News&Views

In the Swim

Ah, summer. While you pull, tug, and grunt your way into another bathing suit season, you might like to know that Joy Emery sees a pattern.

Swimsuits reflect the style of the time in which they are created, according to Emery, who oversees the Commercial Pattern Archive, which is housed in the Special Collections Unit of the URI Library. With nearly 30,000 patterns, fashion periodicals, tailoring journals and other related artifacts dating from the 1860s through the 1980s, it’s the largest such collection in the world.

For example, bathing costumes with ankle-length drawers, pantalets, and full-skirted dresses mirror the fashionable crinolines of the 1860s. The fullness of skirts was swept back to imitate the bustle style in the 1870s. And heavy wool suits, so popular during the 19th century? They only encouraged itching and bobbing up and down in the water, according to Emery, a professor emerita of theatre and former adjunct professor of textiles, fashion merchandising, and design.

The 1920s ushered in the Flappers and with them a unisex swimsuit, made without a defined waist but with an emphasis on the hip. By that time knit underwear manufacturers such as Jansen and BVD had begun adding swimwear to their production line.

During the 1970s, bathers often wore more suntan lotion than spandex. “During the 1870s most female bathers resembled Old Mother Hubbard. A century later, they resembled her cupboard—bare,” Emery says with a laugh.

Volcanologist Discovers Lost Kingdom

Haraldur Sigurdsson, the Indiana Jones of the University, travels the world in pursuit of his passion: volcanoes. A native of Iceland, Sigurdsson is best known for his studies of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the destruction of the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

During one of his latest adventures, the Graduate School of Oceanography professor unearthed the first remnants of the lost kingdom of Tambora, which was buried under ash when Mount Tambora, located on the remote Indonesian island of Sumbawa, blew its top in 1815. It was the largest volcanic eruption in human history, ultimately killing 117,000 people. The gases that lingered in the atmosphere caused a year of global cooling in 1816 now known as “the year without a summer,” which caused disease epidemics and worldwide food shortages.

Sigurdsson suspects that Tambora, which he has researched for 20 years, will become the Pompeii of the East and hold great cultural interest. He and colleagues from the University of North Carolina and the Indonesian Directorate of Volcanology made the discovery during a six-week archaeological dig in the summer of 2004. Using ground-penetrating radar, they located a site where they found the remains of two adults as well as bronze bowls, ceramic pots, iron tools and other artifacts.

The volcanologist believes the village includes a large wooden palace that he hopes to find on an expedition this summer.

“All the people, their houses and culture are still encapsulated there as they were in 1815. It’s important that we keep that capsule intact and open it carefully,” he says. For more information about the expedition, visit uri.edu/news/tambora.

Unparalled Help

Physical therapist Andrea Mitchell ’01 traveled to San Juan La Laguna, Guatemala, this past winter with five students from Jenny Audette’s class to provide physical therapy services to local children. Mitchell is shown at the home of a boy named Jesus who is exercising on some parallel bars. The bars were created with URI ingenuity.

D-Day + 62 Years

Walter “Chris” Heisler returned to Normandy, France, this spring, as he has done for the past six years. This time, the retired URI professor of education and his wife, Gloria, traveled with four other D-Day veterans, members of their families and a camera crew. The men are the focus of an hour-long documentary, D-Day + 62 Years: Rhode Island Veterans Return to Normandy, which airs on NBC-10 on June 6 and 18. URI 1989 Alumnus Tim Gray is the project manager. Army Lt. Heisler parachuted into enemy territory on June 5, 1944, the night before D-Day, the massive land, air, and naval allied effort to liberate Europe from Nazi occupation during World War II. Captured three days later, he spent 11 months in POW camps. To learn more about Heisler’s World War II experiences, go to uri.edu/news/releases/?id=3497

Award Winning Focus

The first time he snapped a picture as an assistant photo editor for The Good 5¢ Cigar, David Goldman ‘98 was hooked on photojournalism.

Now a staff photographer for the Boston Herald, Goldman received the award for best multiple images in a photo essay from Editor and Publisher magazine. The 2005 award was for the category of photos taken for a newspaper with a circulation of 100,000 to 249,000.

