Doug Hodgkin, professor emeritus of political science, is regularly quoted by Maine’s political reporters on a variety of issues. This past summer it was gay marriage, a looming tax-cap referendum, the presidential election, and the death of Ronald Reagan. It was Reagan, Hodgkin told the Portland Press Herald,  who helped re-define the difference between Republicans and Democrats. Reagan took conservative positions on certain social issues “and deepened the cleavage between the two parties that had already been developing to some extent,” Hodgkin told the paper, “but it didn’t necessarily have to go in that direction.” The Republican Party then became more competitive, Hodgkin said. “George Bush the elder was able to win in ’88 because of the Reagan legacy of establishing the parity, the relative equality of the two parties, in terms of their strength among the voters.”… John King, a member of the English faculty from 1971 to 1989, earned Ohio State Univ.’s highest academic appointment, the Distinguished University Professorship, which also earned him an appointment to the President’s and Provost’s Advisory Council. He continues to serve as Humanities Distinguished Professor of English and of Religious Studies. He recently completed a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation’s research institute at Bellagio, Italy. He used this opportunity to continue research into John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs  and early modern English print culture. He lectured on this subject at Cambridge Univ. in summer 2004. His most recent book is Voices of the English Reformation  (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004)…. John Tagliabue, professor emeritus of English, reveled in his and Grace’s visit to campus at Reunion. Along with former students Pam Alexander ’70 and Elizabeth Strout ’77, he read at the “Writing Matters” presentation on Saturday, hosted by English faculty member Rob Farnsworth. Poet Jean Monahan ’80 also read at the event. John also offered a poem at the memorial service for Richard Sampson, professor emeritus of mathematics. “We had a Very Good time,” he wrote in a note to Bates Magazine  recently. He also included this “operatic Farewell Poem”:

“Some Farewell Excitements in sort of Italian Operatic Ways (written as I was leaving a Bates College Alumni Summer Reunion)”

Of course
they made the most of it in Italian Operas,
    extended repetitions
of Addio, Addio, Farewell repetitions with
    varied trills,
sustained narcissism of farewell, I give my
    body away, to
air, earth, to sea, to God knows What;
    whatever you do
do it with undulations of song, comedy if
    possible, coughing
or snorting or if fortunate cavorting.
    I adore you, Sing
O audiences, former students who are former
    teachers,
keep paying for my upkeep, keep my company
    with
Shakespeare, Blake, Farewell, my Fancy (Whitman);
    Fare Well,
my sailing or flying or ambling poems, Fare Well
    lyrically
with fanfare of cadenzas, my future readers of poems,
    keep the
dialogue lushly operatic; Rejoice Rejoice, extend
    and again
extend the many undulating Performances, O Partners
    in the Arias.