The idea came to me in June when I interviewed Rogan Kersh (’86) about his returning home to Wake Forest to become provost. All these years he had been away as a scholar and administrator at Yale, Syracuse and New York University. What were his favorite spots at Wake Forest, those places he had missed? After all, he would be able to revisit them at his leisure (on the rare occasions a provost has leisure) once installed in his new post in Reynolda Hall. He said, not surprisingly: “Some of them are almost clichés, I guess. Reynolda Gardens, an extraordinary place to walk or run or lose oneself for a while when things are going poorly or especially well.”

There it was again. Reynolda Gardens topped an alumnus’ list of memorable places. Reynolda Gardens has the force of gravity, pulling our Wake Forest community to the earth as well as to the woods, the paths, the wetlands and, on certain meditative runs, tranquillity. I recalled how many times alumni mentioned to me their deep affection for the place. The latest issue of Wake Forest Magazine celebrates the gardens through the photography of Travis Dove (’04), who studied communication and studio art and now works as a freelance photographer in Durham, N.C. His work appears in the latest issue of Our State magazine. Rolling Stone, National Geographic and Newsweek have featured his photographs as well. I noticed on election day he was shooting from Raleigh for The New York Times. Having escaped to the gardens as a student, Dove understands the emotional connection many of us feel for the place. You will be delighted by his photographs in the spring issue of Wake Forest Magazine. Space prevented us from featuring them all in the issue, but we don’t want you to miss a single image. Deputy Editor Janet Williamson has prepared a slideshow of all the Reynolda Gardens photographs Dove shot for us last summer, accompanied by music from the music department’s Flute Fest. I hope you will enjoy it.

My single biggest regret about my academic life at Wake Forest is that I failed to spend a semester abroad at Casa Artom or Worrell House. Alumni I meet never hesitate to wax nostalgic about their happy days during their semester abroad and, in some cases, will tell you how they fell in love with their spouse during those months across the pond.

You will find a shortage as acute as cheap Facebook stock shares if you look for recent alumni and current students who made my mistake. Study abroad is de rigueur these days at Wake Forest, and abundant choices include Flow House in Vienna and various programs that can be tailored to our students’ aspirations, from Managua to Madrid.

This semester I heard an entirely fresh take on the study-abroad experience that will have our Wake Forest heroine telling tales for the rest of her days. As far as I know, Clare Rizer, a rising senior from Charlotte, N.C., did not meet her future spouse during her semester in Madrid last fall. She did, however, meet one very nosey, sassy parrot.

"Last night was a blast, eh?"

I’ll let Clare tell you her story. (By the way, she  is a rising senior majoring in history with a minor in Spanish and sociology. She’ll be a Wake Forest Magazine intern next fall.):

“While it is common for Wake Forest students to study abroad in a country with a language barrier and experience firsthand the difficulties of grappling with the unfamiliar, it is uncommon, however, to learn a new language from the mouth, no, beak, of a caged, avian amiga. Cuckoo was my sister abroad, my very loud, obnoxious and narcissistic sister. She was an African Grey Parrot with a red tail and, for some inexplicable reason, she chose to pluck herself of all hairs on her breast. Comical appearance aside, Cuckoo had a voice that filled the apartment (and that of our upstairs neighbors) with daily, intermittent cackles, questions … and even catcalls.

“Cuckoo lived in the parlor of my host mother, Elisa’s, apartment. As her husband was living in the southern region of Spain with his ill mother for the majority of the fall, Eliza found in Cuckoo a joy: her pet, companion and child all wrapped into one. I first encountered Cuckoo as I strolled down the apartment entrance hall for the first time. I heard a mysterious voice say “Hola, Guapa” (“Hello, beautiful”) in Spanish. I immediately assumed it was an overzealous male of the household, but then glanced over to see the thing that, in a few short weeks, would become both my teacher and my nemesis.

“Spain is a country that never sleeps. Or, in my opinion, sleeps at the most inconvenient hours of the day (don’t even get me started on the pitfalls of siesta). I experienced this aggravation firsthand. Cuckoo enjoyed the hours between dusk and dawn and used the quiet time to her personal advantage. When all the lights were out and the house was silent, Cuckoo began to coo. She had a whistle that I can still mock perfectly to this day. She made her own music while I simultaneously attempted to drown out her late-night noises. One night, however, she silenced her whistling and instead began to speak Spanish words. It was that night that I realized this bird and I would form a special bond. I removed my headphones, eagerly absorbing her impressive dialogue.

” From that day forward, I embraced Cukoo as my personal tutor, and we gabbed away many afternoons together.

“Cuckoo: ‘Hola, guapa.’ Como estas? (Hi, pretty. How are you?)

“I : ‘Muy bien chica. Y tu?’ (Very well, and you?)

“She taught me Spanish sarcasm and slang — ‘Noche fue una juerga, eh’ (Last night was a blast, eh?)  – and through her guidance as my renegade tutor, I was the most ‘in the know’ study-abroad student at my school. The incessant ‘Hola, guapa’ chants were also an exciting self-esteem boost each day before and after school, and I do selfishly miss that daily comfort and frequent question: ‘Es tu tarea muy muema?’ (Is your homework very dull? I would respond, ‘Obviamente, chica.’ Obviously, girlfriend!)

