Farm Report

NEWS FROM INSIDE CAMPUS DRIVE AND BEYOND

Quote “No man had held me by the hand since my dad when I was a kid.” -- Retiring Stanford Police Captain Raoul Niemeyer, recalling the day in 1994 when the Dalai Lama, on a campus visit, grasped his hand en route to a news conference

The Case of the Missing Ring Seven years ago, after a business trip to Webster City, Iowa, David Burt discovered his Stanford class ring was missing. "I didn't know I lost it until a few days after I returned to San Diego," he recalls. Late last year, Burt, PhD '71, received an e-mail from a John McGilligan in Webster City. Seems that McGilligan had found a ring stashed in a cigar box beneath the counter of his family restaurant, McGilligan's. "It was too nice a ring to throw away," McGilligan says, "so I decided to track down the owner through the Internet." Made of white gold, the ring had the initials DNB engraved on the inside and PhD on the outside. McGilligan sent an e-mail to the webmaster of the Stanford Alumni Association site, who combed through a database and determined that there was only one 1971 PhD graduate with those initials. McGilligan reached Burt by e-mail and then shipped him the ring. "I'm delighted to have it back," says Burt, who assumes the ring fell out of his pocket while he was dining at the 52-year-old restaurant that closed after John McGilligan's father died last fall. The ring sat behind the bar for at least a year before it was moved to a cigar box beneath the counter. Says McGilligan: "I think everyone who worked there took a turn wearing the ring, hoping that someone would recognize it and claim it someday."

Brushing Up on Tradition DIFFERENT STROKES: Kataoka At an age when most children are still dabbling in fingerpaints, Drue Kataoka picked up a brush and began learning a 2,000-year-old Japanese art form, sumi-e (soo-mi-AY). For 12 years, Kataoka worked to master traditional subjects like seascapes and bamboo shoots. In 1995, she received her han, the stamp of a professional sumi-e artist. Now a Stanford junior majoring in art history, Kataoka is fusing her art with other interests: sports, music and campus architecture. Her trademark black-and-white paintings have popped up on wine bottles, CD covers, physics department brochures and the Hoover Institution's 1998 Christmas cards; her work has been displayed at the Coffee House and Arrillaga Family Sports Center. She even has a weekly feature in the Daily, "Cardinal Strokes." Kataoka loves to capture pivotal moments in Stanford sports. She painted "Cardinal Catch of the Day" (above left) after spending time on the gridiron sidelines in 1997. "The ball is in the air, so the outcome is uncertain," she says. "The painting suspends you between two moments." In "Tiger Watch" (left) Tiger Woods dwarfs the trees behind him as he lines up a putt. "Is Tiger watching us, or are we watching him?" she asks.

The Poet Who Found Inspiration in a Pork Product Spam is more than just a canned delicacy. It's the luncheon meat that launched 12,000 poems -- and counting. That's how many verses John Cho has collected in his online archive, which accepts contributions from Spam fans around the world. Last year, Cho, '85, MS '86, sliced off 162 of the best porcine poems for Spam-Ku: Tranquil Reflection on Luncheon Loaf (HarperPerennial, 1998; $7.95). Though the website includes sonnets and limericks, the book is reserved for haiku. The poems, which have three lines and exactly 17 syllables, cover subjects from Americana and physics to love and dreams. Cho himself contributed 33 verses, including No. 32: Kitchen windowsill. Lit by passing headlights, Spam casts a long shadow. The New York Times called the collection "clever, funny . . . profound." Cho, an atmospheric researcher at M.I.T., says Spam-ku works because of the "weird juxtaposition of ancient high art and modern low pop culture." Or, as the poet says: Descartes on pig parts Says: I'm pink, therefore I'm Spam Deep philosophy. Bad News for Book Lovers EPILOGUE: The bookstore closes; the café remains. For 20 years, it's been an off-campus destination for students, a California Avenue bookstore and sidewalk cafe with neighborhood charm and a lazy atmosphere. But a surge in rent and competition from Internet booksellers and a University Avenue Borders megastore proved fatal to Printer's Inc. Bookstore, which plans to close its Palo Alto shop on March 31. "We continued to see a trend in our sales that indicated we couldn't afford much in the way of an increase in rent," says co-owner Gerry Masteller, '66, who still hopes to find an investor to save the store. The news was unwelcome in many quarters. In an e-mail to the store's website, Ivan Linscott, a senior research associate at Stanford, wrote, "I am deeply disturbed about your decision to close the store. I find the reasons hardly sufficient to justify the loss of the soul of the community." No word yet on who the new tenant will be. The Rite-Aid pharmacy chain made a bid last spring to rent the location for nearly twice what Printer's Inc. was paying, but later withdrew its offer. Meantime, Printer's Inc. will continue to operate its Mountain View store. And Printer's Inc. Café, the thriving California Avenue restaurant under separate ownership, may expand into the bookstore space. On Race, Walking the Walk Stanford routinely scores high in rankings of colleges and universities on dozens of topics. But here's a category that may surprise: in a survey by Black Enterprise magazine, Stanford rated 10th on a list of best colleges for African Americans. The top nine are all schools with majority black enrollments -- including top three Spelman College (95 percent black), Morehouse College (99 percent black) and Florida A&M University (88 percent black). Only 6 percent of Stanford students are African American. "Stanford not only talks the talk but walks the walk," says Marjorie Whigham-Desir, co-author of the article. "It's had a history and tradition of being in the forefront for a lot of good and positive efforts when it comes to inclusion and being reflective of the world." 'Your Basic 30-Hour-a-Week, $7,000-a-Year Job' POLI SCI 101: Lieber, a senior, is a member of the Mountain View city council. When Sally Lieber went searching for a part-time job, she wasn't thinking about hashing dorm food or shelving books at the library. She ran for -- and won -- a seat on the Mountain View city council. Lieber, a senior majoring in political science, spent fall quarter walking precincts, brushing up on the issues and recruiting campaign volunteers. "The whole political science department was really behind me," she says, crediting associate professor Luis Fraga for special inspiration and advice. "We sat down with the campaign plan, and I asked questions like, 'Do you think this mobilizes the community or disempowers it?'" She won election to a four-year term in November. Since then, she's been dividing time between classes, her honors thesis and the council, which she describes as "your basic 30-hour-a-week, $7,000-a-year job." So far, the members have been focusing on quality-of-life issues -- land use, affordable housing, traffic -- "in a Valley that's exploding." Lieber hopes to steer the council to youth policy, where she believes local governments can be creative because little is mandated by federal or state law. At 37, Lieber is not your typical Stanford senior. She restored Victorian houses and attended City College of San Francisco before going to Foothill College in 1995 and then transferring to Stanford a year later. As the top vote-getter of seven council candidates, she bested even the current mayor, an incumbent and lifelong Mountain View resident. (The mayor is drawn from the ranks of the council, based on a combination of seniority and vote count.) That puts Lieber herself in line to be mayor in 2002. After that? She's considering statewide office.