MaGazine - Green Meadow Waldorf School

Green Meadow 

Waldorf School 

A l u m n i 

MaGazine 

S p r i n g 07 

Spring 2007 |

Green Meadow 

Alumni Magazine 

Spring 2007 

Director of Development 

Tony Cirone 

(845) 356-2514 x 311 

tcirone@gmws.org 

Associate Director of 

Development 

Chris Delaney 

845-356-2514 x 304 

cdelaney@gmws.org 

Alumni Coordinator 

Ivy Greenstein 

(845) 356-2514 x 330 

igreenstein@gmws.org 

Alumni Magazine Editor 

Candace Stern 

(201) 264-8100 

cstern@gmws.org 

Design/Production Manager 

Jan Melchior 

jhmelchior@optonline.net 

Photographers 

Heather Duke, Frederic Gilbert, 

Ray Manacas, Jim Morgan, 

Candace Stern 

Editorial Office 

Green Meadow Waldorf School 

307 Hungry Hollow Road 

Chestnut Ridge, NY 10977 

Green Meadow Waldorf School 

publishes the GM Alumni 

Magazine two times a year in 

Fall and Spring. 

Editorial Committee 

Jennie Abbott ‘91 

Jennifer Brooks-Quinn 

Ivy Greenstein 

Jan Melchior 

Ann Stahl 

Alexis Starkey ’91 

Candace Stern 

2 | Alumni Magazine 

Exploring the new world 

Last summer, when the temperature was easily 60 degrees warmer than it 

is now, I began thinking about this issue. At the time, I was immersed in 

the process of assembling the Fall 2006 issue out of Class Reps’ columns 

filled with news: Milestone events such as graduations, engagements, 

weddings and babies, were interspersed with news about work and careers. 

Reading about the diverse ways Green Meadow’s alumni are engaging with the 

world gave me insights into your lives and stirred my imagination for this and future 

issues of the Alumni Magazine. Strange as it may sound, the more I worked on the 

Fall issue, the more this issue began to take form in my mind’s eye. Reading the 

Alumni News was just the beginning: my curiosity grew. I contacted a few alumni 

and from those conversations came the realization that an issue devoted to alumni 

pursuing diverse initiatives would be fascinating. 

One by one, the authors of the articles published here developed their themes: 

Social Finance, Global Warming, Architecture as Art, Humanitarian Service. As each 

essay arrived, I was struck by the combination of dedication, knowledge and passion 

that enlivened their work and their writing about it. These themes appear in the 

news daily, BUT what a different experience to read contemporary accounts written 

by Green Meadow alumni who are actually living these stories. We are fortunate, 

indeed, to be ably guided by these modern day explorers into realms at once familiar 

and strikingly new. 

Now, as I make finishing edits and rewrites for this issue, visions of the next issues 

insinuate themselves into my consciousness. Very soon I will email your indefatigable 

Class Reps to initiate the annual collection of Class News for the Fall 2007 

Alumni Magazine. Your friends and classmates look forward to hearing what you 

are doing and so does the extended Green Meadow community. So please, support 

your Class Rep and fill him/her in on all your doings. As fascinating and inspiring 

as the authors who wrote for this issue are, they are only the tip of the iceberg. As 

Green Meadow alumni, you and they belong to a community of vibrant, engaged and 

dedicated souls. The possibilities for future issues of the Alumni Magazine are rich 

with promise and are guaranteed to make fascinating reading. So take a moment to 

sit down with a cup of tea and read all about the exciting ways your fellow alumni are 

navigating and exploring the new world of the twenty-first century. 

~Candace Stern, Editor 

Our thanks go to Seventh Grade class teacher Karl Schurman and High School crafts teacher 

Sandy Volpe who drew the amazing chalk drawing seen on the front cover of the magazine. 

You will catch tantalizing glimpses of Seventh Grade art work by Laila Younis (inside front 

cover) and Nina Kornberg (page 3) depicting the global explorations conducted by Portuguese 

navigator Vasco da Gama (1460-1524) and English explorer Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912). 

On the back cover is a spring bloom for you: a watercolor painting by Hasan Oswald ’07.

Contents 

f e a t u r e s 

d e p a r t m e n t s 

13 More Than Tea 

16 Teacher FeaTure: Jane Wulsin 

19 service: The BesT DevoTion 

25 caseros Prison DeMoliTion ProJecT 

28 GloBal cliMaTe chanGe 

4 coMMuniTy neWs 

8 aluMni neWs 

31 WhaT WoulD sTeiner say? 

32 conTriBuTors 

Spring 2007 |

Community News 

| Alumni Magazine 

faculty green meadow waldorf 

school sunbridge college 

fellowship community threefold 

educational foundation pfeiffer 

center eurythmy spring valley 

Fa c u l t y n e w s 

Jim & leah Henderson 

on Sabbatical ’07-’08 

Jim and Leah Henderson are 

all smiles these days: next 

year they will be on sabbatical 

and they can’t wait. They were 

bitten by the travel bug years 

ago, but children, teaching and 

the responsibilities of their middle 

years, contrived to keep them 

close to home and family. now, 

as card-carrying Baby Boomers, 

they are looking forward to traveling 

around the world. 

Before they leave, however, 

they will host the marriage celebration 

of their daughter, ariel 

’99, to Josh Gleich, on august 18. 

Jim and Leah will leave on their 

second honeymoon immediately 

following ariel’s and Josh’s nup- 

Above: Leah and Jim Henderson 

tials. With backpacks filled with 

clothes, books and a T-Mobile 

international phone, they are 

looking forward to traveling 

where their curiosity and interest 

take them. no tight schedules 

for these veteran teachers 

who have been on the job every 

morning at 8 am and who have 

sat through countless meetings 

over their combined 47 years at 

Green Meadow. 

Jim and Leah will fly first to 

Hong Kong; from there, they will 

travel by train into southwest 

China where they plan to spend 

two months hiking and visiting 

sites. During the next two 

months they will explore their 

way through Thailand and Vietnam, 

where Jim was once stationed 

with the US navy. They 

will then fly to new Delhi, traveling 

again by train to the southwest 

of the indian Subcontinent. 

Their next stop is nairobi, Kenya 

where they plan to set out on a 

safari. On their trip home, Jim 

and Leah will stop off in Rome to 

see the cleaned frescoes in the 

Sistine Chapel at Vatican City. 

They expect to return to the 

States in mid-May 2008, just in 

time to attend ariel’s graduation 

from the University of Michigan 

Law School. e 

Alumna will Teach 

Biology in 2007-08 

Deborah Schaeffer ‘01 will 

stand in for Jim Henderson 

during the 2007-2008 school 

year teaching biology and math 

at GMWS High School. Deborah 

graduated from Bowdoin College 

in ’05 with a double major in environmental 

Studies and Biology 

and a Government minor. Since 

graduation she has lived and 

worked in Brooklyn. She spent 

a year working with City Year, 

a national organization that recruits 

young people of diverse 

backgrounds to perform a year 

of full-time community service 

in low-income, urban neighborhoods. 

Deborah then worked 

with a public school team in 

Queens assisting a 5th grade 

teacher, tutoring, and running 

after-school programs. Since the 

summer of 2006, she has been 

working at a community center 

in Queensbridge, the largest 

public housing project in the 

city. Deborah’s long-term plans 

are to become a public elementary 

school science teacher. e 

S c h o o l n e w s 

What Does the World 

Need from Us? 

This year during High School 

Week, our activities revolved 

around the question, What Does 

the World Need from Us? We 

viewed it from many angles and 

approached it through a number 

of different activities. 

Our week started off with a 

presentation from our keynote 

speaker David Goodman (par-

ent of Jacob ’01 and ivan ’04). He 

took us on an engaging journey 

of graphs, diagrams and statistics 

regarding the anthropogenic 

world and the natural world. He 

also gave us a glimpse into our 

economic future, as well as the 

alternative energy projects he is 

involved in. This laid the foundation 

for our week and grounded 

us in our theme question. 

Then we moved on to our various 

workshop activities. if you 

had walked into the High School 

at this time, you would have 

seen students doing salsa dancing, 

yoga or Tai Chi. You would 

have heard lively music and business 

discussions. You might have 

caught a glimpse of recycled art 

creations, solar energy contraptions, 

or smelled (or better yet, 

tasted!) bread baking at the 

Pfeif-fer Gardens. each of these 

workshops fully engaged the students, 

while expanding subtly on 

our theme question. We continued 

them throughout the week. 

The next day we had the opportunity 

to hear a varied and illuminating 

group of panelists: Mac 

Mead, formerly the farmer at the 

Fellowship Community and incoming 

Director of Threefold’s 

Pfeiffer Center; Behzad Yaghmaian, 

professor of economics 

and author of Embracing the Infidel, 

who spoke about the perceptions 

held of americans by people 

from other countries; William 

Spencer, a consultant dealing 

with over-use of technology and 

the effect it has on the human 

being; and Dr. John Giudice, an 

holistic chiropractor concerned 

with the future of health care. 

They were eager to tell us what 

they were passionate about and 

to give us advice in light of their 

own life journeys. Whether it was 

biodynamic farming, chiropractic 

healing, the wonders/dangers 

of technology, or the war in 

iraq, each panelist spoke about 

his subject with sincerity and 

intelligence. a question and answer 

session followed in which 

we delved deeper into their presentations. 

Wednesday saw an empty 

high school as we were all on 

field trips exploring our theme 

beyond the school’s borders. 

Some went to the stock market 

to experience the fast-paced 

world that is relevant to our 

future. Others visited the natural 

history museum where they 

looked back to look forward. 

Some viewed the modern art of 

the future while others learned 

dance steps or stayed home 

on the range. We returned to 

school Thursday ready to sit 

down to al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient 

Truth. 

We all gathered together Friday 

afternoon to close our week 

with workshop presentations 

and discussions. We realized, as 

Mrs. Christofides pointed out, 

that there are two ways to approach 

the daunting idea of a 

troubled future. We can be overwhelmed 

and thus discouraged 

from action, or we can take it all 

in with a deep breath and begin 

with the small changes around 

us. “Think globally, act locally” 

was a phrase uttered many times 

this week. The workshop presentations 

were interesting and very 

amusing. each workshop was 

a success. With the closing discussions 

we realized all we had 

learned in the past week, whether 

it was positive or negative. 

The week definitely broadened 

our horizons and perhaps even 

cleared the air regarding our fu- 

ture. Thank you to everyone who 

helped with this week: it would 

not have been possible without 

you. e 

~DanieLLe SCHeReR ‘07 

new Service learning 

group at green meadow 

Last week, a group of twentyfive 

students and three teachers 

got together to form the Service 

initiative Group at Green 

Meadow. Part of the impulse that 

led us to start a group was the 

subject of this year’s high school 

week, What Does the World Need 

From Us? Partly, the students 

and teachers were driven by their 

desire to heal nature and pass on 

our knowledge and good fortune 

to those in need. 

it is our hope that the Service 

initiative can work in three areas: 

the school, the community, and 

the world. in our first meeting, the 

students expressed their desire 

to help Green Meadow students 

reach out to the community and 

to help our school become more 

awake and active in response to 

important environmental issues. 

The Service initiative Group also 

plans to work in the community, 

building relationships with other 

local service groups, and helping 

both the people and the environment 

that surrounds us. Lastly, 

the students hope to help the 

world through environmental 

work, and also by financially aiding 

distant peoples. The students 

also hope to travel and lend their 

own hands to the service of people 

abroad. 

. . . 

We are in need of ideas. We are 

also in need of opportunities. if 

you have any helpful input, please 

email me at defnecaldwell@opt 

online.net. e 

~ DeFne CaLDWeLL ’87 


Spring 2007 |



S u n b r i d g e 

Co l l e g e n e ws 

On the 21st of October, Sunbridge 

College inaugurated 

Robert Schiappacasse as the first 

President of Sunbridge College. 

