WDBJ Features W&L’s Goalball Champion

Matt Simpson

If you missed W&L News Director Sarah Tschiggfrie’s news story about Washington and Lee sophomore Matt Simpson and his participation on the U.S. under-18 goalball team, you can catch up by watching WDBJ-TV’s report on Matt from Thursday night. Matt was interviewed last Friday during W&L’s Parents and Family Weekend, which allowed his parents to be part of the interview along with Chris Schall, director of the Fitness Center who has helped Matt train at W&L. Matt’s currently training to make the U.S. adult team for the 2012 Paralympics in London. You can watch the video on WDBJ’s Web site or below:

W&L’s Wheeler on Vermont Radio Today

Washington and Lee English professor Lesley Wheeler, who was featured in Sunday’s Washington Post, had a live radio interview today (Thursday, Nov. 5) on Vermont’s Woman-Stirred Radio, a program produced by WGDR radio in Plainfield, Vermonth.  Lesley, who has published her first book of poetry, Heathen, discussed her poetry and read from her work. You can listen to the interview below:

Another Chance to Vote for CKWL

Last May we blogged about the Campus Kitchen project at Washington and Lee in the online True Hero competition. Enough folks responded to the request to vote for CKWL that the project won $1,000. The competition has begun anew, and you are again invited (i.e., urged) to log on and cast a vote for CKWL. You need to go here to vote, and you’ll get to see a video from Campus Kitchen Coordinator Jenny Sproul of the Class of 2008. You will also read that the project has served 41,963 meals, recruited 8,193 volunteer hours, and recovered 35,791 pounds of food in its first three years. Vote early and often.

Post-Halloween Horror

Doug Clegg

Ok, so we’re a little late on recommending a book of Halloween stories by alumnus Douglas Clegg. But better late than never. Halloween Candy: 3 Tales of Horror is actually available for free online here. But one you visit Doug’s Web site, you’ll find a fascinating array of material about his book, include YouTube book trailers and an on-line game that accompanies his latest book of the supernatural, Isis, which has a complete Web site of its own. Dean Koontz, not a bad storyteller in his own right, had this to say about Isis: “Clegg’s stories can chill the spine so effectively that the reader should keep paramedics on standby.” Doug is a 1980 graduate who majored in English. His fiction has won the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and the Shocker Award.

W&L in Sunday’s Washington Post

In case you missed it, Washington and Lee was well represented in Sunday’s Washington Post. W&L law professor Robin Fretwell Wilson authored an opinion piece on page C-7 that examined the bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in the District of Columbia. She’s co-editor of  the book “Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts.” You can read that piece here. Then the Post Magazine featured W&L English professor Lesley Wheeler and her poetry research in a piece titled “Journeys of Discovery” in the magazine’s Education Review edition. The story on Lesley was part of a cover story (Lesley’s pictured on the magazine cover) on five faculty from the Post’s circulation area doing interesting and unusual research. You can read the piece on Lesley here. But there’s another W&L connection with the Post magazine story since one of the other professors cited was John Conkling, an adjunct chemistry professor at Washington College in Chestertown, Md., and the father of two W&L alumni: Melinda Hart of the Class of 1991 and John of the Class of 1993. And one more item from the Sunday Post: Kathleen Parker’s column is about the book by W&L alumnus Alex Jones (Class of 1968) on the future of newspapers. Alex was just here to give a talk on his new book, and you can watch it on our YouTube channel.

W&L’s World’s Fastest Nudist

Kyle Overstreet ‘02 was unmasked in a New York Times blog on Thursday as the actor who played the world’s fastest nudist in a marketing campaign for Zappos.com. Kyle, a psychology major at W&L and a fullback on the Generals football team, landed the part of the nude runner who streaked around New York “clad only in running shoes, tube socks and a strategically positioned frontward fanny pack,” as the Times described him. The campaign, created by the independent agency Agent 16, featured YouTube videos that got 60,000 hits and wound up on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 as well as blogs like Gothamist, The Huffington Post and  Gawker. Here’s Kyle’s account of unusual gig:

A van would drop me off in my shorts, with my shirt off,” Mr. Overstreet said. “I really didn’t know what I had gotten myself into until those shorts first came off and I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is insane.’ But I would drop trou, run, and try not to run into any policemen or children.”

He was not quite nude.

“I had this thing called a ‘Houdini,’” said Mr. Overstreet, who also works as a bellman at the Bowery Hotel. “And I was wearing sheer panty hose, too, so with the nudity laws I could sort of defend myself to a cop.”

When he isn’t acting or streaking, Kyle works as a bellman for the Beverly Hotel, according to the Times post. He’s also got a part coming up in November in the soap opera, One Life to Live. He’s going to be a cop — clothed.