'Beyond the Words'
Giving back to her community has always been important to Justina Chen Headley, '90, who won a dean's award for service at Stanford for her work as an academic coordinator in Branner Hall. So when she started writing books, she decided to tie a relevant service project or contest to each one. “I wanted it to be beyond the words,” says the former Microsoft marketing executive.
For The Patch (Charlesbridge, 2006), about a little girl who stops worrying and learns to love her eye patch, Headley donated her advance to InfantSEE, a public health program that provides free eye assessments to babies nationwide. For her first young-adult novel, Nothing But the Truth (and a few white lies) (Little, Brown, 2006), which explores identity themes, she held a “truth” essay contest and gave away a $5,000 scholarship. For her latest release, Girl Overboard (Little, Brown, 2008)— in which the protagonist finds purpose in community service after a snowboard accident—Headley has teamed up with Burton Snowboards and Youth Venture to give away a dozen $1,000 grants to youth who have the “best idea to change the world.”
A year ago, Headley and three other authors of young-adult novels co-founded Readergirlz, an online teen community that promotes books with “super-gutsy girl protagonists.” Her next novel, “North of Beautiful,” will take on the beauty myth. “I am very concerned about the way media is portraying females,” Headley says. “Since when did size 00 become the ideal body type to have?” And, of course, she's working on her beyond-the-book project. “I have some ideas to get girls, in particular, to think hard about what beautiful means.”
Atop the Food Pyramid
Food and marketing researcher Brian Wansink, PhD '90 (“Mind Over Platter,” September/October 2007), has been appointed executive director of the Department of Agriculture's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. In a role he has described as being the nation's “nutrition swami,” he takes on the oversight of the food pyramid program and the development of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
Leave Only Signatures
Four U.S. presidents. John Muir. Buffalo Bill. Rudyard Kipling. From 1873 to 1884, they and 18,000 others signed the register at the Cosmopolitan, a bath house and saloon open during the early days of Yosemite tourism. Last year, Bill Lane, '42, purchased the register from the saloon owners' heirs, then donated the silver-bound volume to the national park in a ceremony on campus. The former publisher of Sunset magazine and ambassador to Australia, Lane once worked at the park, as a mule packer, guide and “caller” of the famous Firefall of embers dropped from Glacier Point.
The Genius of Bees
Claire Kremen, '82, has been named one of 24 MacArthur Fellows, who receive no-strings-attached $500,000 “genius grants” over five years. An assistant professor of environmental science, policy and management at UC-Berkeley, Kremen leads a conservation planning initiative in Madagascar. Stateside, she studies the effects on agriculture of the elimination of bees' natural habitats.
Going to Extreemes
December 2, 2006: Dave Pan, '02, is sitting in O'Brien's Pub in Santa Monica, glancing forlornly across the street at the Christmas tree lot. Apparently he's a glutton for punishment, because O'Brien's is the Cal watering hole of West Los Angeles, and the Golden Bears have just clinched their fifth straight Big Game victory. December 1, 2007: Redemption. Not only are more bar goers wearing Cardinal; Stanford pulls off an upset to defeat Cal 20-13. Pan dashes across the street, buys the first tree he sees, and runs back to the bar with it aloft. “At the sight of the tree, the Stanford faithful went nuts,” Pan says. He named the tree Callie (“out of 'respect' for our fallen opponents”) and paraded her around the bar, drawing pats on the back and punches to the kidneys in roughly equal measure. “At the halfway point, I ran into the bar's bouncer, who made it clear to me that trees were not allowed inside O'Brien's.” Pan and Callie nonetheless were allowed to complete their victory lap.