This moment marked a shift in 

our college culture, which is developing 

into an accredited, anthroposophical 

graduate center 

with strong professional development 

and continuing education 

programs that educate and renew 

Waldorf teachers, school administrators, 

remedial educators, 

handwork teachers, and educational 

and community leaders. as 

our first College President, Robert 

will help Sunbridge further 

strengthen and grow its master’s 

degree program offerings, such 

as the new Liberal Studies M.a. 

offered by The Barfield School of 

Sunbridge College. His role, and 

the resources produced through 

in-depth research projects of 

our graduate students, will allow 

us to participate in mainstream 

dialogues about education and 

healthy child development, putting 

Waldorf education in a new 

and broader context. 

as we begin a new chapter in our 

biography, we also say farewell to 

Christopher and Signe Schaefer 

(GMWS parents of Karin ’87 and 

Stefan ’89). Chris and Signe have 

been instrumental in the development 

of Sunbridge, and after over 

20 years, they are retiring from 

their full-time involvement with 

the College. However, as they will 

both continue to direct part-time 

programs, their work with Sunbridge 

College will continue in a 

fresh way as part of a new and exciting 

future! e 

~JULiKa STaCKeLBeRG-aDDO 

H u n g r y H o l l o w 

Co - o p : Plus ca 

Change, Plus C’est la 

Meme Chose 

Change is probably the word 

that pops up most often when 

talking about the Co-op these 

days. and how could it be otherwise 

in a year that, before it is 

over, will have encompassed the 

departure of three of the founders—Barbara 

Johnson, nancy 

Kossowsky, and later this spring, 

Christine Sloan; a longtime department 

manager—Simon Hilgerdt 

’97; and several faithful staff 

members. They are all leaving to 

pursue exciting new paths. each 

of these individuals is unique and 

irreplaceable. The particular talents 

and interests they brought 

have become part of the fabric of 

the Co-op. They will certainly be 

missed. Their selfless dedication 

to the ideals of community service, 

sustainable agriculture and 

educational outreach has made it 

possible for the Co-op to become 

an independent being with a life 

and a destiny of its own. e 

~PeTeR WieSneR, reprinted from 

the Hungry Holler, Volume XX, 

issue i, Winter 2007 

T h r e e f o l d : news 

from Threefold Educational 

Foundation & 

The pfeiffer Center 

This summer, Gunther Hauk, 

founding director of the Pfeiffer 

Center for Biodynamics & the 

environment, Threefold’s youngest 

offspring, will move to the 

Midwest to begin a biodynamic 

research center. We are happy 

that his dream will be realized 

and equally happy to announce 

that he will be succeeded by Mac 

Mead, who, for over 20 years, 

was the farmer at the Fellowship 

Community. During this year the 

Pfeiffer Center has flourished 

under the joint leadership of Mac 

and Gunther while Mac has also 

turned his talented hand to the 

Left to right: Nancy Kossowsky, 

Christine Sloan, Barbara Johnson. 

Left to right : Robert Schiappacasse, Signe Schaefer, Chris Schaefer

care of the landscaping. The success 

of the Pfeiffer Center garden 

has allowed us to begin to address 

the larger landscape with an approach 

that brings the insights of 

biodynamics to ecology. 

after some initial skepticism 

from local authorities, we obtained 

permission to use an innovative 

method to control storm 

water run-off on the grounds of 

the Hungry Hollow Co-op. The 

landscaping mimics natural systems 

by using native wildflower 

plantings and created wet-lands 

and has many environmental benefits. 

With the interest and en- 

thusiasm of our interns, and the 

direction of Rafael Manaças and 

Mac Mead, the native plantings 

are becoming a viable example 

for like-minded organizations to 

introduce. in the two years since 

they were planted, these plantings 

have survived drought, hurricanes 

and intensive calcium 

chloride run-off. They have even 

survived the derision of neighbors 

who thought it would never 

work! We are proud to be one 

of the first places in Rockland 

County to set this example. e 

~MiMi SaTRianO 

E u r y t h m y 

S p r i n g 

Va l l e y 

…and listens at the 

shores of the great 

silence… 

This past February 3rd, a 

unique, first-of-its-kind collaboration 

took place between 

John Wulsin, Green Meadow 

teacher, and Barbara Schneider- 

Serio, Christina Beck and Jennifer 

Kleinbach, faculty of eurythmy 

Spring Valley. 

The workshop opened with 

John Wulsin leading us into the 

origins of western drama and 

toward Shakespeare and the 

characters of Macbeth. Through 

John’s insights we began to see 

ourselves in the inner conflicts 

and choices of these characters. 

The eurythmists brought a short 

performance in which the questions 

of Lady Macbeth and Lady 

Macduff came to life, reminding 

us of those moments in our own 

lives when we cannot change 

what we have done or what is irreversibly 

coming toward us. 

This workshop will travel 

across the country over the next 

year to Waldorf teacher trainings 

and school communities. 

its interactive format is meant 

to stimulate new answers to the 

question, “Why do Waldorf students 

do eurythmy?” We are interested 

in kindling a direct experience 

of what a tremendous 

resource eurythmy is to any 

process of inquiry. We will continue 

our work on these themes 

and anyone interested in joining 

us for future workshops should 

look on the eurythmy Spring Valley 

website for details at www. 

eurythmy.org. e 

BeTH DUnn-FOX 

Fe l l o w s h i p 

Co m m u n i t y 

The Green Meadow Kindergarten 

class still takes place 

within the community setting, 

on the ground floor of Meadow 

Wood Lodge. Green Meadow 

Third Graders make regular visits 

to the Fellowship when they 

have their farming block. new 

this year is a metal-working 

class for Green Meadow High 

School students. a rebirth of 

Otto Specht classes here in the 

Fellowship has been headed by 

Jeanette Rodriguez. The Otto 

Specht classes are offered to a 

small number of children and 

young adults who have souls in 

need of special care—who often 

need work-based and special educational 

activities. in our setting, 

we call this activity home 

schooling in a community. The 

planned interplay of the ages is 

therapeutic for young and old 

alike. This interaction supports 

what Rudolf Steiner has called 

the greatest “act of fellowship,” 

that is, when the very young and 

the very old meet. 

a geothermal system has been 

installed in Hill Top House. The 

system is up and running, reducing 

our expenses for utilities by 

about 40%. in addition, we have 

been able to take another step 

with “green technology,” installing 

solar panels on the roof of the 

barn at the farm for the production 

of electricity. This installation 

was facilitated by a gift from 

David Goodman, who has a conservation 

business, and a grant 

from the new York State energy 

Renewal Development agency. 

This same agency gave us a grant 

for the geothermal system. e 

Fall ’06 Fellowship Newsletter 


Spring 2007 | 7

Alumni 

News 

Below Right: 

Class of 1976 

(left to right) 

Scott Kemmer, 

Bill Smith, 

Neil Gordon, 

Andrea Singer, 

Chris Scharff 

opposite page: 

Class of 1976 

(first column) 

Barabara and 

Bill Smith, 

Neil Gordon 

and Alla Spiegel, 

Scott and 

Maureen 

Kemmer, 

Andrea and 

Paul Singer, 

Chris Scharff 

opposite page: 

Class of 1991 

(third column) 

1 | Evan Palazzo 

2 | Alexis Starkey & 

partner Scott Nova 

3 | Marlow Grayson, 

Alana Bond & 

Sachio Ko-Yin 

(Oliver Coe) 

4 | Phil Brigouleix’s 

fiance, Maria, & 

, 

wife of 

Sachio Ko-Yin 

5 | Severin Hiller 

& Jennie Abbott 


ClASS oF 1976 

30th Reunion Gathering 

Six members of the class of 1976—Scott 

Kemmer, Bill Smith, neil Gordon, Chris 

Scharff, Fatima Deen and andrea Singer 

—celebrated their 30th class reunion over 

the weekend of the Fall Fair. We gathered at 

the Fall Fair where we were joined by Fatima 

Deen, who came down from Kingston for the 

day, but could not stay for dinner. We stopped 

by the all alumni Gathering in the High School 

and enjoyed seeing so many alumni from other 

classes. We then went to andrea Singer’s 

house for dinner. Joining us were Maureen 

Kemmer, Barbara Smith, alla Spiegel and Paul 

Singer. That we were able to muster six of our 

class of eleven—just better than a fifty percent 

turnout—was wonderful! it seems somehow 

inadequate to comment about how fast time 

has gone by, and yet that is exactly how we all 

felt. The evening provided a wonderful opportunity 

to talk about what we’ve all been up to 

and catch up on family news and events. 

neil, Bill, Scott and andrea are living in 

Rockland County with their families. neil is 

busy with his decorating business and raising 

his two sons. Bill continues with his law practice, 

is a local judge, and he and Barbara are 

active in the community and with their three 

children. Scott and Maureen are working and 

raising their lovely daughter, who was the only 

one of our collective children to join us for dinner. 

Chris is still living in Boston with his wife, 

Fay, and daughter. He is working as an engi-

neer and supports his wife’s african relief work. 

Fatima is self-employed and living upstate in 

Kingston. earlier in the summer, we received 

an email from Richard Brinton. Richard and 

his wife, Maia, have four children (ages 10-20). 

They have lived abroad for twenty-five years 

and in england for the past ten years. Melissa 

Denehy Swain sent regards from north Carolina, 

where she works as a nurse in a local hospital 

and lives with her husband, Rob. Her two 

grown children live nearby and she is enjoying 

her first grandchild. and for those of you who 

were not able to join or send word—Mo, amy, 

Jacqui, Barbara, Mark and James—we’d love 

to hear from you! e 

—Andrea Singer ‘76 

g R e e N M e a d o w 

waldoRf school 

welcoMes 

t h e 2 0 0 7 

R e u N i o N 

c l a s s e s 

• 2002 

• 1977 • 

• 1992 

• 1997 

1982 • 1987 

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15 

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15 

10 quick and easy tips 

on throwing a 

successful reunion 

AlExIS STARKEY ‘91 

1) Gather your forces; do not try to do it 

all alone. Ask several people from your 

class to help. Consider all areas of their 

strengths and talents (see #5), and then 

divide the tasks accordingly. 

2) Think about what kind of reunion the people 

in your class would like to have. Do 

you want to involve the School or would 

you rather do something off campus? Do 

you want to invite only your graduating 

class or those from first grade on? 

3) If you choose to invite everyone you 

need to find them first. This means you 

will need to turn into a bit of a creative 

sleuth. First, remember the Internet is 

your friend. Start by Googling the person 

and see what comes up. Check MySpace. 

com, Friendster.com, and Class Reunions. 

com. While people may have left the 

school, many often maintain strong ties 

to the community. So, put out the word 

that you are looking for someone in par- 

ticular and you will be surprised by what 

you find. I was able to locate a missing 

classmate through a friend who was in 

the class above me, only because he had 

an email for the missing person’s ex-girl- 

friend; and yes, I felt a little silly sending 

an email to a woman I didn’t know, but 

the pay off was worth it! 

4) Once you have located people start the 

real planning. First choose a date and a 

venue. If you want to involve the School 

this is the time to talk with Ivy Greenstein 

about what would work for GMWS. Think 

about where your classmates are living. 

Which classmates still have families liv- 

ing in the GMWS area? Would it be better 

to hold the reunion around a holiday or 

closer to the summer? Would people be 

more interested in having a day at the Fall 

Fair or just spending time alone? Choose 

two or three dates that are available with 

the School and canvas your classmates. 

We have done this with evite.com and by 

sending out cards and asking people to 

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Alumni News 

Spring 2007 |

Alumni News 

1 

2 

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check off dates on a postcard and mail it 

back. Email is of course easiest. 

5) Call on your classmates to help get the 

word out about your reunion. Do you 

7 

have a graphic artist in your midst who 

would be very happy to design an invitation? 

Or perhaps a computer wiz who 

could set up a web page. Maybe someone 

is a videographer or a caterer. Ask 

around and let people help you. It is so 

rewarding when people have an opportunity 

to showcase their knowledge. 

6) Make your plan. It is best to structure your 

reunion with a good balance of planned 

activities and plenty of free time. For our 

10th Reunion, we met at the School and 

participated in some Waldorf activities. 

John Wulsin was kind enough to come 

and start the day off with voice exercis- 

es and his famous tongue twisters. We 

followed this with a lecture by Eugene 

Schwartz, lunch at the Main House, painting 

or drama hours, and a tea where we 

invited all teachers and our parents. We 

ended our day with a BBQ at the School. 

It was wonderful to reconnect with the 

School by reawakening those dormant 

Waldorf memories. And I know the par- 

ents were just as happy seeing each oth- 

er and the teachers as they were seeing 

us. We chose to hold our 15th Reunion 

during the Fall Fair. This time, those of us 

who could meet on Friday evening gath- 

ered in the back room at Di Vinci’s Pizza 

to spend some time alone. The next 

day, at the Fair, we organized a hayride 

for the class, and after a day of greeting 

old friends, we had a dinner together 

with invited faculty and parents at a par- 

ent/friend’s house. Sunday morning we 

hiked to Indian Rock with a backpacked 

picnic lunch. 

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7) Encourage people to bring photos and 

samples of what they have been working 

on, or albums of their recent trips or 

anything else they would like to share. 

Most importantly, bring any of your old 

school photos, or a particular main lesson 

book, or even an old report card. You’ll be 

amazed at how insightful, not spiteful as 

we thought then, our teachers were. 

8) If you choose to cook the main meal ask 

for volunteers to come over early and 

help prep, or do something like a BBQ 

where everyone can pitch in at that moment. 

You will be surprised by how easily 

you will all fall back into the mode of 

working well together again. 

9) Finances can be a big hindrance for people 

wanting to attend a reunion. For our 

first reunion we asked those who could 

contribute a little extra to do so and we 

set up a fund where those who were less 

financially secure could still make the 

trip. Food costs can be divided out, but 

up front money is needed for pre-prep 

purchases. Housing is another consideration. 

