Up Front | From the Editor

June 2000: Vol. 79, No. 3

Our June issue story on Marianne Cramer (BLA '77, upper right) is the third installment in our Bulldogs-renovate-the-Big Apple series.

hat is it about New York City that attracts UGA landscape architecture grads? This issue marks the third installment in our Bulldogs-renovate-the-Big Apple series, which began with our Sept. '97 cover story on Karen Phillips (BLA '75), whose non-profit Abyssinian Development Corporation has invested $65 million to revitalize Harlem ("Harlem Renaissance Woman").

Moving to the south end of Manhattan island in the Dec. '98 issue, GM introduced readers to Richard Wells (BLA '76), who takes a ferry boat ride into American history every single morning ("Saving Ellis Island").

In the current issue, we visit what UGA landscape architecture prof Marianne Cramer (BLA '77) calls the "island within the island" to learn how she and her colleagues at the Central Park Conservancy nursed America's first—and most famous—urban park back to health ("Friend of Central Park"). One of her colleagues was the late Bruce Kelly (BLA '81), who designed Central Park's memorial to John Lennon (see "Strawberry Fields"). "I don't think it's unusual that we've all ended up there," says Cramer, "because New York is a real magnet for landscape architects and urban planners."

Speaking of Bulldogs in far-flung places, we think GM readers will enjoy all three of the "Where in the World Is Alex Crevar?" features in this issue.

For starters, we sent our talented young assistant editor to Havana on a special UGA-arranged visa to report on the unique study-abroad opportunities afforded the Foundation Fellows. GM readers will feel like they were part of the tour when UGA's top scholarship recipients spent 10 days examining Fidel Castro's continuing experiment in Western Hemisphere communism.

Alex's frequent-flyer miles received another boost a few weeks later when we sent him to India with the Steve Dancz (BMus '80) quartet, which performed American jazz in the World Festival of Sacred Music—and had a private audience with the Dalai Lama himself.

To keep Alex's laptop warm and him from getting stale, we took advantage of the small time window between those two trips and dispatched him all the way to downtown Athens to get the scoop on what makes Widespread Panic—which was founded by three UGA alums—one of the hottest rock n' roll road shows in America.