Social Justice
The Game That Changed Baseball
On Sept. 1, 1971, in front of a crowd of 11,278, the Pirates fielded a lineup composed entirely of Black and Afro-Latino players. It is believed to be the first all-minority starting nine in AL/NL history.
(MLB.com, Sept. 2021)
Inside the Movement to Abolish Colonialist Bird Names
Last year, the American Ornithological Society accepted a proposal to rename a bird linked to a racist figure. And there’s more where that came from.
(Outside, February 2021)
The Home Front
Ai-jen Poo ’96 spent her formative years as a Columbia Lion, but as an advocate for domestic workers she identifies more closely with the tiger, her Chinese zodiac sign. So much, in fact, that she had its likeness tattooed on her right arm when she was in her mid-20s.
(Columbia College Today, Fall 2012)
Science
Timber salvaged from New York City buildings reveals ancient climate
Old-growth forests once covered the eastern United States, but they were almost entirely decimated by the early 1900s after centuries of commercial logging. Yet wood from those forests survives, much of it tucked behind the walls of New York City buildings. The tree rings on these timbers are sources of historical climate data, which is why researchers are working to recover them.
(National Geographic, Oct. 2021)
Oceanographer Juliette Finzi Hart ’96 Shows the (Virtual) Reality of Climate Change
Imagine seeing your favorite beach swallowed by the ocean. Your distress — the visceral kind of reaction that spurs people to action — is what oceanographer Juliette Finzi Hart ’96 is looking to elicit from residents of Southern California through the use of virtual reality.
(Columbia College Today, Winter 2017-18)
Go Fish
Paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Neil Shubin ’82 delights in recounting how a fortune cookie foreshadowed the journey that resulted in his most important discovery.
(Columbia College Today, March/April 2011)
Entertainment
Latinx Writers Couldn’t Get Hollywood’s Attention. So They Came Up With Another Way
During last year’s Latinx Heritage Month, Nuyorican actor and filmmaker Dominique Nieves launched a mentorship initiative for up-and-coming Latinx television writers having a harder-than-normal time getting their foot in the door.
(Refinery29, Sept. 2021)
Moira Demos ’96 Returns to the Scene of the Crime
Once you’ve created a cultural phenomenon, what do you do for an encore? Moira Demos ’96, SOA’08 and Laura Ricciardi SOA’07, the filmmakers behind the true-crime Netflix docuseries Making a Murderer, took a somewhat meta approach: They returned to Manitowoc County, Wis., to grapple with a world changed by the impassioned response to their work.
(Columbia College Today, Winter 2019)
Food
On the Day Shift with Pastry Cook Mercedes Vargas
It’s just before 10 a.m. on a December Monday at The Ritz-Carlton New York, Central Park, and pastry cook Mercedes Vargas ’99 is in her work clothes: a white chef jacket embroidered with the hotel name, an apron that shows faint evidence of encounters with chocolate and loose pants with a fine black-and-white checkerboard pattern. Her dark hair is tucked into a pillbox hat.
(Columbia College Today, Spring 2015)
Youngest Son of “The First Family of Fine Dining,” Keeps Making Food Lovers Smile
It’s lunchtime on a humid summer Tuesday and a suit-and-tied Mauro Maccioni ’95 is seated in a harlequin-patterned chair in the dining room of Osteria del Circo, the Midtown West restaurant inspired by his mother Egidiana’s Tuscan home cooking.
(Columbia College Today, Summer 2014)
New York City
Citywide hotel boom hits LIC
Though not traditionally associated with tourism, Long Island City is proving fertile ground for new hotels because of its proximity to Midtown Manhattan.
(Queens Chronicle, Nov. 2011)