“At my ‘last supper’ on my final day in Spain, Elisa let Cuckoo out of her cage for the first time since my arrival and, as dignified as ever, my little friend pranced around the living room, accentuating her human qualities in full. Tipsy on Spanish wine, Elisa, my roommate and I laughed until our stomachs hurt, giggling at our pompous and loquacious companion. This semester, bookended by the antics of a small bird, was truly what I would call, ‘unrivaled by any.’”

There you have it. While Cuckoo will remain a singular pal, Clare experienced a study-abroad semester that is typical from what I hear from Wake Foresters everywhere. It was “una juerga” alright — a blast.

Michael Toth (’79) isn’t mentioned this morning in The Wall Street Journal’s “Reading Beneath the Lines” about the Walters Art Museum’s Oct. 16-Jan. 1 exhibit in Baltimore called “Lost & Found: The Secrets of Archimedes,” but I think he should be, and, at Wake Forest Magazine in the latest issue, he is.

Adventurer and historical detective Michael Toth ('79)

Toth was one of the digital-imaging experts who helped reveal the vestigial ink of the undertext of a prayer book that turned out to be treatises on math by Archimedes. Here’s how the Journal’s William Triplett describes it today: “In 1229, a monk in Jerusalem wanted to make a prayer book, but virgin parchment — the staple of medieval publishing — was hard to come by. So the monk did what most people did at the time — took existing handwritten books, removed the binding, and used a knife to scrape the ink as much as possible from the parchment folios. He then cut the folios in half, rotated them 90 degrees and started writing on them. Eventually he added a new binding, and a palimpsest — derived from the Greek word palimpsestos, meaning ‘scraped again’ — was born.

“The monk had used parchment from several books, the principal one a tome of Archimedes’s treatises on math, first written on papyrus in the third century B.C. and then copied into book form around the 10th century, (Will) Noel (curator of manuscripts and rare books at the Walters) says.”

In Wake Forest Magazine, Mark Schrope (’93) interviews Toth about the long process to recover the writings. “With all the projects I’ve worked on the goal is to always ensure the data become available for the public good,” Toth tells him.

And that’s a crucial point of today’s article about the Walters exhibit and, at Wake Forest, a reminder of how a liberal arts education allows alumni to work across disciplines and occupations. (In Toth’s case he began as biology student, shifted to history, graduated, worked in U.S. intelligence, the Defense Department and NASA before putting his experience in handling satellite imagery to work examining historical treasures as an adventurer-detective possessing a distinguished facility with multispectral imaging.)

“Quite possibly the exhibit will show that history itself may be a kind of palimpsest,” writes Triplett in the Journal. “‘Whether you study philosophy or science or whatever,’ Mr. Noel says, ‘the Archimedes palimpsest breaks down boundaries between disciplines. It contains history, philosophy and mathematics, and then all the latest technologies that were applied — the digital imaging, the metadata management — along with all the scholarship. We’d like people to know that because of all these things, history is still being written.’”

Thanks to Toth, we have a glimpse of history, the very ancient roots of our civilization, unearthed with modern technology and painstaking care.

My friend Marybeth Sutton Wallace (’86) met me for lunch last week, wanting to tell me about a loss for North Carolina and her former community. “He was a Double Deac,” she said, lamenting the death of Fred Turnage (’58, JD ’61, P ’84 and ’87). He died of pancreatic cancer at age 75 on July 31, in his beloved Rocky Mount, where he became the city’s youngest mayor at age 37 and served for 34 years. Aside from his political skills noted for bringing out the best in people, he was known, my friend told me, for his ardent support of Wake Forest University. If you listened closely, you would catch him publicly asking God to bless the Deacons at the microphone before meals, even if the meals were being served at other fine colleges in eastern North Carolina.

The Rocky Mount Telegram announced his death by saying Turnage was “(w)idely regarded by residents and community leaders as a man who displayed benevolent and selfless leadership.” N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper called Turnage’s life of political service “a labor of love.”

And in Georgia, George Chidi, a former staff writer for the Rocky Mount Telegram and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, wrote about how he wept when he heard the news. “Turnage was my very first exposure to Southern politics. I walked into his law offices expecting a reaction akin to something from a 1960s civil rights news reel, a drawling Bull Connor, Boss Hogg in a seersucker suit and a straw hat, on high alert for tricks from the liberal biracial Boston city slicker.

“Those of you who knew Mayor Turnage pretty much know what happened next, which is to say, nothing of the sort happened. He was friendly and funny and quickly put me at ease. He matter-of-factly described Rocky Mount to me, warts and all — its struggle to recover from the flood, its problems with poverty, the continuing racial divide. He was candid, humble and self-effacing. And, clearly in retrospect, he knew what I might be thinking about him and his beloved city because he’d had to do that dance before.”

That first meeting changed Chidi’s perspective:  “I entered his offices braced for conflict. I left a committed observer, and I think it made me a much better reporter — a much better person, actually.” Read Chidi’s remembrance here.

And consider that for one man in Rocky Mount, American political service, tended with selfless leadership, could be practiced and honored as a labor of love despite divisive times.