Some families may have moved 

away and hotels in Rockland can be pricey 

and/or far away from your gathering 

place. Ask around and see who needs 

housing and who can offer housing. 

Some people might need transportation 

from trains, planes or buses. Channel local 

high school classmates who have 

available cars and would be willing to 

give rides. 

10) Remember: Whatever you and your classmates 

choose to do will be fun. Whether 

you plan a lot of activities or a nice, quiet 

evening, you’re bound to have a wonderful 

time. The most important part of a 

reunion is just spending time with each 

other. Enjoy yourself! e 

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m u s i c • c r a f t s • g a m e s • a r t i s a n s • g r i l l 

G r e e n M e a d o w 

F a M i l y M u s i c 

F e s t i v a l 

s ta r r i n G t o M c h a p i n 

a n d o t h e r s p e c i a l G u e s t s 

M a y 2 6 , 1 0 a M - 6 p M 

i c e c r e a m • t i e - d y e • b e a d i n g • p o n y r i d e s 

Ca l e n d a r o f Eve nts 

Senior projects 

april 16 – 20 

gmWS Family 

music Festival 

May 26th 10am-6pm 

Mary Dailey Field 

Headliners include Tom Chapin 

25% off Admission for all 

Green Meadow Alumni. 

For updates and information 

visit the Green Meadow 

website: www.gmws.org 

High School 

graduation 

sunday, June 17 

GMWS Gymnasium 

Fall Fair & Alumni 

gathering 2007 

saturday, october 20 

faiR 

10 am – 5 pm 

Green Meadow Courtyard 

aluMNi gatheRiNg 

4 pm in the High School 

Class of 1991, 15th reunion, photos taken by Alexis Starkey, Fall Fair 2006 

(pages 9 & 10): 1 | Ariana Daner Falerni, Alana Bond Franklin, Alexis Starkey; 

2 | Krista and Nicole Schoolcraft; 3 | Jeff and Ariana Daner Falerni, and Phil 

Brigouleix; 4 | Anind Dey holding Kavi & Jennifer Mankoff holding Elena; 

5 | Tony and Jennifer Grant Horler; 6 | (in the corner) Sachio Ko-yin and 

John Wulsin; 7 | Standing: , Sachio Ko-Yin, Nico (son 

of ) Ramona Ruud, Marlow Grayson, Severin Hiller, Ariana Daner Falerni, 

Alana Bond Franklin, Phil Brigouleix and fiance, Maria. In front, Jennifer 

Abbott and Alexis Starkey; 8 | Evan Palazzo, Alexis Starkey, Scott Nova 

from the alumni office 

In the summer of 2005, Candace Stern 

joined the Development Office in the 

role of Alumni Coordinator, responsible 

for the Alumni Committee, publications, 

events/reunions, and Alumni Giving. 

This May, Richard Stern will retire and 

he is taking Candace with him. Their 

plan is to spend summers in Maine and 

winters in Texas. While Richard enjoys 

his well-deserved retirement, computers 

and telecommunications will allow Candace 

to continue as editor of the Alumni 

Magazine. “As it is, I rely upon phone 

and email to stay in touch with GMWS 

Alumni. As for planning and producing 

the Magazine, Jan Melchior, our graphic 

designer, lives 50 miles north of Green 

Meadow and we have always phoned, 

emailed and sent documents back and 

forth. Nothing much is really going to 

change—except for the location of my 

computer and telephone. Wherever I 

am, you can always reach me by email 

at cstern@gmws.org.” We at Green 

Meadow gratefully acknowledge the innumerable 

contributions Candace has 

made to the Alumni program. We wish 

her and Richard safe travels and much 

happiness in their new life. 

Anticipating Candace’s new role, in 

January Ivy Greenstein joined the Development 

Office to become the School’s 

new Alumni Coordinator and in-house 

Alumni contact person. In addition to 

facilitating class reunions – take note 

classes of ’77, ’82, ’87, ’92, ’97, ’02! - Ivy 

will support and coordinate Alumni Giving 

with David Bosch and is gearing up 

to produce the next Alumni Directory. 

Her email address is igreenstein@gmws. 

org. During the “changeover” months of 

February and March, Ivy and Candace are 

sharing a desk, a computer and a phone, 

working closely to ensure a smooth transition. 

You can reach the Alumni Office 

by calling 845-356-2514, ext. 330, where 

the current or future (and sometimes 

both!) Alumni Coordinators are always 

happy to hear from you. e 

tony cirone, development director 

Alumni News 

Spring 2007 |

Pictured below, 

left to right: 

Ivy Greenstein, 

Candace Stern 


Alumni Directory ’07 

I am delighted to become the newest 

member of GMWS’s Development team. 

I bring with me many years of administrative 

experience in a variety of educational 

settings, as well as the personal interest 

and perspective of a current GMWS parent. 

I look forward to connecting with as 

many of you as possible and hope to do 

justice to the wonderful legacy Candace 

is leaving behind. 

The 2007 edition of the Alumni Directory 

will be one of my first projects. The 

new directory will be a valuable resource 

for all of us and with your support we 

hope to produce it in time to include 

with the Summer issue of the Alumni 

Magazine. 

When class reps contact you this spring 

to gather news for this next issue, they 

will be asking you to verify the snail and 

email addresses we have on file. You can 

help them by giving us your updates in 

advance. If your contact information has 

changed in the last year or so, please send 

your update via email to igreenstein@ 

gmws.org. Simply write “Alumni Directory” 

on the subject line and list your name, 

class year, current address, email address 

and phone number. This way, I can begin 

what will undoubtedly be a cumbersome 

process and help to ensure the timeliness 

and accuracy of our finished product. 

If you have any comments/thoughts/ 

ideas as to how the GMWS Alumni Office 

may best serve you, please feel free 

to send them along also. I’m very happy 

to be working here on your behalf and I 

truly welcome your suggestions. e 

ivy greenstein, alumni coordinator 

alumni fundraising: Mid-Year Update 

am happy to report that the 2006i 

2007 Alumni Annual Giving campaign 

has gotten off to a good start. 

Tim Burger ’86 and I kicked things 

off with an Annual Appeal letter enclosed 

with the Fall 06 Alumni Magazine. 

We followed up with a personal 

appeal made to the hundred or so 

Alumni who attended the 2006 All 

Alumni Reunion at the Fall Fair. My 

message was short and to the point: 

We are seeking to increase both the 

number of Alumni donations, from 

76 to 115, and the amount of money 

raised from $10,000 to $15,000 this 

fiscal year, 2006-2007. As always, the 

Fall Fair generated lots of alumni enthusiasm 

and appreciation for Green 

Meadow. From conversations I had 

over the course of the All Alumni 

Reunion party, our goals for this year 

resonated with many of you. 

In the months since the Fall Fair, 

we’ve received thirty-four donations 

totaling $5,063. This is the best start 

ever, and on behalf of Green Mead- 

david Bosch ‘85 

Alumni News 

ow we thank all of you who have donated. 

However, we still have a way to go 

to reach the goals of 115 donations 

and $15,000 dollars. To get to where 

we need to be we’ll be relying in large 

part on newly minted Class Agents, 

who will undertake to contact all 

of their class members on behalf of 

the school. We found last year that 

reaching out personally to alumni really 

helped, and we’ll be tracking our 

progress with this initiative. 

As the size and number of alumni 

donations increase, we as alumni 

can ensure that Green Meadow Waldorf 

School will continue to provide 

a quality education to the next generations 

of students. A hearty thanks 

to those of you who have already 

made your donation to the School 

this year. For those of you waiting for 

a more auspicious moment to make 

your gift, please consider doing so 

by the close of the School’s fiscal 

year, June 30, 2007. e 

Every gift makes a big 

difference for gmWS 

THrEE EASy WAyS To giVE: 

pHonE: Tony CironE 845-356-2514, x 311 

onlinE: www.gmws.org/giving 

mAil: gmWS Development office 

307 Hungry Hollow road • Chestnut ridge, ny 10977

More 

than 

Tea 

Mark Finser 

Class of 7 

As I sipped my morning tea on a recent 

chilly morning, I looked at the attractive 

Numi Tea package and thought about 

the individuals who made it possible for 

me to enjoy this particular way of waking 

up. Warming my hands on the mug, I considered 

this socially responsible company and the values 

it holds—values closely aligned with those of RSF 

Social Finance, the organization I lead as president 

and CEO. Some of those values include environmental 

stewardship, compassion, interdependence, 

collaboration, and innovation. As a social finance 

organization, it’s a given that RSF ensures there is 

alignment of values with our clients before we make 

a grant, a gift, or a loan. As with all our other clients, 

Numi’s values proved to be a match. 

After guiding RSF for 22 years, I look back now 

on my journey to this point and see how marked by 

significant moments it has been. A particularly large 

“signpost” was the 7 Green Meadow student 

conference Meeting the Future and Ourselves. 

This was my early and exciting introduction to the 

world of philanthropy and a foreshadowing of my 

life’s work with RSF. 

RSF Social Finance 

i 

joined RSF in 1984 and, along 

with other visionaries and dedicated 

staff, shaped its present 

incarnation as a leading social finance 

non-profit organization in 

San Francisco. From the beginning, 

RSF’s mission was to “transform 

the way the world worked with 

money.” RSF’s vision for the future 

is one where a new consciousness 

is brought to financial transactions, 

a future where profit is determined 

by social and environmental benefit, 

as well as by financial return. We 

work towards this by attracting and 

developing a community of philanthropists 

and socially responsible 

investors; by putting donor and investor 

intentions to work through 

grants, loans, and investments in 

organizations that foster economic, 

environmental, and social responsibility; 

and by developing the capacity 

of individuals and organizations 

to explore the social implications of 

financial practices. 

My work at RSF is exciting. Just 

imagine—through the vehicle of 

social finance, we get to support the 

future through the present moment. 

People have the power, through 

their thoughtful financial transactions, 

to create the world we want 

to see. Gift and investment money 

moves throughout philanthropic, 

investment, and lending programs 

to provide funding for a variety of 

new initiatives. For example, funds 

Alumni profile 

Spring 2007 |


1: Three tea 

pickers at 

Koslanda tea 

garden; 

2: Banana 

growers pose in 

front of their new 

home in El Guabo, 

Ecuador, built 

from the 

proceeds of 

selling bananas 

to the Fair Trade 

market. 

3: School girls 

at United Nilgiri 

tea garden; 

4: Coffee sorting 

at Oromia Coffee 

Cooperative 

Union, Ethiopia 

All photos 

courtesy of 

TransFair USA 


have provided support for a Buddhist 

guest house in Katmandu, a 

women’s cooperative in ecuador, 

helped ensure farmers get fair prices 

for their products (www.transfairusa.org), 

strengthened the voice 

of independent media (www.indypress.org), 

helped protect and educate 

child refugees (www.rugmark. 

org), and helped provide buildings 

for Waldorf schools. Many of these 

projects and organizations, while 

not anthroposophical, are closely 

compatible with Rudolf Steiner’s 

ideals of a society characterized by 

freedom in cultural work, human 

dignity, and social justice through 

human rights and brotherhood in 

the economic realm. 

1 

4 

2 3 

Social Finance 

—a continuum 

Social finance is the use of financial 

resources for social 

benefit. it can take the form 

of a gift to a nonprofit or an investment 

in an organization creating 

positive social or environmental 

impact. along with philanthropy, 

the following are the principal tools 

for financing social benefit. 

Socially responsible investing 

(equity) describes an investment 

strategy which combines the intentions 

to maximize both financial 

return and social good. in general, 

socially responsible investors favor 

corporate practices which are en- 

vironmentally responsible, support 

workplace diversity, and increase 

product safety and quality. 

Social debt investments can take 

many forms. Corporate and government 

debt can be screened for social 

/ environmental issues; loans 

can be made directly to nonprofits 

and companies with social missions; 

and investments can be made 

in community development and microfinance 

organizations working to 

revitalize local communities. 

Social venture capital entails investing 

in private, often early stage, 

companies that are involved in beneficial 

activities such as organic 

food production, renewable energy 

development, or green real estate 

construction. 

Community 

then and 

now 

as i sit in my office, i take in 

the photos of people i have 

met over the years. i think 

about sharing my present life with 

my old Green Meadow classmates 

and i begin to remember . . . learning 

to swim at the Threefold Pond, 

planting tulip and daffodil bulbs 

with Howard Mehrtens, walking the 

half mile to school with my friends, 

and the elderly ladies of the Threefold 

Community waving cheerfully 

to us as we passed by each morning. 

in the early days of Green Meadow, 

there were very few buildings on 

the campus. Through the years, my 

teachers, schoolmates and i helped 

clear the land for many of the new 

buildings and the sports field. We 

worked together with chainsaws, 

shovels and rakes removing stones 

and debris before the construction 

crew began laying the foundations.

