Fall 2018 Issue

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FEATURES

  • During a sunny lunchtime on the Bryan Center Plaza in the first week of classes, a throng of students crowd around Dorian Bolden ’02, surrounded by his wife, his kids, and some associates, as he uses a giant pair of Duke Blue scissors to cut a long Duke Blue ribbon in front of his brand-new coffee shop, Beyu Blue. “It is by far the coolest thing as an alum to come back on campus,” Bolden says, “and be among all of us students.” He laughs. “Well, all of you are students,” he says. It’s an easy stumble to make—time has flown.
  • WHAT DOES AMERICA MEAN TO YOU?” I ask the twenty students in my American studies seminar. It’s the first day of class at Duke Kunshan University. We are sitting at a dark-wood, rectangular table in the Conference Center. The shades are drawn to keep out the afternoon sun, though you can see through them to the Innovation Building that is going up next door. The occasional thump of construction punctuates our conversation.
  • The Nasher Museum of Art was born in 2005, making it a toddler in the art world. That youth might seem like a hindrance. After all, a museum’s collection is what most defines it, and a collection tends to accrue steadily with the passage of time.
  • In a former ping pong table showroom on a busy street near Belgrade’s bustling central train and bus stations is Ryo Ragland’s coworking space and “anti-café,” Share Square. By day, customers pay by the hour for unlimited coffee and make-your-own waffles as they work. At night, residents of the Serbian city have a community center that offers dozens of classes in eclectic topics like Japanese cooking, tarot card reading, calligraphy, and nature photography.
  • It’s a lecture hall without fancy features, except for the model of a human skeleton occupying one corner. Typically outfitted first-year students file in—backpacks, laptops, water bottles. They’re wearing white coats, which prove useful for accommodating the accessory of a clipped-on DukeCard. The white coats mark the start of the journey to become a physician; they were awarded in a formal ceremony a couple of days earlier.
  • It’s 7 p.m., and David Shumate is missing his coffee. He drinks it when he calls Duke games, even those with an evening kickoff, like tonight’s season opener against Army. But on the last night of August, it’s simply too stifling in the Blue Devil Tower booth; the retracted windows—essential to the ambient crowd noise on the radio broadcast—have invited in far too much of the Durham heat for anyone to enjoy a mug.

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

  • By
    In praise of Mr. WolfeI enjoyed your Forum [Under the Gargoyles, Summer 2018] column on Tom Wolfe, my favorite author/journalist. I just wanted to point out that Mr. Wolfe began his forays to Duke some twenty-five years before the 1998 visit you mention. In 1973, he previewed the movie The Last American Hero based on an article of his, after which he gave a talk and held a Q&A. That visit was the start of my lifelong love affair with his writings.
  • With Hurricane Florence headed for North Carolina in mid-September, the vital parts of Duke were appropriately prepared. For Duke Dining, that meant securing 400 pounds of rice, 460 pounds of broccoli, 1,000 pounds of potatoes, and 1,200 pounds of chicken.
  • My wife, Annette, and I were bounding down the Duke Forest trail, our dogs pulling us between squirrels and startled birds, when our guide called for us to stop next to an ordinary-looking beech tree. “Look closely,” she said. “They’re dancing.”
  • THESE IMAGES are from the beginning stages of my final project for my Duke in New York program. The goal of the final project is to both academically and creatively engage with the city of New York. My project focuses on memory, history, and contextualizing images as they relate to my familial ties to Harlem.
  • World War II had an enormous impact on Duke, from the curriculum to the student body, from research to athletics. The campus hosted the Navy V-12 program, training thousands of servicemen. With so many students and local Durham citizens occupied with the war, the campus struggled to manage.
  • In the romantic-comedy movie version, the love story between Megan Forlines M.M.S. ’12 and Devon Bostock ’11, M.M.S. ’12 would unspool something like this: Young members of rival families meet and, like their family members before them, instantly dislike each other. They date more “suitable” choices, bumping into one another only to trade insults. Then, one day, circumstances force them together. The ice starts to crack. She notices he’s not that bad after all. He discovers how funny she is. A wedding unites their warring families.
  • Which starship captain would you like to serve under? Katherine Janeway, who encounters dozens of civilizations as captain of the USS Voyager. She started out as a science officer, so she has great appreciation for science. But I would not want to be stuck in the Delta Quadrant for a period of seven years. What makes Star Trek good for showcasing science?
  • As the last months of Patrick Grady’s time at Duke wound down, and then the spring turned into summer and endless eighty-five-hour weeks in the Gross Hall basement’s cluttered and flourescent makerspace, his faith came from the formulas. “The math said that we could beat [the record], said Grady ’18, the then-president of Duke Electric Vehicles, “but there was a big gap between the math saying that and actually doing that.”

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