Click here to see a photo of Ralph Fisher and several of his photographs.
Ralph Fisher '39 had a State Department career that took him to some of the most fascinating countries in the world. As a Foreign Service Officer working on issues of agriculture or economics, he, wife Sally, and four sons have lived in Ethiopia, Korea, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, and Uganda.
But since he was an adolescent attending school in Germany, he has taken photographs--first with a Leica 35mm camera and later, in salon work, with a Mamiya Rb67 camera that is perfect for creating 8 x 10 photographs. "I prefer the larger negative," he said. He also processed the photos in his home darkroom.
Fisher studied at the New York School of Photography in the mid-1940s and in 1976 with the internationally recognized photographer Fred Picker of Putney, Vt. Fisher's skill and eye allowed him to supplement his State Dept. income by selling his photographs through an agent in New York. Photos he took while on assignment for the State Dept. have appeared in Grolier's Encyclopedia, Foreign Service Journal, The Washington Post, Yankee, Christian Science Monitor, and Vermont Life, the magazine of the state where he now lives.
The photograph he is proudest of was taken in Naples in 1959 on his way back to the United States after completing a two-year assignment in Ethiopia. "I took the photo out of a hotel window and focused on an elderly woman sitting in a chair across the way. She was looking sad," he recalled.
Today, Fisher doesn't take many photographs because of his diminished eyesight, but he does take a lot of snapshots of his six grandchildren.
In 1972, Fisher retired from foreign service work and moved to East Hardwick, Vt. Since then, he has taken photos of local Vermont scenes and still lifes, but primarily he has been working 150 acres of sugarbush he owns.
His eldest son, Galen '70, is the primary operator of Ralph Fisher & Sons Maple Syrup, located in Greensboro, Vt., which produced 605 gallons of syrup from 2,200 trees last year. "It takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup," Ralph said.
Galen said his father's work can still be found on the walls of local Vermont businesses: "I was at the health clinic recently and saw one of my father's photographs on the wall from about 10 years ago. They're still around."
"It gives me a great deal of pleasure. I enjoy being able to capture the light and find the perspective," Ralph said. "It's an artistic outlet."
--Audree Penner
Franz
Leichter '52 (D/L, Manhat-tan/Bronx) retired last year after serving
30 years in the N.Y. state legislature. Dubbed the "conscience of the
Senate" by The Village Voice, Leichter was a tireless champion of
justice and fairness, no matter how unpopular the cause or how
hopeless the political battle.
To rise to any level of prominence is quite an accomplishment, considering that Leichter spent his entire legislative career--six years in the state assembly and 24 in the senate---as a member of the minority party.
"It was not an easy 30 years," admits Leichter. "Constantly being in the minority in a very partisan system is frustrating. It is a struggle to get people to pay attention to a minority bill in Albany." But given this political reality, Leichter was uncommonly successful, as his political friends and foes readily admit.
A modest, pragmatic man, Leichter exhibits pride when speaking of two legislative accomplishments that stand as bookends around his career. In 1970, a bill he introduced made New York the first state to legalize abortion. This was three years before the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision and an extremely controversial move at the time--especially for a newcomer. "It was just the right thing to do," says Leichter of his pioneering effort.
And in 1998, Leichter and others, working with the Hudson River Park Alliance, succeeded in passing the Hudson River Park Act, which will create a riverfront park between Battery City and 59th Street in Manhattan, finally opening up the riverfront to recreational use and limiting commercial development. "I view this as an environmental issue and also a way to make public space available. The New York waterfront is just so spectacular."
Both measures had immense opposition, requiring unusually demanding public relations campaigns. But public relations became one of Leichter's strong suits over the years. And Leichter learned right away that, being a minority politician, his strongest allies might just be the public. He was convinced that if he could make them aware of some of the wasteful, corrupt, or undemocratic practices that existed in government, they would react as strongly as he did. So he launched into investigations, compiling endless reams of data and publishing reports that exposed institutional injustices and inefficiencies.