We built stone walls and laid pathways. 

How satisfying it was to create 

these beautiful facilities with 

my school family! it was true community 

and something that i hold 

dear today as i work in so many 

different communities in the social 

finance realm. 

i was a pretty sleepy student at 

Green Meadow, needing more than 

tea to wake me up then! i’m grateful 

to our wonderful class teacher, 

Bill Lindeman, for allowing me to 

take my time to wake up and to 

become interested in academics. 

Spring Valley was a great place to 

grow up because of all the wonderful 

places for our (not-too-wild) 

parties. The green garage was a 

special place for us—if those walls 

could talk...Well, they might just 

say that Finser had a funny laugh 

and we’ll leave it at that! 

One of the most valuable lessons 

i learned at Green Meadow was 

that learning is a reciprocal affair. 

The young teachers were forthright 

and honest as they, too, learned 

along with us. They epitomized the 

Socratic tradition, drawing out of 

their students, through their skillful 

questioning and listening. They 

coaxed and encouraged that which 

was already there to be outwardly 

expressed. Reflecting on this now, 

i realize that this lesson is fundamental 

to my work relationships. 

at RSF, we pay close attention to 

our clients’ needs and endeavor to 

listen closely. 

i have found collaborative and 

synergistic relationships are characterized 

by deep listening. These 

conversations occur informally and 

in structured ways. examples of my 

involvement in a formal capacity 

include being on the board of the 

New Resource Bank (www.newresourcebank.com), 

a new “green” 

bank in San Francisco RSF helped 

launch; the board of Investors’ 

Circle (www.investorscircle.net), a 

collaboration of high net worth angel 

investors whose goal is to affect 

how money is directed toward private 

equity for start-up and expanding 

companies; and the board of the 

Bravewell Collaborative (www. 

bravewell.org), a group whose mission 

is to transform the healthcare 

system in the U.S. by promoting integrative 

medical care and delivery. 

Other groups i participate in 

are the Transforming Money Collaborative, 

which seeks to awaken 

society to a new way of looking at 

and relating to money (www.reimagemoney.org) 

and Conscious Capitalism, 

a group led by John Mackey, 

the founder and CeO of Whole 

Foods, and other business leaders. 

as i mentioned, the 1979 student 

conference Meeting the Future and 

Ourselves was a clear “signpost.” 

it foreshadowed my career choice. 

The conference combined theory, 

workshops, and a lot of practical 

activity. Raising money for the 

conference was my first real experience 

of fundraising. i discovered 

then the joy it was for me to help 

philanthropists see how their money 

could benefit and contribute to 

the greater good. Dietrich V. asten 

and elise Caspar (long-time supporters 

of Rudolf Steiner’s work 

and Waldorf education) gave us the 

first donations for the conference. 

it was clear to me then the honor 

they were bestowing on us—they 

were trusting us to use their money 

for the best possible outcome of the 

conference. i wanted them to feel 

proud that they had placed their 

trust in us. it was an “aha” moment. 

i thought, “i can use this money for 

the good of the whole community.” 

That was my first awakening to the 

mystery of how money moves in 

the world and how i wanted to be a 

community builder. 

My life is only half over (i hope), 

and i feel great appreciation for 

the investment by my family and 

the community in my early years 

which has led me to this world of 

social finance: a world where i get 

to effect positive change through 

working with compassionate and 

skilled people; a world in which 

much credit goes to my educational 

experience for enabling me to help 

RSF grow from $6,000 in assets to 

$100 million. When we give the gift 

of education to our children, it has 

the potential to make a difference 

for generations to come. e 

Bishop Desmond Tutu (left) 

and Mark Finser at the Quest for 

Global Healing Conference, Bali, 

May 2006. 


Spring 2007 |

Telling Stories 

by Jennie abbott 

Class of 1991 


A J A N E W U L S I N E d U C A T I O N 

Now teaching her fourth third grade class, Jane Wulsin is part of four decades of Green 

Meadow’s existence, the class teacher of over 100 children who were part of her classes 

over the years, students whose lives she enriched and hearts she warmed with her attention 

and care. On Saturday night January 6, 2007, Jane’s former students Jennie 

Abbott ’91, Katie Battles ’99, Anna Booth ’99 and Erin Schirm ’07 met with Jane to ask 

questions and hear stories for this issue’s Teacher Feature. 

teacher 

feature 

in first grade, each letter had a story, 

but not all the stories were about letters. 

Jane Wulsin told us about the juniper 

tree growing on a steep hill to form 

the letter “J,” with its roots curved uphill and 

its trunk growing up straight. She also told 

us about her childhood in Florida: romps on 

horses and chasing baby alligators, limestone 

caves that collapsed, and the cows at her 

grandparents’ dairy farm. Her stories helped 

us relate to her as the little girl she had been, 

they warmed our hearts and piqued our curiosity, 

and underneath it all, they informed us 

and taught us about the world. 

Twenty-eight years after Jane started with 

her first 1st grade, she met with students she 

had taught during three “generations” of the 

lower school cycle, and in response to our 

requests, she told us her stories. She went 

into greater detail about ones we remembered 

her telling us as children, and told us 

new ones about her adult years before her 

time at Green Meadow. as ever, her stories 

amused, engaged, and educated: She told us 

about her political activism in South Florida 

in the 1960’s, advocating for migrant workers 

who were oppressed by citrus farmers. She described 

a legal collective she worked with to 

demystify the law and help people represent 

themselves. She was able to assist women 

with divorce and childcare issues and african 

american women in prison. She was active in 

women’s liberation, and participated in a collective 

that shared land, lived communally, 

and farmed. 

in the same way that Jane’s work on the 

farm was an exercise in deliberate, group ex

perience and learning, 

so, too, were her classes 

at Green Meadow. She 

shared her knowledge 

of plants and animals, 

math and history, with 

the attention and 

intention that arose 

out of her social philosophy. On the 

farm, “we were working ourselves to the bone, 

but we loved it, because it was something that 

we were building up together.” in the classroom, 

there was also a lot of work – especially 

for Jane as a new teacher! – but we students 

thrived on it because every day we were learning 

together and refining the group we were as 

a class together, orchestrated by Jane. “There 

are so many things that happen with all the 

relationships between everyone… the group 

that comes together is really a strong karmic 

group that has a lot to do with every single person 

in that class whether they know it or not.” 

Long before she became a classroom teacher, 

Jane volunteered at her school in Florida 

as a 5th and 6th grader to spend time with 

younger children in her school, later joining 

the Future Teachers of america club. after 

college she taught with a professor at an 

experimental school where she was disappointed 

to discover that state requirements 

for students’ test scores made it impossible 

to implement all the hands-on and alternative 

learning that the curriculum aimed to 

provide. (Yes, even 40 years ago, public school 

teachers were wrestling with that!) With two 

young daughters, Jill and Shannon, Jane had 

even more incentive to explore education and 

teaching, to inspire her to seek out alternatives 

to the usual schools. 

She drove to Gainesville from the collective 

farm to attend an information session about 

a school using Waldorf methods, and thought: 

“This is it!” Passionate, idealistic, and determined, 

Jane moved with her daughters first 

to Denver, then, encouraged by Werner Glas, 

to the Waldorf institute of Detroit. Jill and 

Shannon attended the Detroit Waldorf School 

while Jane took the teacher training at the 

Waldorf institute. after her training, Jane 

did not yet feel ready to teach a class, so she 

continued to take courses while she worked 

at the institute, studied, and read more about 

anthroposophy. When she was ready to teach, 

she looked at schools again, and when she visited 

Spring Valley, she knew it was the right 

place. She came and started her first class in 

the fall of 1979, “a wonderful class who taught 

me how to be a teacher. You were so patient 

with me and always gave me another chance.” 

i told her that we were reflecting what was before 

us. 

Silent and attentive during the interview, 

we listened to Jane’s wisdom, learning from 

her still: “i didn’t know when i first started 

out that it would be the children who would 

be teaching me how to teach... i thought i was 

the teacher and that i was going to teach them 

everything. Yet every day you have a reflection. 

individuals and the whole class reflect back 

to you how you have done in a particular part 

of the main lesson… i think that one of the 

greatest gifts that i can give is a joy for learning. 

if the students come away with an enthusiasm 

to learn, to want to learn more about 

the world, and in learning about the world, to 

find out something about themselves, then i 

feel i have accomplished something.” 

We asked Jane about the differences between 

her students and classes over time, and she told 

us about the chemistry of each class affecting 

how her lessons were received. Something one 

first-grade class loved fell flat before another 

class, for example. “it was so interesting to 

me because i didn’t notice so much that the 

children had actually changed from one first 

grade to the next, but there is something of 

a difference in what each group likes to do 

or takes up.” She gives children another 

chance and another chance – and she also 

hopes that when she makes mistakes as a 

teacher, that the children forgive her too. 

Jane loves to have big classes because she sees 

teacher 

feature 

Spring 2007 | 7

teacher 

feature 

Jane embodies the 

anthroposophical 

belief that all of us 

have the support 

of a spiritual world 

as well as that of 

our classmates and 

teachers in the 

classroom and 

far beyond. 


that “all the different gifts 

people have” helps everyone 

and makes the fabric so much 

richer. as each class graduated 

eighth grade and disappeared 

into high school, Jane 

returned to the beginning, to 

the formation of a new group 

of students with whom she 

would learn and grow. 

We asked if Jane has a favorite 

grade to teach and she 

said “i think every year, when i am in it, is my 

favorite year.” Being fully present in that way is 

part of Jane’s magic in the classroom, and she 

was just as present with us when we met with 

her last month. She always encouraged us to do 

our best, and i still feel it deeply ingrained in 

my approach to all i do. She told us of her deep 

belief that the value of striving to do one’s best 

is grounded in the importance of being present. 

She said that “if one is giving one’s best to whatever 

it is, if you are watching the forming of your 

letters, each one of them is a little form drawing 

in itself, if… you are immersing yourself in 

the color of the painting or drawing and you see 

what you are creating, then you are present in 

the moment… i think that being present in the 

moment is a spiritual gift.” 

it was a thrill for me after being in Jane’s 

class as a child to hear her talk about her side 

of the experience, the process and the changes 

she encouraged and witnessed. as an adult, 

i appreciate hearing where she came from before 

coming to the school and to my class; it 

fills out the story of Jane Wulsin: who she is 

and how she lives in the world. Jane embodies 

the anthroposophical belief that all of us 

have the support of a spiritual world as well 

as that of our classmates and teachers in the 

classroom and far beyond. 

“The classes, the classes, they are all one big 

class!” Jane still thinks of all of us as her children, 

and the lines between each class blur. We 

enter as babies, and she guides us into adolescence. 

“To be witness to that, to participate in 

that every day, it is the greatest blessing i can 

imagine. it is such a gift. i can’t possibly talk 

about it without crying! it is just so precious. 

So precious. i just feel so blessed that i have 

known all of you and been with you.” Jane, we 

also feel blessed, and continue to shine and 

grow with the love of learning—and love of 

each other – that you instilled in us. e 

Jane Wulsin with members of all four of her Green Meadow classes: ’91, ’99, ’07, and her current third grade.

SeRViCe: 

T E n y E A r S A F T E r 

r e t r o s p e c t i v e s 

THe BeST 

Devotion 

a Conversation with 

imam Tosun Bayrak 

by Candace Stern 

of the carnage of the Bosnian War the former Yugoslavia, Romania, Bul- 

to schools across the United States. garia, albania, Greece and Turkey. 

Moments later, imam Bayrak ar- This peninsula has been fiercely conrived. 

We settled down on the floor tested since the Ottoman empire’s 

and benches, sipping our tea and westward expansion into southeast- 

talking about those long-ago days. ern europe during the 14th and 15th 

centuries. it was here that three 

religions took root among a people 

with a common ethnic heritage and 

a common language: Serbo-Croat. 

Generally, the “Croats” were Roman 

Catholics, the Serbs were Orthodox 

Christians, and the “Bosniaks” were 

Muslims. 

