A Good Milker
A couple of years ago, Katie Smith Milway and her mother, Mary Smith, spotted an ad for a children’s-fiction contest and thought, why not? Milway, ’82, is a writer and editor, and years ago Smith had dreamed up a fable that became a family favorite. They didn’t win, but they did rework their manuscript—and Kids Can Press published Cappuccina Goes to Town in May. It’s the tale of a cow longing to break out of her bovine existence. But when Cappuccina finds out that quadrupeds like her can’t fit hooves into shoes, hats over horns or dresses around tails, she’s relieved to return to her creature comforts on the farm. Milway works in Boston and her mother lives in British Columbia, but a second project keeps them close: a sequel called Cappuccina Goes to the Fair.
Making Sparks
You might not expect to find a chemist and a historian on the same expert panel. But when the subject is Benjamin Franklin, it makes sense. As Catherine Allen, executive producer of a PBS television special, Benjamin Franklin, puts it: “Think of a combination of Bill Gates, Dave Barry, Rupert Murdoch and Henry Kissinger, and you begin to have some idea of the scope of [Franklin’s] talents, his achievements and his fame.” Her three-part series, airing November 19 and 20, features commentary by H.W. Brands, ’75, and Dudley Herschbach, ’54, MS ’55. Brands teaches history at Texas A&M and is a prolific author whose Franklin biography, The First American (2000), was a Pulitzer finalist. Herschbach, who shared the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1986 and teaches at Harvard, will shed light on Franklin’s scientific achievements.
