BU goes for the gold – In the post-Silber era, the university pursues its first capital campaign
By Alex Beam – Globe Columnist / September 3, 2010

This summer the Boston University trustees quietly green-lit the university’s first-ever, big-time fund-raising campaign. It sounds like a small thing, but it is a big thing. Unlike almost every other university its size, BU has never clamped a full-court press on all of its alumni for a billion-dollar capital campaign.

Why not? For decades, John Silber or a Silberite ruled BU. Silber hated fund-raising and wasn’t particularly good at it. In 2002 donor David Mugar of July Fourth fireworks fame threatened to sue Silber and the university unless they agreed to return a $3 million gift that Mugar claimed had been misappropriated. BU returned the money.

To BU’s vast alumni networks, Silber was a polarizing figure, beloved by some for his conservative, principled stands, and despised by others for his fulminous rants. For university fund-raising, bland is better. Think former Harvard president Neil Rudenstine, not the more dynamic — and off-putting — Larry Summers.

John Simpson, 85, a legend as athletic director at BU
By Marvin Pave – Globe Correspondent / September 3, 2010

As athletic director at Boston University from 1975 to ’84, John Simpson, a former BU football lineman, hired some of the most successful and colorful coaches in school history.

One was a 26-year-old assistant at Syracuse University named Rick Pitino, later coach of the Boston Celtics and now head coach at the University of Louisville, who recalled his 1978 interview with Mr. Simpson nine years later at a BU basketball tip-off dinner.

“John Simpson said something so honest, I’ll never forget it. He said, ‘This is a bad job. But I love the school, and it has great potential. You should know that I know nothing about basketball, and the media never comes to our games, and our fans don’t come. So no one can second-guess you,’ ’’ said Pitino, who coached at BU for five seasons. “It turned out to be the greatest move I ever made.’’

Think ink – Check out the artists at the tattoo convention and then sample the squid at nearby restaurants
By Luke O’Neil – Globe Correspondent / September 3, 2010

Now in its ninth year, this weekend’s Boston Tattoo Convention marks its first move outside of the Boston Center for the Arts. A new location at the Sheraton Boston Hotel will give the annual celebration of everything inked-up more space, says convention manager Micah R.O. Litant of Witch City Ink in Salem. “Hotel shows are more centralized. It’s much better having everything, and everyone, in one place.’’

That means easier access to parties, artists’ galleries, and performances like collaborative live painting exhibitions, mixed martial arts fighting demonstrations, burlesque performers, and a Ms. Boston Tattoo contest. Throughout the weekend participants can also enter themselves and their tattoos in categories like best of show and best portrait. The main draw will be the hundreds of artists on hand practicing their work on conventiongoers.

Boston Tattoo Convention, Sept. 3-6. $20-$70. Sheraton Boston Hotel, 39 Dalton St., Boston. www.bostontattooconvention.com

1838 – Dressed in a sailor’s uniform and carrying identification papers provided by a Free Black seaman, future abolitionist Frederick Douglass boards a train in Maryland on his way to freedom from slavery.  More anniversaries.

Played with Boston Symphony for 29 Years, Taught at NEC for 23 Years

New England Conservatory is mourning the death of Jay Wadenpfuhl, who played in the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s horn section for 29 years and was a member of the NEC faculty for 23 years. Wadenpfuhl died June 19 of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. He was 60.

Wadenpfuhl was born into a musical family in Kirbyville, Texas, where his mother played and taught piano and directed choirs, and his father, a trumpet player, conducted prize-winning high school and college bands. His parents, both active octogenarians, had died in just the last six months, his mother in December and his father on June 13. The young Jay was a professional horn player from age 15, when he performed with the Beaumont (TX) Symphony Orchestra and the Beaumont Civic Opera.

He studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned his bachelor and master degrees in music, with a major in horn and a minor in composition. He also completed one year’s work toward his Doctor of Musical Arts degree at North Texas State University. Prior to joining the BSO, he was a member of the U.S. Army Band, the Florida Philharmonic, the Fort Worth Symphony, and the National Symphony Orchestra. At the BSO, he occupied the John P. II and Nancy S. Eustis chair. Wadenpfuhl joined the NEC faculty in 1987 and, among the students he taught here was his second cousin and hornist, Lee Wadenpfuhl ’06 M.M.