Late one november afternoon, 

i drove over to the 

Jerrahi Mosque for a conversation 

with imam Tosun 

Bayrak. Visitors to the Jerrahi 

Mosque must first turn off Chestnut 

Ridge Road, drive past an old garage 

with arabic letters on its gable and 

into a small village of houses and 

gardens. at its heart is the Mosque, 

a sturdy stone building crowned by 

a wooden minaret. The Mosque’s 

entrance brings you into the vestibule: 

a generous-sized room, one 

wall bright with Turkish tiles, the 

other lined with cubbies for coats 

and shoes. Relieved of these worldly 

accoutrements, you at last enter into 

the heart of the Mosque: a large octagonal 

room surmounted by eight 

exposed wooden beams, its floor 

covered with oriental rugs. On one 

of the eight walls, the mihrab, indicating 

the direction of Mecca, is set 

into a beautifully tiled wall, a simple 

glass lamp hanging at its center. 

i met Helen Morgan and alix 

Christofides, both members of the 

Mosque and GMWS High School registrar 

and english teacher, respectively, 

in the dining room, just off 

the prayer room. This room is lined 

with low benches. its walls are covered 

with many framed examples of 

elegant islamic calligraphy, its floor 

covered with Turkish carpets. in 

the early 1990s, both Helen and alix 

worked closely with imam Bayrak to 

bring young Bosnian students out 

A ShoRT hISToRy of A 

loNg SToRy 

The Bosnian War of 1992-1995 has 

deep roots. Bosnia is located on the 

Balkan peninsula between the adriatic 

and ionian seas. The countries 

occupying this peninsula include 

Pages 20 and 21 

feature several 

personal snapshots 

of students 

and host families 

associated with 

the Bosnian 

Student Project. 

We thank the 

Christofides- 

lowenthal and 

Morgan families 

for the use of 

these images. 

Spring 2007 |


in 1945 communist Prime Minster 

Josip Broz Tito became the 

Prime Minister of the Federal People’s 

Republic of Yugoslavia. it was 

composed of six republics: Serbia, 

Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 

Macedonia, Slovenia, and Montenegro, 

as well as two provinces, Kosovo 

and Vojvodina. Tito successfully 

cultivated a socialist fraternity and 

unity that took precedence over 

longstanding religious/ethnic differences. 

His death in 1980 and the 

subsequent decline of communism 

gave rise to nationalist/separatist 

movements. 

Slovenia and Croatia were the first 

republics to declare independence 

from Yugoslavia, followed by Macedonia, 

and, in april 1992, Bosnia and 

Herzegovina. Of all the Yugoslavian 

republics, Bosnia and Herzegovina 

was the most diverse: 43% Muslim, 

31% Serbian, and 17% Croatian. 

as soon as independence was declared, 

religious and ethnic tensions 

mounted and Bosnia erupted into 

war. Recent research numbers the 

war victims around 100,000-110,000 

(civilians and military). 1.8 million 

people were displaced before the 

Dayton Peace accord brought the 

war to an end in late 1995. 

it was into the vortex of this conflagration 

that imam Tosun Bayrak 

was drawn on a humanitarian mission. 

Responding to a report that 

hundreds of Bosniak women had 

been raped, imam Bayrak traveled 

in late 1992 with his wife, 4 psychologists, 

a reporter and a photographer 

to zagreb, Croatia. as soon as they 

arrived they “went to the authorities 

to locate these women. We contacted 

the Mesihat and they helped 

us find them. But the women abso- 

lutely did not want to see us.” Disappointed 

they could not provide the 

assistance they had come so far to 

give, imam Bayrak chanced to meet 

some destitute Bosnian students, 

living in zagreb. These students had 

started college when Yugoslavia was 

a united country. With the break up 

of their country, students from different 

republics were now considered 

foreigners and were required 

to pay tuition. “They lost everything. 

They couldn’t eat and they couldn’t 

work because they were in Croatia 

and they couldn’t go back to Bosnia 

because the war was raging everywhere. 

The only way they could survive 

was by selling their blood.” 

Out of their desperate circumstances, 

they formed a Bosnian 

Students association. imam Bayrak 

was invited to a meeting of this association. 

“We met in a room without 

any chairs. So we all sat on the floor 

and talked about what we could do. i 

wasn’t sure if we could get american 

visas for them or if we could get any 

grants from schools.” Still, he was 

willing to try. 

as soon as he returned home, 

imam Bayrak contacted the Fellowship 

of Reconciliation (FOR) and 

told them what he was trying to do. 

(FOR) is the largest, oldest, interfaith 

peace organization in the US 

with headquarters in nyack. “Doug 

Hostetter (who later became Director 

of the Bosnian Student Project) 

committed to get scholarships for 

Bosnian students.” imam Bayrak 

began making legal and logistical 

arrangements for Bosnian students 

to go to the US and Turkey because 

that country was so much nearer. 

“Turkish schools were receiving 

Bosnian students by the thousands.” 

T H E B E S T 

Helen and alix were responsible for 

making arrangements for each of the 

students. “We made arrangements 

for more than 150 students who 

came to this country, and at least a 

couple hundred students who went 

to Turkey from Bosnia.” Students under 

18 needed a sponsor who would 

assume legal guardianship for them. 

“There was a lot of paper work going 

back and forth. We were able to get 

guardianship papers signed by their 

parents for the younger students. 

We made arrangements for visa interviews 

at the american Consulate 

in zagreb, or wherever the students 

happened to be. We learned how the 

bureaucracy worked and we abided 

by it. it worked.” 

Why, i asked, was imam Bayrak so 

interested in saving students? “The 

thing that really incited me to initiate 

this program, was that the Serbs 

first set out to destroy the Bosnian 

intelligentsia. When you destroy the 

intelligentsia—the professors, doctors, 

and lawyers—it is like cutting 

off the head of a nation. Bosnia needed 

to protect its young. They needed 

a new intelligentsia. That is how i 

sold the program to the Bosnians. 

My goal was to create an americaneducated 

intelligentsia who, when 

the war was over and their educations 

completed, could return to 

Bosnia. i went from school to school 

to look at their transcripts. i got the 

best students with the best english. 

They were very good kids. Bright. 

When they came, some didn’t even 

know english, but in their classes 

they were getting a’s all the time.” 

imam Bayrak made a second trip 

(1993), again to zagreb because it 

was still impossible to go directly to 

Bosnia. “all these people were in the 

T H E B E S T

D E V o T i o n 

worst shape. They were hungry and 

destitute. So we brought the second 

batch from zagreb. Many of the kids 

who went to GMWS were from this 

second batch.” FOR and the Jerrahi 

Mosque worked together to make 

arrangements for the Bosnian students 

to attend american public 

and private schools. GMWS was the 

first private school to accept and enroll 

10 Bosnian students, with total 

tuition remission. These students 

graduated with the classes of 1994, 

1995, 1996, and 1997. Following 

GMWS’s lead, other private schools 

opened their doors to Bosnian students. 

The network of schools, sponsors 

and families across the country, 

expanded further to include colleges 

and universities who offered Bosnian 

students full scholarships to 

continue their educations. 

imam Bayrak’s third trip (1995) 

to the war zone started in zagreb 

and continued on to Split, Mostar, 

and Tuzla. “i traveled with two 

Turkish teachers from Fatih College 

because i was going to send 

students to Turkey. This time, 

people were shooting and bombing. 

My blood pressure went sky high 

and they offered me garlic because 

there was no medication, no food to 

eat, nothing whatsoever. i sent 75 

students, refugees from the massacre 

at Srebrenica. When i say students, 

i mean little children, 7 or 

8 years old. We put them on buses 

and they were met at the frontier 

by people who fed and clothed 

them, gave them shelter and then 

educated them—from academy, to 

school, to lyceum, to college. They 

are mostly all grown up now. none 

of them went back. They became 

Turks, essentially.” 


What about these american-educated 

intelligentsia, i asked, have 

they returned to Bosnia? “Some 

did go back. Some are in europe. 

Some are living in the US. Unfortunately 

the Bosnian Government 

does not accept american degrees! 

They fear the degrees could be fake 

and charge as much as $20,000 to 

get them validated. Who wants to 

work for the Bosnian government, 

anyhow? They have very nice jobs 

with foreign companies, humanitarian 

organizations and other nGOs. 

More than that, they are doing 

very well with their lives. although 

many of them lost their mothers 

and fathers, certainly their homes 

and family members, somehow being 

away helped them a great deal. 

They are probably less prejudiced 

against the Serbs than those who 

stayed and suffered to the end. 

They were all wonderful kids, in 

spite of coming from such a trying 

situation.” 

as our conversation wound down, 

we spoke of other humanitarian and 

relief projects imam Bayrak and the 

Jerrahi Mosque have worked on together 

since the Bosnian War. The 

needs of the Bosnian students have 

been superseded by other wars and 

other civilian populations caught in 

the cross-fire of sectarian violence. 

assistance such as FOR and the 

Mosque once offered “would be impossible 

now.” 

almost as an after thought, imam 

Bayrak added, “The best way to advance 

spiritually is to serve. You can 

make prayers, fast, read, but service 

is the best devotion. This situation 

permitted us to serve.” e 

~Candace Stern 

EnSAr HAliloViC ‘96 

left Bosnia after a horrible mas- 

i sacre in my hometown of Tuzla 

on May 25th 1995, where 68 young 

people died from a mortar grenade 

fired from hills held by Serbian 

military. Sixty-eight people killed: 

a child of 2, two persons of 45, and 

the rest between 18 and 25 years 

old. i lost several friends from my 

class and neighborhood that day. 

it was only by pure luck that i was 

not with them. i had lived through 

three terrible years of war: without 

food and electricity, sometimes for 

days; attending classes between 

mortar attacks; always holding on 

to hope for better days. On May 25, 

life was shattered. On that day, the 

hope in my heart disappeared. Yet, 

unbeknownst to me, my parents 

had sent my documents to the Bosnian 

Student Project. a few days 

after the May 25th attack, someone 

from the project called our house 

and asked if i were still alive and 

able to travel to the US. My father 

accompanied me to the Bosnian / 

Croatian border. The trip almost 

cost us both our lives. We barely 

escaped a hijacking at gun point by 

local para-militants as we crossed 

a “no man’s land.” Once i reached 

Croatia, i felt safer, but i could not 

be happy knowing that my parents 

and my little sister were still in 

great danger. 

i arrived in Chestnut Ridge, new 

York in June 1995. My first stop coming 

from the airport was the Jerrahi 

Mosque. it happened to be the night 

of the Green Meadow High School 

prom. i met some fellow Bosnian 

students all dressed up and festive. 

after they left for the prom, i 

Spring 2007 | 2


went inside the mosque where the 

dervishes followed imam Bayrak in 

prayer and zikr. after the prayer, he 

talked to me and welcomed me to 

the wonderful community of families 

of Jerrahi Mosque. i knew that 

bright days were ahead of me. 

in September, i joined the Class 

of 1996. i received a warm welcome 

from the students and faculty of 

Green Meadow. after our Senior 

Class zoology trip to Hermit island, i 

felt comfortable with my classmates. 

During the year, i joined the basketball 

team. That allowed me to spend 

time, outside of class, with guys from 

school. That year at Green Meadow 

was an unforgettable experience 

for me. i have to be honest and say 

that it was not easy. My english was 

not great; it took me much longer 

to study the material. even German 

class with Frau edelglass was 

a challenge since we had to act in 

a play in German and keep a daily 

journal, in German. But it all came 

with a sort of ease, since our school 

days would end with arts and craft 

classes, bookbinding and ceramics 

(clay) for example. i did not play 

an instrument, so i attended a folk 

dance class with Mr. Kotansky. What 

joy! Things in my life were balanced 

again. My nightmares of the war were 

slowly disappearing. By the end of 

the school year, i knew i would miss 

the friends i had made in my class 

after we all left for college. 

i was very fortunate to be welcomed 

into the home and family of 

Stephen and Lisa Oswald, a wonderful 

Green Meadow family with three 

kids: anisa ‘03, nuriya ‘05 and Hasan 

‘07. a Green Meadow event made a 

lasting impression on me: at the 

Rose Ceremony in September, i gave 

Hasan a rose, marking his first days 

in school. at the end of the school 

year, he gave me back the rose saying 

good-bye to me and sending me 

off to start a new chapter of my life. 

The Oswald family became my family. 

With Stephen and Lisa, i learned 

how to drive a car. When anna and 

i were married, September 3, 2006, 

Lisa made a beautiful cake for our 

wedding. They were there for me 

at the beginning of yet another 

chapter of my life. They have been 

an important part of my life since i 

came to the USa and always will be. 

anna and i are going to Bosnia this 

summer to have another wedding 

celebration with my extended family 

and friends in Bosnia. 

after graduating from Green 

Meadow, i went to Clark University 

in Massachusetts. at Clark i majored 

in Biochemistry and Biology with 

high honors. However, every summer 

i went back to the Oswalds in 

Chestnut Ridge where i volunteered 

and worked as an emergency Medical 

Technician at W.P. Faist ambulance 

Corps. after getting my Bachelor’s 

degree, i stayed on at Clark 

T H E B E S T 

to obtain a Master’s in Molecular 

Biology. after that i took a position 

as a research associate at UMaSS 

Medical School. Shortly after that i 

realized i wanted to be at the place 

where medicine and science meet. 

i enrolled in the Ph.D. program at 

Cornell University Medical School, 

in new York City, to study Cancer 

Pharmacology. i am now in the final 

years of a program doing research at 

Memorial Cancer Center to develop 

and improve targeted therapies for 

patients suffering from melanoma 

and colon cancer. 

