Dec. 13. The cost is $21.00 For more details call Jane Wasson S'47 at 303-333-1958.

At the annual meeting on July 12th, the club elected Robert Ireland '76 to take over from me as Club President after my three enjoyable years getting to know many of you through coordinating club activities. Bob brings with him tremendous experience serving Princeton alumni, beginning with his stints as his alumni class president from '86-'91, and again from '96-'01 (didn't he learn?!). He has also served as Treasurer of this Club in the '87-'89 era, as well as a member of the board and President of the Seattle area alumni club from '93-'95, and a member of the board of the Princeton Club of Northern California from '98-'99.

You are invited to attend an evening of networking and planning in Boulder on June 26, 2002 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 at: Gerry Baerman's ('77) House

Refreshments will be provided

Please RSVP to Nate Ford at nford@faegre.com and please let me know if you are willing to include your contact information/business description (please also include the information) in our Membership Directory that will be circulated after this event for the use of Princeton Alumni only.

We plan to discuss ideas for our inaugural meeting as well as schedule smaller topical discussions over the next 12 month period.

Fellow Princetonians:

We are in the process of organizing the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Princeton Entrepreneurs' Network and are looking for volunteers and ideas to assist in this effort.

Regional chapters of PrincetonEN operate in locales where Princetonians are working together to create and grow businesses. Activities include panels, speeches, networking events, and trips that address the entrepreneurial interests and pursuits of Princetonians and other like-minded individuals within their region.

The organizational meeting will be held on Tuesday, April 30, 2001 from 6:30-8:00 at my house at 375 Clayton Street in Denver. On the evening of the event you may call 303-388-6862.

Please contact me if you would like any more information about the group -- or if you wish to be on the mailing list for future events, volunteer to help, etc. Information is also available at http://www.princetonen.org/

Regards,
Nate Ford '93

Where: Large home 2 miles South of University Hospital, Hilltop neighborhood

What you get: Bedroom, bathroom, sunroom – furnished or unfurnished; Garage parking included; Washer/Dryer; Share superbly equipped kitchen; Copious storage; Fenced yard; Walking distance to 3 parks

How much: $650/month + ½ Utilities ($100 cap)

Bonus: Your dog is welcome, too.

I can be reached at: ament@alumni.princeton.edu I'd appreciate any and all assistance. Thanks! Mike Ament, '85

I wanted to thank all of you who may have checked the box with my name on it last April/May. I have been elected to the Princeton Board of Trustees for a four-year term. Thanks for your trust. Keep in touch if there are issues on your mind.

Hello,
My name is Combus Chapman, and I will be graduating this year. I am interested in any job opportunities that are available in the metro area. I know it seems late to be looking for a job, but I have had late start due to the basketball season .I will be happy to fax over a resume to any one that is interested.
I would appreciate it if you could email me back with any information. below is my email address:
alc52@aol.com.

I'm interning at the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden for the summer and need to find housing in downtown Denver or Golden from May through August. I'm looking for a studio or 1 bdrm (hopefully furnished) that's reasonably priced. Any advice regarding realtors or management companies to contact for short-term leases or areas to live would be greatly appreciated. Jake can be reached at jswenson@umich.edu.

I'm an ecology major and will be conducting field work for my thesis at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory this summer. Unfortunately, I need a car (preferably a truck with standard transmission) to drive between my research sites from 6/1 to 8/1. Dates are flexible, there won't be any off road driving, and I have a spotless record. Price negotiable, but please call or email soon if you have any ideas or offers! Thanks.

Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos will speak in Macky Auditorium November 7, 2000 from 5:00 - 6:30 p.m. He is on campus to receive the 2000 National Entrepreneur of the Year award from the Robert H. and Beverly A. Deming Center for Entrepreneurship, a joint program of the Colleges of Business and Engineering. He will receive the award from CU President Elizabeth Hoffman, speak briefly and then take questions from the audience. The event is free and open to the public. Come early to get a good seat! For further information, contact the Deming Entrepreneurship Center at 303.735.5415.

Hello all,

I hope you had a good summer and are enjoying the beginning of "fall." I'm writing about the tutoring program at Bradley Elementary, which will be starting again in mid-October. If you are interested in returning as a tutor this year, please drop me an email, including your contact info and full-time/substitute preference. Andy and Dennis are excited to have us back for a third year, and there is a new group of fourth-grades in need of tutoring and mentoring. Except for those who have made specific arrangements with their students from last year, everyone will be matched up with someone new.

There will be some changes to the program that should help make it go more smoothly:
- I will not be working with a student during the regular tutoring session. This will allow me to act as a substitute and to do things like contact parents about issues, absences, etc. (I've been tutoring Katie, my student from last year, throughout the summer, and will continue to do this at another time during the week.).
- Our contacts list will include the home phone numbers for all the students. Tutors and parents will be encouraged to exchange numbers and to stay in direct contact.
- I will propose three parent/tutor conferences: one at the beginning, one in January, and one at the end of the school year. Aside from providing tutors with information and guidance about their students, it will help keep the parents more involved, and will help them understand the commitment they are making for their children.
- I will also propose that students will get only two "no-show" warnings before they are dropped from the program. While this may seem harsh, there are many kids who need our help, and since we don't have enough resources to get to all of them, we need to help the ones whose parents have the commitment to get them there every week.
- I will make tutoring applications, on which parents can indicate areas in which the students need help, and any other concerns and information they may have. While our match-ups worked out OK last year, this will help us go about it in a less haphazard way.
- I'll work on finding supplementary resources, like worksheets and educational games.

*** Please note: I need someone to replace me as organizer for the program. The time commitment I've given at work and the fact that I live in Boulder will make it hard for me to do everything that I need to do to make it run smoothly. I will continue on until this happens, because I believe it is worthwhile and I know it is making a difference in these students' lives... but if you have an interest in organizing the program (or splitting the responsibility among two or three people), please let me know. Thanks! ***

We'll be having a tutors' kickoff meeting in the evening of Oct. 12, location TBA. I'm looking forward to seeing you then.

The third annual Ivy League 5k was held Sunday May 21 in City Park. It was great fun for all in attendance with awards and t-shirts for everyone. Sadly, I have to report that Yale bested Cornell for top honors. Princeton, by my not-too-objective count, tied for third through eighth. First overall went to Adam Feerst, a yalie, age 40, who bested some runners half his age. After the race, we all met for a cookout with burgers, dogs, chips, pop and all the fixings. Special thanks are due Judy Beckenbach, a Cornell alum (are they "Cornellians"?) for undertaking most of this year's organization of the event. It was agreed by all in attendance that there will be a fourth annual and RMPC members are encouraged to attend (particularly those of you who still fit into your college track team singlets - we can sure use your help.)