"I had to find some way to have an impact. I didn't want to just go up there and be paid to have someone call me 'senator'. I wanted to find a way to move toward some of the goals I had," Leichter explains. "I needed to raise issues and get some bills passed, and I did so mainly by issuing reports and holding press conferences to publicize issues. Even while I was very frustrated about all the things I couldn't do, I certainly had some satisfaction and some sense of achievement."
Although his political adversaries might cringe at the prospect of being delivered a voluminous Leichter report or having to endure a Leichter end-of-the-year colloquy, he is a genuinely
well-liked and -respected man.
Leichter was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1930. His interest in public ser-vice came naturally, he says, as both of his parents were active in politics in Austria before World War II. He thereafter moved to New York and graduated from Swarthmore in 1952, majoring in history with minors in both political science and philosophy. He went straight to Harvard Law School, but his education was interrupted by being drafted into the Korean War. Upon graduation in 1957, he worked as a Democratic Party official, beginning his career alongside reformers Eleanor Roosevelt and Governor Herbert Lehman.
His reform politics garnered him a reputation as a political maverick, an apt description to this day. Whether the issue has been environmental protection, consumer fraud, campaign finance reform, or the degradation of city parks by the laxity of dog owners (hence, his famous "pooper scooper" law), Leichter has not been afraid to stand alone. More often, though, he has stood with his constituents firmly beside him.
Has it ever felt like a burden to carry the torch as a liberal outsider? Leichter is philosophical. "It would have been difficult for me to cast a vote that I didn't believe in. And I really credit Swarthmore, to a great extent, for helping me to develop my moral compass. So I felt comfortable very often being the only member of the legislature voting against a particular bill or challenging some of the procedures of the legislature that I thought were undemocratic, unfair or that closed government." After a moment, he playfully adds, "Well, I guess I have a stubborn streak."
In June, President Clinton nominated Leichter to a position on the Federal Housing Finance Board, a position that appealed to Leichter because it will allow him to continue his involvement in important issues of affordable housing and community investment. With Senate confirmation likely this fall, Leichter will be able to keep himself "involved in his time" for at least another six years. Then, he'll undoubtedly be on to yet another cause.
--Terri-Jean Pyer '77
Click here to see a photograph of Beth McIntosh and Judith Edelman
Ask Madonna or Mick: the life of a touring musician is grueling even when you have a coterie of roadies to help you. When you're a woman on your own, driving solo through the vast American West in a car crammed with your own CDs and a guitar and only gas money in your pocket, grueling does not begin to describe it. But the gruel factor is mitigated by the exhilaration of pursuing a dream on your own terms.
That's how two singer-songwriters from Swarthmore describe their separate years on the road. In the years following graduation, Elizabeth C. McIntosh '80 and Judith Edelman '87 have lived passionate, if precarious, lives as musicians and recording artists--freelancers on tour, pioneers in the creative wilderness, frontier women in the West. Though always touch-and-go financially, the endeavor has enriched them in other ways: with loyal fans who come down from the hills to local watering holes to sing along to lyrics they know by heart, collaborations with artists of every stripe, and critical acclaim. For albums such as Fire and Sage and Grizzlies Walking Upright, acoustic guitar player McIntosh has won awards like the Wyoming Performing Arts Fellowship and been dubbed by Jackson Hole Magazine as "a mysterious, lion-maned songwriter whose poems are as complex and meaningful as her adept guitar work." Edelman's recordings, Perfect World and Only Sun, have garnered praise from The Wall Street Journal, Billboard, and Music Review, the last of which described her music as "[p]art bluegrass, a smidge pop, a dash alternative, fully literate, and shockingly good songwriting."
With the gap in their ages, the two never met each other at Swarthmore. But when they met--2,000 miles away in Wyoming through the men in their lives, Edelman's longtime partner and award-winning banjo player and mandolinist Matt Flinner and bluegrass guitar and bassist Phil Round, whom McIntosh married in 1980--they quickly became each other's biggest fans.
"Beth is in touch with an incredibly deep wellspring," crooned Edelman, who lives in Idaho, 20 miles over a pass in the Tetons from McIntosh. "She's an incredibly brilliant and intuitive person all around. She sees the connection between creative wildness and environmental wildness."