My higher education degrees 

and the several awards and honors 

bestowed upon me are not the 

achievements i am the proudest of. 

i am proud to be doing cutting edge 

science in the effort to develop 

therapeutics that will save lives. as 

new opportunities are given to me, i 

wish to give the opportunity for life 

to someone else. One day i hope to 

make a difference in people’s lives 

by building a bridge between the 

medical sciences and research in 

the USa and science and medicine 

in Bosnia. e 

FATimA DJEkiC oguz 

‘96 

Fatima Djekic met imam Tosun 

Bayrak on his third trip in the 

summer of 1995. His search for Bosnian 

students to bring to the U.S. 

had brought him to Tuzla. “after an 

interview, i was offered a scholarship 

abroad…My family wanted me 

to leave our war-torn country in the 

hope of a better future.” after talking 

with her mother and receiving 

her parents’ permission, Fatima 

set about making arrangements. 

“everyone wanted to get out of the 

T H E B E S T


country, so obtaining a passport 

was a costly and difficult mission. 

i clearly remember imam Bayrak 

giving me the money for all the 

paperwork-related expenses. His 

generosity and kindness was simply 

overwhelming.” 

Fatima remembers that “leaving 

my family was probably one of the 

most difficult moments in my life. 

i didn’t know if i would ever see 

them again, and they didn’t know 

if they would ever see me again. 

Just the thought of it brings tears 

to my eyes. it’s an experience that 

required lots of strength and courage.” 

Fatima flew from zagreb to 

new York in September 1995 with 

two other Bosnian students headed 

to different schools within the United 

States (one in Pa, the other in 

TX). “i remember seeing the new 

York skyline through the Swiss air 

windows: everything seemed surreal. 

in my war-torn country we 

had water and electricity restrictions. 

Suddenly such rules no longer 

existed. i could have a shower 

without worrying if the water would 

suddenly stop running. Food was no 

longer a scarce commodity. There 

was no need to run to the shelter 

in the basement as air raid sirens 

were no longer sounding off.” 

Fatima was warmly welcomed by 

her host family, zinnur and Yurdaer 

Doganata, the Jerrahi community, 

the Fellowship of Reconciliation 

and Green Meadow “the entire community 

was fully supportive. They 

helped all of the Bosnian students 

get through those difficult times. 

Still my heart was not at peace as 

i knew that everything back home 

remained in danger.” Two months 

after her arrival, on november 21, 

the Bosnian War ended. “That is 


when i believe all Bosnian students, 

who were dispersed throughout this 

world, achieved inner peace and 

happiness.” 

as Fatima settled into life in 

Chestnut Ridge, she also entered 

into the life of Green Meadow’s 

Class of 1996. “Coming from a 

class of 42 students – and often 

more than that – i was impressed 

by the teacher-student ratio in the 

high school. The presence of edina 

Sarajlic, ensar Halilovic and Taida 

Horozovic in my class made our 

adjustment much easier.” Fatima 

came from a high school where 

the arts were neglected and the 

sciences were emphasized. “i was 

impressed how Waldorf education 

managed to successfully integrate 

art into every aspect of the curriculum. 

Handwork, singing, eurythmy, 

acting and foreign languages were 

very appealing. i loved the concept 

of the main lesson blocks. The process 

of developing my own main 

lesson book always encouraged creativity 

and free-thinking.” 

Green Meadow “accepted us with 

arms wide open. all the high school 

teachers were extremely supportive 

and understanding of our situation. 

They tried to help us every step of 

the way. i was always inspired by 

their dedication to instill a genuine 

love of learning within each of us. i 

truly cherish every moment i spent 

at GMWS and am so grateful for it.” 

after graduating from Green 

Meadow, Fatima went on to earn her 

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science 

from new York University in 

2000. She went to work for the eMC 

Corporation as a Design engineer in 

Hopkinton, Massachusetts. a year 

later she began working on her Master’s 

degree in Software engineering 

at Brandeis University, completing 

it in 2004. She and her husband 

now live in San Diego and work at 

Qualcomm incorporated. Fatima 

“applies automation technologies 

to translate manual test cases into 

automated test suites for testing numerous 

wireless phone features.” 

On May 22, 1999 Fatima and Seyfullah 

Oguz, brother of Fatima’s 

host mother, zinnur Doganata, were 

married by imam Bayrak in the Jerrahi 

Mosque. each year, Fatima and 

Seyfullah try to go to Bosnia to visit 

her family. “i can only take at most 

3 weeks off from work, so i don’t get 

to spend a lot of time back home. 

in a couple years we would like to 

settle in Turkey. if we live in Turkey, 

i could easily spend a weekend 

with my family in Tuzla.” in looking 

back, Fatima concluded: “i would 

like to express my sincere thanks 

to imam Bayrak, my host families 

– zinnur & Yurdaer Doganata, ayca 

& Charles Rae, the Jerrahi Order of 

america, Doug Hostetter, Fellow- 

Spring 2007 | 2


ship of Reconciliation, Green Meadow, 

Talat Halman and nYU for their 

gracious help. Together they were 

the means for making a difference 

in my life. i hope to accomplish the 

same for someone else.” e 

SAnDro AliSiC, ‘94 

When Sandro alisic left Prijedor 

(in northwestern Bosnia) 

in 1992 with his mother and brother, 

they were fleeing a Serbian-launched 

ethic cleansing campaign. They escaped 

to neighboring Croatia, but 

without Croatian citizenship, he and 

his brother couldn’t attend school. 

“When i heard about the possibility 

of continuing my education in the 

States, i was very excited, but didn’t 

really believe it would ever happen. 

i sent all my transcripts and other 

documents and forgot about it. One 

day in april 1993, i received a call 

telling me that i would leave for the 

States in five days. i went to zagreb, 

and there it really dawned on me 

that i would be leaving my fam- 

ily and going to an unknown place 

where i knew no one.” 

On april 29, 1993, Sandro arrived 

in new York with three other Bosnian 

students: irvana Kapetanovic, 

iris Kulasic and Jasmina Hadzihasanovic. 

“We only knew we were going 

to ‘new York’ and we expected 

to live somewhere near the empire 

State building or some other famous 

landmark.” To their surprise, 

they found themselves in Chestnut 

Ridge. “What happened to the 

big city with familiar sites we had 

seen so many times on television? 

a feeling of anxiety and fear sank 

in, and for the first time, i thought 

that maybe i shouldn’t have come 

at all.” Yet, when they got out of 

the car in Chestnut Ridge, they 

were surrounded by “lots of children 

from the Jerrahi Mosque who 

gave us small presents. They were 

smiling and ushered us into the 

mosque, where dinner was served. 

We immediately felt better.” 

Two weeks later Sandro and irvana 

joined the Green Meadow 

class of ‘94, while iris and Jasmina 

joined the class of ’95. “What struck 

me most was how small the whole 

school was. i could not believe there 

were just four classes in the whole 

high school.” That was not the only 

surprise. “i remember how shocked 

i was when i realized not only were 

there few textbooks, but that i would 

be writing my own lesson book. it 

was a totally new concept to me. after 

a while, i realized the whole idea 

behind the students ‘writing’ their 

own books. i was so proud of my first 

main lesson book for Mr. Hoffman’s 

chemistry class. There was a sense 

of accomplishment.” 

education in Bosnia, “where 

much greater emphasis was placed 

T H E B E S T 

on rote learning and memorization 

and where the teacher was a ‘sage 

at the stage’ with unquestioned 

authority” contrasted strongly with 

education at Green Meadow where 

“students were active participants, 

involved learners working collaboratively 

with their teachers.” 

Sandro’s memories from his year 

and a half at Green Meadow include: 

“Hermit island in Maine, 

the prom, Mrs. Wolf’s bookbinding 

class, our class trip and play, The 

Inspector General” and “most of all, 

the sense of a nurturing community 

and the warmth and closeness that 

GMWS embodies. it is precisely this 

that helped me get adjusted to the 

‘american way of life.’ i am grateful 

that my first experience in america, 

academically and socially, was at 

Green Meadow.” 

after Sandro graduated Phi Beta 

Kappa from earlham College in 

Richmond, indiana (where he majored 

in Psychology and German), 

he received an Ma degree in German 

studies from Bowling Green 

State University. Since 2001 he 

has been working for the Defense 

Language institute teaching the 

Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian 

languages. During the five years he 

lived in Monterey, California, Sandro 

completed a second Ma degree 

in instructional Science and Technology 

at California State University. 

in June 2006 he was transferred 

to San antonio, Texas. “i still work 

in the field of foreign language education, 

but with an emphasis on the 

use of technology in language learning. 

i am enjoying my current job, 

which combines my interests and 

my language and technology skills.” 

Sandro’s brother and their parents 

now live in the US. e 

D E V o T i o n

The Caseros Prison 

Demolition Project 

For the past year, i’ve been 

working on a project that 

uses the former Caseros 

Prison, its history and its 

demolition, as raw materials for a 

dynamic artwork. Caseros Prison, 

an urban skyscraper jail in Buenos 

aires, argentina, was opened in 1979 

by the military junta to incarcerate 

political prisoners. The prison was 

closed down in 2001, and slated for 

destruction, but due to legal difficulties, 

the demolition was delayed 

for several years. The city of Buenos 

aires has contracted with the argentine 

military to demolish the 22story 

building floor by floor, from the 

top down, in a process expected to 

take eighteen months. 

i discovered the prison shortly 

after i moved to Buenos aires in 

December 2005. i’ve always been 

fascinated by cycles of architectural 

and cultural generation and degeneration. 

When i caught wind of its 

imminent demolition, i set to work 

figuring how to turn the demolition 

of the building itself into a work of 

art. Part of the original idea that 

struck me was to turn the prison demolition 

into a kind of funeral pyre, 

a readymade unmade, where the 

focus of the observer would enliven 

a destructive architectural practice 

in a way that could spark a perceptual 

creation, or allow for a kind of 

resurrection from the raw material 

of destruction. 

a few years ago i worked with a 

pictorial technique using fragments 

of mirror and glass like pixels to pro- 

16 

TOnS 

Seth Wulsin 

Class of 2000 

duce images that are purely a function 

of space and light. everywhere i 

traveled, i looked for a building with 

window grids to apply the idea on an 

architectural scale, engaging various 

cycles of time by reflecting the light 

of the sun and moon. in Caseros 

Prison i found the perfect building, 

where artistic activity could engage, 

and even transform some of the 

complex social, political, spiritual, 

historical, architectural, and above 

all human layers of the site. 

Originally presented by General 

Videla’s dictatorship as a “model 

prison,” it quickly became clear that 

Caseros was quite the opposite. The 

prison was designed to be part of 

a ‘judicial city’ complex, and was 

built as a temporary holding bin for 

prisoners awaiting trial. Fittingly, 

the rest of the judicial city—including 

the courthouse where the 

prisoners awaiting trial were to be 

tried—was never built. The building 

is hermetically sealed off from 

its surroundings. it was designed 


Spring 2007 | 2



so that direct sunlight would not 

reach the prisoners in their cells. 

Most of the political prisoners 

were released after the fall of 

the military dictatorship in 1983. 

Thereafter, Caseros prison was used 

chiefly to incarcerate common criminals. 

as in many prisons, corruption 

among both inmates and guards 

abounded. Caseros remained notorious 

throughout the ‘80s both for 

its occasional inmate riots and for 

its perennial over-crowding. Holes 

broken through the outer walls of 

the prison during these riots allowed 

the inmates to stick their heads and 

torsos out to catch some sun, and to 

talk to neighbors as well as friends 

and family who would gather in the 

streets below. in the ‘90s the prison 

was used as a chop shop for stripping 

stolen cars. Far from serving as 

a place for rehabilitation, a common 

euphemism applied to jails, Caseros, 

from its brutalist architecture to its 

crooked administration, came to 

embody the essence of what tends 

to be wrong with prisons—a striking 

combination of extreme institutional 

repression and corruption. The prison’s 

history is all the more striking 

for its urban location, in the working 

class residential neighborhood of 

Parque Patricios. The prison looms 

high above the two and three story 

homes and small factories across the 

cobblestone street (including chocolate 

and pasta factories which occasionally 

fill the now gutted prison 

with delicious aromas). Soccer player 

Diego Maradona, and former argentine 

dictator Jorge Rafael Videla 

both spent short stints in Caseros. 

Because of Caseros Prison’s complex 

political and cultural charge, 

and because the site is guarded by 

the argentine military 24 hours a 

day, i had to win the support of a 

wide array of national and municipal 

government agencies, human rights 

groups, former prisoners of Caseros 

(both political and non-political) 

and the military itself in order to gain 

authorization for the project, a pro- 

cess which took four months. at one 

point, after a couple weeks walking 

the halls of the congressional offices 

looking for support for the project, i 

realized that i’d turned into a political 

lobbyist. at another point i calculated 

that i was on a first name basis 

with over twenty-five secretaries of 

various politicians. i no longer had 

to identify myself when i called on 

the phone. The bureaucracy became 

a kind of functional metaphor for 

the work i was doing with the prison 

itself, looking for the sliver of space 

where people could exercise their 

freedom transcending a structure 

designed to prevent just that. 

