mount holyoke alumnae quarterly fall 2005

Fall 2005

18 What’s in Alums’ Attics 22 Learning From Time Abroad 40 The “New” Alumnae Association

ActivistAlumnaeAreChangingOurWorld

Superwomen

10 SuperwomenActivist Alumnae Are Changing Our Worldby Avice A. Meehan ’77Alumnae are leading the way toward a better world. They’re doing pro-bono reconstructive surgery in Peru, giving legal voice to poor people in Manhattan, and preventing importation of nuclear waste in Kazakhstan, to name just a few examples.

16 Sprocket Science by Emily Harrison Weir Katheryn Curi ’96 bikes to win, and win she does. The elite athlete sped to a national championship this summer, thus earning a berth in the world championship competition.

18 The Objects of My Affectionby Faye WolfeWe asked you what “artifacts” you saved from your MHC days, why, and what they mean to you now. You may be surprised by the things that have stood the test of time.

22 A Whole New World Tales From Studying Abroadby Susan R. Bushey ’96Whether riding in a taxi in Cairo or on a yak in Tibet, learning a for-eign language or rediscovering one’s own tongue anew, battling bedbugs, or coping with unfriendly locals, studying abroad brings myriad lessons in and out of the classroom.

features

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On the Cover

Our “supermodel” prefers to remain anonymous, but other alumnae who are changing our world agreed to be photo-graphed sans mask.

Photo by Paul Schnaittacher

Volume 89 Number 3 | Fall 2005

MANAGING DIRECTOR OF PRINT AND ONLINE MAGAZINES

Emily Harrison Weir

WRITERMieke H. Bomann

CLASS NOTES EDITORDeborah Sharp

DESIGNERBidwell ID

Quarterly Committee: Avice A. Meehan ’77, chair; Kara C. Baskin ’00, Susan R. Bushey ’96, Diana Bosse Mathis ’70, Marissa Saltzman ’07, Julie L. Sell ’83; Susan Beers Betzer ’65, ex officio with vote; W. Rochelle Calhoun ’83, ex officio without vote

Quarterly Deadlines: Material is due November 15 for the winter issue, February 1 for the spring issue, May 15 for the summer issue, and August 15 for the fall issue.

Ideas expressed in the Quarterly are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of either the Alumnae Association or the College.

Published in the spring, summer, fall, and winter and copyrighted 2005 by the Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College, Inc. Periodicals postage paid at South Hadley, MA 01075 and additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA by Lane Press, Burlington, Vermont.

The Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College is an independent organization that serves a worldwide network of diverse individuals, cultivates and celebrates vibrant connections among all alumnae, fosters lifelong learning in the liberal arts tradition, and facilitates opportunities for alumnae to advance the goals and values of the College.

Comments concerning the Quarterly should be sent to Alumnae Quarterly, Alumnae Association, 50 College St., South Hadley, MA 01075-1486; tel. 413-538-2301; fax 413-538-2254; e-mail: [email protected]. Send address changes to Alumnae Information Services (same address; 413-538-2303; [email protected]). Call 413-538-2300 for help with general questions regarding the Alumnae Association, or visit www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu. Reach other College departments by calling 413-538-2000.

POSTMASTER: (ISSN 0027-2493) (USPS 365-280) Please send form 3579 to Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly, 50 College St., South Hadley, MA 01075-1486.

Viewpoints 2Your comments on conservatism and liberalism on campus, women in science, and other topics

Campus Currents 4Overflowing archives, the new first-years, late-nightstudying, “Law and Dis/Order,” and more campus news

Alumnae Matters 26A “relaunched” Alumnae Association offers improved and expanded services for alums; Glee Club alumnae make beautiful music; and alumnae clubs’ news

Off the Shelf 34Books by alumnae and professors on explaining the Holocaust to kids, images of the Congo, figure skating, lawyers in Russia, dog biscuits, and other topics

Class Notes 39News of your classmates, and miniprofiles

Bulletin Board 77Announcements, travel opportunities, class and clubproducts, and classified ads

Last Look 80by Penny GillPenny Gill, Mary Lyon Professor of Humanities and professor of politics, reflects on teaching in a truly global classroom, where the students’ international perspectives enrich discussions and lead everyone to engage issues at a more complex level than in decades past.