Of her younger sister in songwriting, McIntosh said: "Watching how [Judith] works from the bedrock layer of her soul through the process of production is truly amazing. She knows that everything she sees, smells, eats, and thinks makes its way into her work."
McIntosh and Edelman are articulate, intense, nervy individuals fully seasoned in the realities of staying afloat in a not-always-kind industry. The similarities between them are striking. Both are Easterners--Edelman grew up in the crush of Manhattan and McIntosh in a Boston suburb, both in homes warmed by a spiritual hearth of music. Trained in classical piano, Edelman became adept at the Mozart and Beethoven sonatas that everyone in her high-achieving family played, including Dave Edelman '83. In comical contrast, McIntosh has "the funniest picture of my two parents sitting in front of the TV with their guitars," following along to the tutelage of a hippy-folksy gal" in the days when everyone wanted to be Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell. In such an environment, it was only natural that McIntosh was already picking her way among the strings and frets by the time she was five, emulating James Taylor during an awkward adolescence and playing coffeehouses by the time she came to Swarthmore. (Some may remember her appearances at Mephistos.)
Both chose majors in the humanities, McIntosh in psychology, Edelman in English when the Women's Studies program was in its infancy. Each briefly pursued paths after Swarthmore that smothered their creative fires: McIntosh fished commercially in Alaska and went on to postgraduate work in anthropology with plans to go into academia. She found herself feeling "top-heavy," overly cerebral, and longing for a place "where your body can bash up against the natural forces that are informing you." Edelman did field research in Third World agricultural development. It was in Nairobi that Edelman first picked up a guitar, in the home of a stranger who took her in when she was critically ill with a case of salmonella.
Both alumnae were influenced by their brothers. Edelman's curiosity about the rhythmic potential of bluegrass had been awakened by violinist Dave's combo band at Swarthmore. It was this genre she pursued in lessons when she moved to San Francisco after returning to the United States. McIntosh heard of the Rocky Mountains' splendor from her brother and followed him westward. "It was as far away from anything academic as you can get. I'd asked myself: Where is my heart? What is the most intelligent thing I can do with my life? So far, I hadn't found the answer in academics or a professional track. The only thing was my guitar and my music."
In these ways, both found themselves in the uncharted territory of making music (not that any career in the arts comes with a road map), careers without 401Ks, paid sick days, or guarantees of success. They played concerts large and small, for college audiences and women's festivals. "It was great," recalled McIntosh: "Get in the car and drive a zillion miles and leave with some money." Edelman teamed up with touring groups, im-mersing herself in bluegrass's intertwining of tradition and innovation. Through that magical combination of persistence and serendipity, both found agents, then small independent labels--Compass Records for Edelman, and McIntosh eventually appointed herself president of her own company, ECM Music.
Today, the musicians' lives are undergoing changes. Edelman and Flinner made a leap of faith and moved to Nashville this summer, reluctantly bidding fare-well to the majestic and affordable West for the hustle and hoo of the nation's bluegrass and country capital; there, they hope to find steady session work and visibility among other writers. Four years ago, McIntosh became the mother of Wilder, who was followed this spring by Raynor. The addition of a nursing infant to the demands of the road proved arduous. There was a note of wistfulness in McIntosh's voice as she related her decision to cut back on touring for now. She has stayed closer to home, writing music for a film and teaching workshops like "Finding Your Wild Voice" at the Teton Science Center near her family's log cabin in Wilson, Wyo., with a population of 202.
Yet ironically, motherhood has only deepened McIntosh's music. She just released The Wild Ride, whose title alludes to the journey of birth and maternity, to her encounter with the wilderness in her own body as well as the external wilderness she limns in imagistic, Cassandra-like songs. She is less consumed by the idea of albums as product and more interested in the process of living, which may eventually end up as a song or album. Reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance author Robert Pirsig's latest book, Lila, helped put the question of creative output in perspective for McIntosh. "There were 10 years between his last book and this one," she mused softly, while her children burbled in the background. "The guy waited until he really had something to say. I want to write the same way. It's about seeing your life as a body of work and of trusting in the gestational aspects of creativity."
--Ali Crolius '84
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