Working from qualities implicit 

at every level of the prison building—its 

history and current state of 

demolition—i sought to illuminate 

those qualities by making some mark 

on the building itself in concert with 

and in advance of the full demolition. 

The life cycle of the place, the 

relationship between physical and 

psychological limits and human 

freedom, light and shadow, space 

and concrete, isolation and continuity, 

inside and outside, expression 

and communication, creation and 

destruction—these are the raw materials 

the project works with. The 

prison, its countless stories, its integral 

structure and application, as 

well as its demolition and my own 

work on the site all express various 

deep paradoxes that coexist and 

resonate at every magnitude of the 

place, and i think of human consciousness 

itself. 

Dozens of window grids covering 

the northern end of the prison 

building provided me with a point of 

entry to the place. My work on the 

building consisted in breaking out 

certain windows in each grid. The 

dark, interior space of the prison ap-

pears through the broken windows, 

producing the shadow value of the 

images, while the sunlight shining in 

the reflective space of the remaining 

windows gives the light values. The 

images—48 faces in all (one in each 

grid of 209 windows)—are directed 

towards specific points on the streets 

below from which the reflections of 

the sun are visible depending on the 

hour of the day and the month of the 

year, so that the prison becomes like 

a giant sundial that doesn’t tell the 

time, but instead tells human stories 

according to the changes in time, 

and ultimately tells of its own dissolution. 

i culled the images by observing 

the pictorial spaces of the grids 

themselves, formed by light gradations 

produced by the inconsistencies 

of the glass window surfaces as 

they reflected the sunlight, and the 

many windows already broken out by 

prisoners when the jail was in use. 

The faces will disappear, one by one, 

with the demolition of the building. 

i did the onsite work with the 

help of a few friends who joined 

me in breaking thousands of windows—over 

four tons of glass—over 

the course of five weeks in June and 

July, 2006. Other elements of the 

work, such as filming the building’s 

ongoing demolition (including the 

demolition of the window grids), are 

expected to take at least another 

year, depending on the progress of 

the demolition itself. Kellen Quinn 

‘00 came down from new York to 

film the onsite work and is creating a 

documentary on the project and the 

story of the prison. 

There is an old saying, “The only 

good institution is the asado”—an 

argentine style barbeque. in late 

October i held an asado as a sort of 

opening for the work, inviting everyone 

who helped me during the 

project, bureaucrats, former political 

prisoners, friends, human rights 

people, and anyone else who might 

like to come to the prison. The city 

government closed off the street beside 

the jail, and i borrowed a piece 

of corrugated metal and a big grill 

from the demo workers at the prison. 

We set up the parilla in the street, 

placed the corrugated metal on the 

cobblestones, built a fire, and set to 

work grilling about fifty pounds of 

meat and one hundred chorizos and 

morcillas (blood sausage). a couple 

former political prisoners helped my 

friend Charlie grill the meat, and we 

passed the afternoon gorging ourselves, 

drinking wine, chewing the 

fat, and looking up at the sequence 

of faces as they came to light, and 

faded to obscurity with the passage 

of the sun. e 


Spring 2007 | 27


Global Climate 

Change 

past climates and the future of 

carbon emissions and 

energy 

Peter almasi 

Class of 1993 


Research and scientific debate 

on global climate change has 

been a focus of earth science 

for decades. Coverage of climate 

change and greenhouse gases in 

popular media steadily increased 

in the 1990s with the design and 

implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, 

the controversial plan for international 

limits on greenhouse gases. 

no event, however, thrust climate 

change into public consciousness 

like Hurricane Katrina. While few 

scientists would argue that Katrina 

was a direct result of human-caused 

global warming, the flurry of media 

activity on climate change in the 

year since the disaster has finally 

communicated that climate change 

could be abrupt, devastating, and 

incredibly costly. This represented 

a major shift in the american perception 

of climate change from a 

mere extension of the t-shirt season 

in the northeast. This article is 

designed to provide context to the 

current debates on how to address 

future climate change by describing 

the role of atmospheric carbon 

dioxide (CO2) in past climate scenarios. 

Only when it is understood 

where, why, and how fast climate 

has changed in the past is it possible 

to predict how future climate might 

respond to human activity. 

CO2, climate 

balance, and the 

perspective of 

ice ages 

The so-called “greenhouse” gases, 

including water vapor, carbon 

dioxide, and methane, are natural 

components of the atmosphere that 

affect the balance of incoming and 

outgoing solar energy on earth. For 

most of earth’s 4.6 billion year history, 

greenhouse gases have helped 

maintain a surface temperature 

within the range of liquid water, a 

condition essential for the evolution 

and diversification of life. a basic 

calculation of earth’s radiative balance 

given only its size, reflectivity, 

and distance from the Sun yields an 

expected surface temperature 33 °C 

colder than the actual temperature. 

This difference can be attributed to 

greenhouse gases. Other planets are 

in radiative balance as well, but well 

outside the temperature range of 

liquid water. While Venus and Mars 

likely shared similar climate states 

with earth during their formation, 

the atmosphere of Venus evolved to 

nearly pure CO2 at a balmy 400 °C. 

Mars’ atmosphere diffused away to 

space, leaving the planet a decidedly 

chilly -63 °C. 

Detailed reconstructions of past 

climates exist for the glacial cycles 

of the last million years. ice ages 

(glacial) and shorter warm periods 

(interglacial) occur roughly every 

100,000 years in close association 

with the seasonal distributions of 

solar energy in the northern hemisphere, 

allowing enough winter 

snowfall to persist through the summer 

to eventually grow continentsize 

ice sheets. This is called the 

orbital theory of ice ages, and is generally 

accepted as a major pacemaker 

of glacial cycles. Within ice ages, 

abrupt regional climate jumps up to 

10 °C have occurred, most likely in 

response to the interactions of huge 

ice sheets and ocean circulation. 

Though the orbital climate influence 

(called “forcing”) was mainly 

in the northern hemisphere, proxy 

records from polar ice cores and 

deep-sea sediments indicate that 

ice ages were global in extent, and 

appear even more closely associated 

with atmospheric CO2 concentrations 

than orbital forcing. This led 

to the theory that CO2 was lowered 

by the initial orbitally-driven cooling 

via a variety of mechanisms, and 

the new lower CO2 equilibrium then 

cooled the entire planet by around 

4° C. if atmospheric CO2 lowered by 

only 100 parts per million (ppm) sustained 

global ice ages, could increasing 

the concentration 100 ppm or 

more warm the planet a comparable 

amount? figure 1 shows a 420,000year 

ice core record of temperature 

and atmospheric CO2 concentration 

from antarctica, showing the 

close relation between atmospheric 

CO2 and temperature variations. 

Decreasing atmospheric CO2 is the

temperature deviation ( °c) 

figure 1 

Global ice age records from the Vostok Antarctic ice core. Temperature changes (°C) and 

atmospheric CO2 (ppm) appear to occur in synchrony in this diagram, but temperature 

slightly leads the CO2 change, implying the role of CO2 as an amplifier of orbitally-driven 

climate change. Ice ages (glacial), are characterized by abrupt swings in climate, in contrast 

to relatively stable warm periods (interglacial). ~ Petit et al., Nature, 1999 

mechanism believed to amplify an 

initial northern hemisphere cooling 

and turn it into a global ice age. 

note our present position in this 

natural climate cycle. examining 

figure 1, we might expect the next 

ice age to begin shortly, given that 

we have enjoyed our present interglacial 

longer than our ancestors 

may have in the last few interglacial 

periods. in fact, while scientists had 

long suspected increasing CO2 could 

result in global warming, in the 1970s 

a global cooling seemed far more 

likely, even imminent. figure 2 illustrates 

one of the reasons for the 

atmospheric co2 (ppm) 

change in scientific emphasis. The 

startling run-up in atmospheric CO2 

is evident in records from Mauna 

Loa by the late Dr. Charles Keeling. 

a comparison of atmospheric CO2 

concentrations prior to human influence 

(from the ice core), and the 

Keeling curve shows that current 

CO2 is elevated well off the chart of 

pre-industrial, natural variability. if 

atmospheric CO2 can modify global 

temperature to the extent past climate 

records suggest, its buildup in 

the atmosphere suggests that the 

coming of the next ice age isn’t as 

pressing as it once appeared! 

figure 2 

Increases in atmospheric CO2 as a result of fossil fuel burning, as measured by Dr. Keeling 

on Mauna loa in Hawaii. The wiggles in the curve are the annual cycle of photosynthesis 

and respiration in the northern hemisphere. The analogy of these cycles as the “breathing” 

of the biosphere is a popular view of the interaction between life on Earth and planetaryscale 

features. ~ C.D. Keeling, Scripps Institute of Oceanography (through 1971) 

atmospheric co2 (ppm) 

380 

370 

360 

350 

340 

330 

320 

l 

1960 

l 

1970 

l 

1980 

date (ad) 

l 

1990 

l 

2000 

Climate since the last 

ice age 

Other factors can affect global 

or regional climate on shorter 

time scales, such as changes in 

heat-transporting ocean currents, 

volcanic dust, and changes in the 

brightness of the Sun. Since the 

current interglacial period began 

11,500 years ago, the largest centennial 

to millennial scale climate cycles 

reconstructed for the northern 

Hemisphere are in the north atlantic, 

around 1-2 °C. figure 3 shows 

a climate record from the north 

atlantic region compared with a 

proxy for solar activity derived from 

tree rings. Though there are periods 

of poor matches, it appears as if a 

large portion of a 1000-2000 year climate 

cycle in the north atlantic was 

somehow influenced by changes in 

solar activity. 

in the last 2000 years, past climate 

records get much more detailed. Reconstructions 

of climate of the last 

2000 years are available from preserved 

marine plankton, tree rings, 

ice cores, pollen records, and many 

other independent proxies. in the 

north atlantic region, proxies and 

historical evidence suggest a Medieval 

Warm Period peaking 1000 

years ago, followed by a Little ice 

age, its coldest periods occurring between 

1550-1850. figure 4 shows a 

northern Hemisphere temperature 

record reconstructed from a variety 

of proxy data. The annual average 

northern Hemisphere meteorological 

record is also shown, current 

through november, 2006. 

Understanding the 

role of CO2 in future 

climate 

Climate records of the last ~1000 

years can be simulated using 

computer models incorporating so- 


Spring 2007 | 2



l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l 

2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 

calendar years before present 

figure 3 

A reconstruction of North Atlantic climate (blue) and solar activity (green) for the last 

11,500 years. Peaks represent warm intervals. ~ Bond et al., Science, 2001 

lar, volcanic, and greenhouse gas 

changes. Solar and volcanic activity, 

though dominant in abrupt change 

in the north atlantic over the last 

11,500 years, have not varied as expected 

if they dominated the observational 

climate record of the last 

100 years. That leaves greenhouse 

gases as the only available forcing 

with enough power to explain the 

current warming. 

The majority of workers in the 

field agree that a doubling of CO2 

(560 ppm) from pre-industrial levels 

(280 ppm) would cause disruptive 

climate change within 100 years on 

a scale that would leave virtually no 

population, ecology, or economy un- 

affected. estimates of global average 

warming in response to a doubling 

of CO2 range from 3-5°C, a range 

easily large enough to raise sea levels 

tens of meters, cause droughts, 

melting of permafrost, and general 

ecological disaster. Given that CO2 

concentrations are nearly halfway to 

580 ppm, projected emissions rates 

indicate only 50 years remain to not 

just reduce but completely eliminate 

emission of CO2. 

Before the possibility of human 

influence on atmospheric CO2 was 

first identified in the last 1800s, it 

was never envisioned there would be 

enough coal or oil burned to exceed 

its absorption in the oceans and 

figure 4 

Northern Hemisphere temperature anomaly reconstructed from tree rings and date (AD). 

The detailed record (red) and smoothed record (blue) clearly show the Medieval Warm Period 

and little Ice ages, the last of the 1000-2000 year cycles that have characterized North 

Atlantic climate since the end of the last ice age. The instrumental Northern Hemisphere 

temperature record (purple) has been overlaid for comparison. ~ Moberg et al., Nature, 2005 

0.8 — 

0.6 — 

°c) ( 

0.4 — 

0.2 — 

0.0 — 

temp 

-0.2 — 

-0.4 — 

-0.6 — 

hemisphere 

-0.8 — 

-1.0 — 

-1.2 — l l l l l l l l l l l Northern 

0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 

biosphere. Before huge reserves of 

oil were discovered with new technology 

and geologic understanding, 

it was speculated that fossil fuels 

would become scarce and expensive 

before CO2 reached “dangerous” levels. 