A versatile musician comfortable in many genres, Wadenpfuhl composed works for horn and was also a composer/lyricist of popular and jazz songs. He recorded two albums with the NFB Horn Quartet (Riccardo Almeida, William Hoyt, David Kappy, and Wadenpfuhl), which was composed of former students of the legendary horn player John Barrows. The first album was dedicated to the memory of Barrows, and included Wadenpfuhl’s composition, Tectonica, for eight horns and percussion. The other featured a collaboration with horn player Barry Tuckwell, and included Gunther Schuller’s Five Pieces for Five Horns and Wadenpfuhl’s quartet Textures.

In addition, the horn player toured Japan with the Michel LeGrand Jazz Orchestra, and toured and recorded with Chuck Mangione, appearing on the albums Live at the Hollywood Bowl and Tarantella. In 1989, Wadenpfuhl performed the world premiere of William Thomas McKinley’s Huntington Horn Concerto with John Williams and the Boston Pops.

Frank Epstein, a longtime BSO colleague and chair of Brass and Percussion at NEC, said this about Wadenpfuhl: “Jay, was a one of a kind personality, emotionally charged yet highly committed to all things musical. An unusual talent, he was a composer of brass music and loved to conduct pieces in the brass repertoire. His playing was elegant, stylistically fluent and secure, his tone beautifully centered at all times, while his playing was always musical with an extraordinary sense of good taste. He was also a committed teacher.”

Wadenpfuhl leaves his wife, Michelle Perry, hornist in the Empire Brass and performer with numerous Boston ensembles.

For further information, check the NEC Website at: http://necmusic.edu/faculty/jay-wadenpfuhl

1904 – Irish author James Joyce begins a relationship with Nora Barnacle and subsequently uses the date to set the actions for his novel Ulysses; this date is now traditionally called “Bloomsday,”  More anniversaries.

William J. Mitchell, Architect and Urban Visionary, Dies at 65
By WILLIAM GRIMES/NYT – June 15, 2010

William J. Mitchell, an architect and urban theorist who envisioned the modern city as an electronically interconnected network of systems and who, while serving as dean of the school of architecture and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, enlisted top architects to carry out an ambitious expansion of the M.I.T. campus, died Friday in Boston. He was 65 and lived in Cambridge, Mass.

The cause was complications of cancer, his wife, Jane Wolfson, said.

Mr. Mitchell, who led the Smart Cities research group at the M.I.T. Media Lab and was a professor of architecture and media arts and sciences, was an architect by training but an urban visionary by avocation. Early on, he saw the application of computers to architectural design. His pioneering work in this area, and his books “Computer-Aided Architectural Design” (1977) and “The Logic of Architecture: Design, Computation and Cognition” (1990) profoundly changed the way architects approached building design.

“A lot of what is taught about design and computation in architecture schools today comes from the way that Bill set the subject up,” said George Stiny, a professor of computation at M.I.T. “If he hadn’t been there to inaugurate computer-aided architectural design, architects would probably still not be doing it. Remember, in 1977 it was hard to draw a line on a computer. Bill really had a sense of how much architects could take, gave them a little more, and made it possible for them to take the next step.”

Protesters rally at Fenway Park – Ariz. game draws immigration law demonstrators
By Maria Sacchetti – Globe Staff / June 16, 2010

The Arizona Diamondbacks huddled in the cramped visitors clubhouse in Fenway Park yesterday afternoon, carrying more baggage than the usual bats and balls. On Lansdowne Street, the protesters were arriving.

The team has become mired in the vitriolic national debate over illegal immigration, a symbol of a state under fire for recently passing the most restrictive immigration law in the country. Protests have dogged them in Houston and Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami, and yesterday in Boston, where scores of demonstrators gathered behind the Green Monster before game time to rally against the law.

“It’s been happening everywhere we go,’’ said Miguel Montero, a 26-year-old catcher from Venezuela. “We don’t talk about it.’’

Yesterday’s demonstrators — about 200 people from labor unions, church groups, and immigrant advocates — crowded the sidewalk behind sausage stands to assail the law, which was passed in April and takes effect next month. The law makes it a state crime to be in the United States illegally and allows police to question those they suspect of being in the country without papers.

