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November 2, 2005: From the Editor

Leslie Jennings Rowley holds an unusual University record: most inoculated person at Princeton. She manages the Princeton Journeys travel program, a job that requires her to pack her suitcase and head for spots that the office-bound among us only read about. PAW caught up with her the day she returned after previewing a prospective alumni trip to Turkey, and 10 days before leaving for India, which would be followed by a trip to Tanzania. She didn’t have much time to talk — she had an appointment at McCosh Health Center to get “another one of those Japanese encephalitis shots.”

Rowley is among the staff members who accompany Princeton Journeys excursions and go on “scouting trips” to locations that may end up on the schedule in future years. That lets them in on some memorable accomplishments, such as the poems (including two limericks) produced by participants on a trip to Ireland last year with professors Paul Muldoon and Michael Cadden. Rowley is a good fit for the job, and not just because of her background in travel: Her 5-foot-1-inch frame makes long coach trips bearable, she has a strong stomach, and she cheerfully views the injections as only one of the “occupational inconveniences I’m willing to bear.” The only hard part is the time away from her new husband, Clancy Rowley ’95, an assistant engineering professor at Princeton.

To write about Princeton’s alumni education program — especially the fastest-growing part, travel — PAW bought a spot on a trek to Machu Picchu for our fittest staff member, associate editor Brett Tomlinson. The trip was geared to “young alumni,” and for good reason: Participants faced steep climbs, thin air, and cold nights spent sleeping in tents. In addition to his general update on alumni education, Tomlinson provides an account of his excellent adventure.

Alumni journalists offer more international perspectives in a package of essays about how Americans are perceived in other countries during a time of diminishing prestige for the United States. The assignment to the journalists was broad: Contributors were asked to submit short slices of life about “how the United States and its citizens are viewed by ordinary people in other countries, and about what life is like for Americans abroad.”

Not surprisingly, many of the responses deal with the international reaction to the ongoing war in Iraq. Some, however, approach the issue from different angles, helping us to see ourselves through others’ eyes.

Happy travels.

Marilyn H. Marks *86
mmarks@princeton.edu