Today, high and volatile natural 

gas prices, persistent demand for 

power in the US, and explosive development 

in China are fuelling a 

boom in coal-fired electrical generation, 

a sector responsible for nearly 

half of global carbon emissions. 

While alternative/renewable energy 

sources such as wind, solar, 

and ethanol are enjoying growth in a 

strong subsidy environment, it is not 

yet feasible to implement them on a 

scale to serve as baseload electrical 

generation at current levels of consumption. 

environmental financial 

markets such as european Union 

carbon trading appear the quickest 

way to reduce carbon emissions, but 

their most ambitious cuts represent 

less than 1/5 the projected growth 

of emissions from coal power plants 

in the non–participating nations of 

USa, india, and China. While the issues 

of radioactive waste and nuclear 

proliferation are major drawbacks, 

nuclear power will almost certainly 

play a substantial role if CO2 emissions 

from the power sector are to 

be eliminated. The new pebble-bed 

reactors under development in the 

US, China, and South africa promise 

smaller, safer, scaleable power 

systems. it remains to be seen how 

the research, environmental, and 

regulatory communities will balance 

the challenges of long-term climate 

change and an entirely new energy 

infrastructure. 

Further information 

For climate science at the cutting 

edge, visit realclimate.org. Further 

reading about the discovery of global 

warming may be found at: www.aip. 

org/history/climate/index.html. e

what would steiner say? 

Puppetry 

A Remedy for 

Civilization’s 

IllS BY 

The title is from Rudolf Steiner who 

referred to puppetry as a remedy 

for civilization’s ills. Having seen 

many, many Green Meadow 

puppet shows, I always had a feeling 

there was a lot more going on than met 

the eye. (One thing I learned quickly was 

that the performances are not “shows,” 

not entertainment, but are designed to 

have a greater, deeper impact on the 

child than something designed simply 

for entertainment purposes.) 

Steiner devoted himself to puppetry in 

1917. Of course, puppetry itself goes back 

a long way to ancient Egyptian times and 

can be found in most cultures. Puppetry 

at first was the domain of adults, not children, 

and it proved to be a fun, artistic 

way to convey, again for the adult world 

only, commentary on the life and politics 

of the time. And it was not for all adults 

at the beginning. It was reserved for the 

“upper echelon” of society, the priests and 

priestesses, royalty and the Church. The 

word “marionette”—the puppet worked 

through strings—comes from Mary and 

the story of the Nativity, a very popular 

theme for puppet performances of yore. 

During the 18th and19th centuries the 

adult grasp on puppetry began to slip as 

puppet performances started to appear 

at children’s birthday parties. From then 

on the emphasis of puppetry was toward 

the child more than the adult. 

In 1917 Steiner was living in an apartment 

building in Berlin where there was 

also a day care center for children 4-12 

years old. The center, sponsored by the 

Berlin branch of the Anthroposophical 

Society, became involved with puppetry 

with the building of a marionette theater. 

ED BIEBER, GREEN MEADOW PARENT 

When Steiner was asked for advice about 

this theater he became so fascinated with 

it that he devoted his full attention for an 

entire year to working with and guiding 

all aspects of it. He went to all the rehearsals 

and gave indications as to colors, 

materials, paint, stage settings, costumes, 

lighting, etc. 

What was the calling, the fascination? 

Remember that this was a tragic time in 

Europe, a devastating time during the last 

phases of the war. “The task of this marionette 

theater was to give a concrete example 

of the spiritual impulse of Middle 

Europe against the flood of western ways.” 

~Dr. Helmut von Kügelgen 

Steiner spoke often about renewal 

from the living arts and how our hope lies 

in educating the children. 

One of the main differences between 

Waldorf marionettes and others is that 

there is no crosspiece that the puppeteer 

uses to manipulate the strings. The strings 

are held by the puppeteer, ensouling the 

puppets, directing them from above. The 

workings of the marionettes are seen as 

coming from another being or beings. 

And the puppeteer is not hidden behind 

a stage or other barrier but is seen by the 

entire audience as he or she guides the 

puppet. 

At Green Meadow, all puppets are 

handmade by the teachers and real 

thought is given to this endeavor. Colors 

are carefully chosen as are the kinds and 

styles of fabrics. Silk, colored with plant 

dye, is one favorite fabric because there 

is a living quality about it. A puppet may 

have both a dress and a veil, the dress 

denoting the inner qualities and the veil 

the outer, more worldlier manifestations. 

It’s always amazing to me that for each year of my, so far, 22year 

connection with Green Meadow, I discover something 

new about Waldorf education that astounds me, that allows 

me anew to appreciate the depths upon which this education 

is founded. Such was the case again when I interviewed 

Lyn Barton and Lisa Miccio about the role of puppetry in the 

kindergarten. 

The puppets do not have faces so as to 

encourage a child’s imagination. 

Steiner was very clear about some 

things, i.e., “Marionettes cannot speak!” 

So the fairy or folk tales are read from a 

golden book by someone “pretty” sitting 

in a beautiful chair. The mood is first set 

by music, a candle is lit and then three different 

colored veils are lifted so as to give 

the sense of removing the stage from the 

everyday, from the worldly. 

The marionette experience is meant to 

bring children—and adults—the truth. 

It is to show children that we, as adults, 

have not forgotten the spiritual wisdom 

and the truths connected to them. (So 

much attention is given to every part of 

the puppet experience so as to elicit a 

soul response from the children.) 

When you watch children at a performance 

they literally sit with their mouths 

open, drinking in all that is before them. 

And for weeks afterward, back in their 

classrooms (as well as at home), they can 

be seen “playing” puppets and moving 

the figures with reverence. They, indeed, 

take it in very deeply. 

Our kindergarten teachers have been 

taking their puppets “on the road” as an 

outreach effort for the last two years hoping 

to bring an awareness of the healing 

qualities of puppetry. 

Most recently, a GMWS presentation of 

The Girl Who Spun Gold was performed at 

the Nyack library in March. e 

Spring 2007 |

contributors 

Jennie Abbott ’91 graduated from Smith 

College in 1995. She lives in Berkeley (where 

she doesn’t own a car), and strives to balance 

her computer-oriented work life as a technical 

writer with singing and socializing. She also 

has a communication hobby that includes the 

annual ’91 class alumni update and website, 

as well as websites for other organizations for 

which she volunteers. She is proud to have 

copyedited (with her father) two of John Hoffman’s 

Buzzy books! When not tied to her work 

commitments, Jennie spends as much time as 

she can traveling the world. 

Peter Almasi ‘93 was excited to learn that 

earth science yielded the opportunity to work 

on some of the most difficult and complex 

problems in the natural world. After 9 years of 

graduate school, he is interested in applying 

the scientific perspective of climate change to 

business models which can accurately value 

greenhouse gas emissions in an increasingly 

restrictive global regulatory environment. He 

is currently a student at Lamont-Doherty Earth 

Observatory of Columbia University in Palisades, 

NY, and hopes to finish his Ph.D. this summer. 

Katie Battles ’99 graduated from the 

Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston. From 

there she traveled through Ireland on her bicycle. 

Upon her return she moved to California 

for a year where she was a kindergarten assistant 

for the Waldorf School of the Peninsula. 

Since then, she has worked with a studio potter 

in the Catskill Mountains and assists in the 

Child’s Garden and After Care programs here 

at Green Meadow. Katie is working towards 

becoming an Art Therapist. 

Ed Bieber has children ranging in age from 

2 to 22, all of whom have gone to GMWS, are 

presently attending GMWS or will be attending 

GMWS when old enough. He is a friend 

of Mother Nature, as evidenced by his directing 

the Nature Place Day Camp for the last 22 

years at Green Meadow, as well as having a 

last name that rhymes with ‘beaver’. Many 

years ago he gave up correcting people when 

called ‘Mr. Beaver’. It’s only natural. 

Anna Booth ’99 went off to art school starting 

at Munson Williams Proctor Institute and finishing 

at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 2003. 

Some adventures and highlights following art 

school include traveling to Hong Kong and Cebu 

in the Philippines and forging new friendships 

in New Haven, CT. She has followed in her 

mother’s footsteps as a natural foods grocery 

buyer. Currently Anna is back in Brooklyn NY living 

with close pals (some GMWS grads), developing 

a growing art practice on the weekends 

and by night, while handling contemporary 

art at Phillips auction house by day. Occasional 

teaching at GMWS over the last two years has 

inspired and fueled her own work. 

David Bosch ’85 lives and works in NY. He 

has served on the GMWS Alumni Committee 

since 1999. He is helping his father, Will, set up 

the farm he recently bought upstate. 

Defne Bayrak Caldwell was a member of 

the GMWS class of 1987 from its earliest days. 

She did her undergraduate studies at Boston 

University and earned a Master’s degree from 

Fairleigh Dickinson University. She taught 

writing at Ramapo High School and Ramapo 

College in New Jersey. She is a GMWS High 

School English teacher. 

Beth Dunn-Fox was raised and educated in 

California, studied ballet, character and modern 

dance, and performed on the West Coast, 

in Louisiana and Colorado. After graduating 

from Eurythmy Spring Valley in ’86, she joined 

the performing ensemble and soon took over 

the development work for the School and 

Ensemble. She performed for 16 years with 

the Ensemble throughout the US, Canada and 

Europe and has taught many courses for the 

public and within the eurythmy training. Her 

daughter, Sophia, is a GMWS First Grader. 

Mark Finser ’78 is the president & CEO of 

RSF Social Finance, a financial services nonprofit 

organization in San Francisco providing 

investing, lending, and philanthropic services 

to create a sustainable future. Visit www.rsfsocialfinance.org 

or call (415) 561-3900. Mark 

enjoys long conversations about philosophy, 

money, and spirit. Gardening, meditation, and 

engaging in good-natured pranks also grab his 

attention. Mark and his wife, Heidi, live outside 

San Francisco with their two children, Yohanna 

and Benjamin. 

Education Towards Freedom 

Forwarding sErvicE rEquEsTEd 

Mimi Satriano worked in the high school 

office for seven years. When a student pointed 

out to her that she was never going to “graduate” 

she moved to the kindergarten and eventually 

graduated in 1991 to the Threefold Educational 

Foundation where she now cares for 

47 buildings, among other duties. She is the 

mother of two Waldorf graduates, Maureen 

’88 and Nicholas ’90, and grandmother of four 

potential Waldorf students. 

Danielle Scherer ’07 is a GMWS senior. 

She is looking forward to her last months at 

GMWS and all that they entail. She is also 

looking forward to what next year may bring 

her, out there in the wide, wide world. 

Erin Schirm ’07 writes: I am a senior at 

GMWS. Mrs. Wulsin was my class teacher. 

I am interested in becoming a teacher and 

studying education in college. Most of all, I like 

to run. I compete in track and cross country 

and would like to run DI in college. I grew up in 

the community and have learned and gained 

from what it had to offer. I look forward to the 

future and what it has in store. 

Julika Stackelberg-Addo grew up in 

Heidelberg, Germany where she attended the 

Freie Waldorf Schule. After high school she 

moved to South Africa where she assisted in 

several Waldorf kindergartens. She enrolled 

in Sunbridge’s Orientation Year before moving 

to the University of London where she earned 

her BA in African Studies and Development 

Studies in 2002. After a year working with 

an international development organization in 

the US, she returned to Sunbridge College as 

Development Director. 

Alexis Starkey is a “Green Meadow Lifer;” 

she started Kindergarten with Nancy Lindeman 

at 3 years of age and managed to graduate in 

1991. She currently resides in Washington, DC 

where she graduated from George Washington 

University. When she is not busy throwing 

theme parties, Alexis manages public relations 

for the American Health Care Association. 

Candace Stern was GMWS’s first Development 

Officer. She was co-founder and editor 

of the GMWS Bulletin from ’88-’94 and served 

as chair and member of the Green Meadow 

Advisory Board from 1997-2005. She is now 

the Alumni Magazine’s editor. Her daughter is 

Caitlin ’03. 

Peter Wiesner’s involvement in the natural 

food movement began in 1975 when he joined 

11 other college students in creating a co-operatively 

owned and operated natural food store 

and vegetarian restaurant. In the early 80’s, 

after graduating from the Waldorf Institute in 

Detroit (now Sunbridge College), he came to 

Spring Valley to manage Weleda’s retail store. 

His current connection to the Co-op arose as a 

result of designing and building displays for the 

renovated store. In addition to working with 

wood and food, he loves acting, most recently 

playing Caliban in the Threefold production of 

The Tempest. 

Seth Wulsin ’00 has spent most of his time 

since leaving high school playing music and 

doing sculpture. In 2004, after working with the 

sculptor, Ray King, in Philadelphia, he moved to 

Brooklyn for a year. In late 2005 he jumped ship 

and flew to Buenos Aires, Argentina where he is 

currently sniffing out new projects. e 

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