[see also this photo gallery - ed]

A hermetically sealed dome around Kenmore Square was probably judged too expensive
Universal Hub: By adamg – 6/15/10 – 5:04 pm

Making sure we understand why we can’t have nice things, Boston Police are doing everything they can to keep drunken louts from overturning cars in Kenmore Square (and near Faneuil Hall and the Garden) both today and Thursday (because you never know), in addition to banning freebie newspaper boxes and just generally trying to keep people out of the areas.

[We missed this when it was published last week - ed.]

Walter L. Kouyoumjian, mechanical engineer and city activist
By Emma Stickgold – Globe Correspondent / February 12, 2010

Sitting at outdoor cafes in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood, Walter Leon Kouyoumjian talked with neighbors about how to improve the lives of area residents, and politicians often stopped to chat with him.

“He was affable – a reasoned, thinking person who would opine about city issues, about neighborhood issues,’’ Boston City Council President Michael Ross said. “And he would never be alone. He was always with a crowd, a group. He was the kind of person that I would see and go over and talk to. I think he was fairly grounded. He was someone you felt real comfortable approaching.’’

The retired mechanical engineer had led a life as varied as the composition of his ever-changing neighborhood.

He farmed potatoes and sheep in Maine for a time and, while living in Pepperell, had just the right temperament to collect honey from beehives. He taught what he had learned about the mechanics of engineering to high school graduates, drawing on his years of studying and fixing aircraft while serving in the Air Force.

The son of Armenian immigrants, he grew up in New York City, and it was the familiarity with city life that drew him to the streets of Boston, where he joined various boards of directors and became a neighborhood fixture, according to Ross.

Robert B. Parker, the Prolific Writer Who Created Spenser, Is Dead at 77
By BRUCE WEBER/NYT – January 20, 2010

Robert B. Parker, the best-selling mystery writer who created Spenser, a tough, glib Boston private detective who was the hero of nearly 40 novels, died Monday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 77.

The cause was a heart attack, said his agent of 37 years, Helen Brann. She said that Mr. Parker had been thought to be in splendid health, and that he died at his desk, working on a book. He wrote five pages a day, every day but Sunday, she said.

…

He was born in Springfield, Mass., on Sept. 17, 1932, the only child of working-class parents. His father worked for the telephone company. He attended Colby College in Maine, graduating in 1954, then served in the Army in Korea, after the Korean War. He earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in literature from Boston University, and taught there as well as at Northeastern University.

Scotts to sell Fenway Park grass seed
By Greg Turner/Boston Herald – January 20, 2010

The grass is always greener at Fenway Park.

But as soon as this spring, Red Sox fans will be able to replicate Boston’s field of dreams in their front yard.

The Scotts Co. announced a deal today with Major League Baseball Properties to sell grass seed that’s specially blended to match the turf at Fenway and four other ballparks.

The product packaging features the signatures of the teams’ head groundskeeper.

Walter Kouyoumjian shares cake with
Helen Cox at her birthday party last
December. Photo by Tracy Cusick

KOUYOUMJIAN, Walter Leon Born 03/24/1928 in New York to Rose and Leon Kouyoumjian Sr. , and died at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston of heart related illness on 12/21/2009 at approximately 11:30 am. Walter served in the United States Air Force from 1946 to 1949 and was stationed in Korea and Japan. After being honorably discharged from the service he attended, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken NJ and earned a BS in mechanical engineering, graduating in 1953. He later received a Masters in Education at Fitchburg State College. He worked as a mechanical engineer and taught at several post-secondary schools and colleges in Maine and Massachusetts and Vermont. He had a number of interests that included dancing, photography, and politics and had spent time farming in Northern Maine.

After retiring, he was a member of the Board of Directors of the Fenway CDC and was elected a member of the Ward 5 Democratic Committee. He volunteered with various organizations in the Boston area including the Boston Harbor Island Alliance and, most importantly, Eastern Service Workers Association. Walter is survived by his sons Leon, Paul, David, grandson Walter, and his former wife Joyce Freedman. He was predeceased by his sister Lucille Witz and his brother Leon Kouyoumjian. The memorial service will be held January 16th from 12-3 at Canastaro, 16 Peterborough St, Boston MA 02215 www. canastaro.com for info please contact vartan617@gmail.com or 201.945.3599. All memorial gifts should go to Eastern Service Workers Association, 247 Bowdoin St, Dorchester, MA 02122. tel(617) 265-9200

Condolences may be sent to his son David Kouyoumjian at: 112 Shaler Avenue, Fairview, N.J. 07022….

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