One sad note during the weekend was the passing of Paul Newman; he died on September 26th, the day before our ceremony.  Although Oz Farm is off the grid and there’s no cell phone reception, the news spread slowly across the farm on Saturday.

Paul Newman was a great, admirable man in all sorts of ways, from his commitment to social justice to his lifelong and devoted marriage.  But he’s on White Whale’s radar because he was an alumni, frequent donor, and great friend to Kenyon College, whose site we redesigned earlier this year.  I was fortunate enough to be asked to design a homepage graphic to serve as a tribute, and it’s now live on the Kenyon homepage, along with a moving tribute page and a photo-by-photo description of the homepage graphic.   To create it, I paged through countless photos, which really gave me a sense of how long and how deeply Paul Newman has been a part of the American consciousness.  (The folks at Kenyon did the important work of securing all photo permissions, which I know was no picnic, given that since Paul’s passing copyrighted images have spread across the web without proper attribution.)