So that’s where this blog went…

We didn’t forget about it. Kinda the opposite. We’ve been building something bigger and better.

(Well, Joseph Jaramillo (’01) and Mighty Interactive have been doing the building. We’ve just been saying, “Wow, that looks great…”)

Either way, though: it goes live Monday, at www.flinnscholars.org. And as you can see, down there in that left rail is a new Scholars blog.

Thanks for visiting here, and see you there…

And one time, guys with swords walked up and…

We can’t tell you half of what Jon Gandomi (’99) told us about his adventures in all the places on the FAA’s Don’t-Go-There list. Or rather, we could, but it would end up redacted by a guy named Yossarian.

But even so, what we did manage to sneak into this profile on the Scholars website is worth reading. And we found a couple of pictures and put them on some kind of electronic corkboard called Flickr.

Good luck tracking down Jon from here on out. He’s now working about 23 hours a day in the State Department’s Office of the Coordinator of Reconstruction and Stabilization. They’re the people who put back together failed states after wars and natural disasters and real-estate bubbles collapse and so forth.

Somebody in Tucson’s been stuck at the SOC way too long

We’re starting to understand why the Phoenix Mars Mission was only scheduled for three months of digging holes and making sand castles on the Red Planet. Now in their fifth month of mind-bending 24.66-hour days, even the most sedate scientists have gone loopy.

Here’s the latest list of names they’ve given pebbles and other random things:

• Headless (a rock)
• Galloping Hessian (a soil sample)
• La Mancha (a trench)
• Snow White (another trench)

Hmmm… we wonder if this endless work is affecting Matt Hom (’08) and Melissa Lamberton (’05), too. Anybody seen them around campus? Are they referring to their backpacks and iPods as Sancho Panza and Lightning McQueen?

If so, this article on the Scholars website might be the last record of them speaking coherently, before the sleep deprivation kicked in.

If you want even more, there’s a reflection from Matt on his experience as a mission documentarian, after the jump.

What happened last summer

Right there in the middle of this picture is our very own Joanna Yang (’08), with Gov. Janet Napolitano and Melisa Tarango of the Governor’s Office of Children, Youth, and Families.

Why is she holding a fancy certificate, and why does she look so happy? We think it’s because Joanna was one of two Arizonans picked by the governor to attend the National Youth Science Camp over the summer in the Potomac Highlands near Bartow, West Virginia. She spent 3+ weeks of July at the camp doing secret things like inventing fuel cells, discovering solar systems, and getting lost in enormous caves under the Appalachian mountains.

“A foreigner in my hometown”

We tried calculating the mileage Shruti Bala (’07) has logged since May, but the mammoth task burned out our TI-92 Plus. (Maybe Danielle Bäck (’08) can score us a replacement?)

After Shruti finished the trip to Hungary and Romania with her Scholars class, she went to New York for an internship at the museum of the New York Historical Society. After that, Guatemala, where she brushed up on Spanish and volunteered at a school for disadvantaged boys. Now she’s in Vancouver, where she’s researching healthcare practices among the homeless population and studying at the University of British Columbia. That should keep her occupied until December, but then, she says, it’s winter break in Bangalore, India, and the spring semester in Singapore on an exchange.

Will she recognize any of us by next May?

After the jump, a reflection from Shruti’s brief time back in Arizona, between Guatemala and Vancouver.

Leading the A-Team

An advertisement from the Business Journal of Phoenix, 07/18/2008

Everybody knows, the main reason to go to college is to get free pizza at meetings of random honoraries, service clubs, and laboratory groups.

Dustin Cox (’04) isn’t a college student anymore, but he’s still getting free food. Tonight, it’s a black-tie-optional dinner, presented by the Hon Kachina Council.

For his untiring work with Anytown Arizona, and founding A-Town at UA, Dustin has been named one of eight recipients of the Hon Kachina Volunteer Award–essentially the Nobel Peace Prize of Arizona.

Here’s the story on the Scholars website. Dustin is, if our records are accurate, the second Scholar to receive the honor, joining Alon Unger (’94), who won for his HIV/AIDS work in the community.

Good luck, kiddies!

The 2009 Scholars application is live.

Message to all you stressed-out, over-achieving, amazing high-school seniors: Have fun, be daring, and show us what you’ve got… See you at the interviews!

Photo by Flickr user Chaparral[Kendra] under a Creative Commons license