Goldman’s essay, titled “Disengagement,” featured residents of the settlement of Gadid in Gush Katif, in the Gaza Strip in a standoff with Israeli soldiers who came to evacuate them from their homes.

Goldman, a Pawtucket resident, traveled to the Gaza Strip in March 2005 and stayed with a family with ties to the Boston area. “This initial experience prepared me for my trip in August.” he said. “Living with a family who were about to be forced to leave their home really gave me an inside and personal perspective on the situation, which made my project and winning the award that much more significant.”

Upon returning to the Gadid settlement in August, Goldman lived with a different family until the day the Israeli Army arrived to take them from their home.

By Jessica Gillman, ’06

‘Ask the Pharmacist’

Have a question about drug interactions, herbal remedies, over-the-counter treatments or prescription medication for anything from nail fungus to high blood pressure? If you live in Southeastern New England and own a TV, you’re in luck.

You can now “Ask the Pharmacist,” thanks to a newly launched partnership between the University’s Department of Communications/News Bureau, College of Pharmacy, and ABC 6 in Providence.

The pharmacist in the starring role is Kristina Ward, clinical assistant professor at our College of Pharmacy and director of its Drug Information Services. She responds to ABC 6 viewer questions on “Ask the Pharmacist” segments Tuesdays and Thursdays during the 6 a.m. and noon newscasts.

Viewers may submit their questions to Ward by going to the ABC 6 Web site, http://abc6.com, or by mailing them to ABC 6, 10 Orms, St., Providence. She will answer as many as time permits. It’s another way that our College of Pharmacy helps area residents.

Oldest Alum Dies at 102

Nelson C. White, the University’s oldest grad, died this winter at 102. Known for his lifelong pioneering spirit, he traded his 1978 Cadillac Eldorado coupe for a Lexus 430 two-seater with a retractable hardtop on his 96th birthday and enjoyed demonstrating how the roof opened and closed at a push of the button.

A 1925 chemical engineering graduate, he received our first and only “master of engineering” degree in 1931. A successful businessman, he joined the International Minerals and Chemical Corporation at the start of World War II and eventually became its general manager in 1950 and then its chairman and CEO in 1966. He retired in 1971, but remained on the board until 1974.

He established awards for engineering students who showed creativity by donating $4,000 in 1970, adding a match from this company. Today, grateful engineering students throughout the college receive White awards at commencement.

Mustering Interest in Art

Art galleries generally provide a time and place for quiet reflection, but an exhibition at the Fine Arts Center this February created quite a bit of noise.

The exhibition, “States of Siege: A Consideration of Re-enactment Photography,” featured a complementary Civil War muster complete with reenactment troops, hard tack, salt pork, and fife and drums.

“The event brought a re-interpretation of history to life. It was the perfect means to focus on the historic processes of photography and the effect of this art form on the recording of history and our personal and collective memory,” says galleries director Judith Tolnick Champa, who creatively curated the exhibition and coordinated the muster with sculptor Jen Raimondi.

Justice at Commencement

Frank J. Williams, chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, delivered the University’s 120th commencement address on May 21.

Williams was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2001 after serving for nearly six years as an associate justice of the Superior Court.

The prominent Lincoln scholar noted that the commencement marked the 66th anniversary of his father’s graduation from URI in 1940.

The judge was one of seven individuals who received honorary degrees. The other recipients were: Ken and Sue Kermes, noted community leaders who avidly support, frequently fund, and rarely miss many of the University’s arts programs; Janet Hirsch, URI professor emerita, who taught caring and commitment along with nursing for 27 years, Fred Joyal ’79, chief executive officer of Futuredontics, who helped URI students visualize a career in film by initiating our film festival and an endowment for our new film media major; Thomas Wroe Jr. ’72, president of Sensata Technologies, Inc., and the driving force behind the University’s proposed Chinese International Engineering Program; and Dennis Langley, president and CEO of the Rhode Island affiliate of the National Urban League, the nation’s oldest and largest community-based movement devoted to empowering Americans.