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Take a New Look at the Alumnae AssociationWhether you want to boost your career, keep your brain revved, pay less for goods and services, or keep your MHC friendships strong, the Alumnae Association has new and improved services that can enhance your life today.

Based on alumnae wishes, we’ve expanded our offerings, revamped our Web site, and given our printed materials a fresh new look. (That’s our new logo in the illustration below.)

The flier bound into the cen-ter of this magazine provides a quick look at all we offer. Let us know what you think.

Our Focus Is on YouTo underscore the Association’s renewed focus on alumnae, this Quarterly features even more than the usual number of alumnae stories and photos. As always, we hope the magazine helps keep you connected with your MHC sisters.

Physicians for Human Rights, which Susannah Sirkin '76 serves as deputy direc-tor, investigated "destruction of live-lihoods" in the refu-gee camp along the Chad/Sudan border.

2 www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly | Fall 2005 3

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viewpoints

Conservatism: Read, Think, Discuss I’m not at all surprised to learn of conservative students’ con-cerns. While I consider myself a liberal (small “l”), I can’t say I was particularly aware of political or economic biases in my courses at College. Perhaps those of us in the immediate post–World War II classes had other concerns, such as the Cold War. Evidently things have changed!

We all know the country has become more polarized since the 2000 elections, and our communities’ and states’ feelings seem to be reflected in those who represent us in Con-gress. What is so unfortunate is that liberals and conservatives seem to have drawn lines in the sand, and the word “compro-mise” has become a pejorative.

As a retired teacher, I know that it is important to teach students to think for themselves and to arrive at conclusions based on reason and adequate information. A teacher is a human being with strong opinions—so is a professor—but it is up to the teacher skillfully to encour-age a variety of viewpoints in meaningful discussion and research. I never found it easy to do, but it can be done.

Sylvia Smith Campbell ’52Denville, NJ

As an instructor of sociology at two different colleges in New York City, I am just the kind of faculty member that Sarah Peyron ’06, Jo Jensen ’07, and Esa Aigamaua ’06 complain about: I challenge my students to think. This is just what my teachers at Mount Holyoke did—present intellectual and moral chal-lenges to all students, left, right, or center. If the young women quoted in this exceed-ingly one-sided article (after all, what do liberal students think about the campus polit-ical climate?) have political views worth defending, they will argue back. It is only a hallmark of cowardice to be unable to deal with the chal-lenge of persuading peers and professors that one is right. I thought we Mount Holyoke women were stronger than that—MHC doesn’t train women to be wilting flowers, women who suffer a bout of the vapors whenever asked to engage with topics of social and political importance.

Today, we in the United States live in a time of almost unprecedented con-servative domination of the political,cultural, and eco-nomic sphere. The Republican Party dominates two branches of government and is work-ing hard on the third. Faculty

members at some public uni-versities are facing lawsuits because they dared express a liberal thought. And conser-vative Christian colleges make faculty members sign loyalty oaths and religious pledges to get a job. In this environ-ment, the young women who complain that they are in the minority at Mount Holyoke should relish the chance to spend four short years prac-ticing their arguments against a large group of liberal peers. They won’t have the chance again anytime soon.Mikaila Mariel Lemonik Arthur ’01

New York, New York

I had to chuckle when read-ing the summer Quarterly issue about conservatives on a liberal campus. I, too, arrived on campus as a conservative raised in a very Republican family. I recall participating in the Amherst fall homecoming parade in 1965 and handing out election pamphlets with my Young Republican friends from MHC. I do not recall any strong liberal leanings of the faculty at that time. In fact the campus seemed like an ivory tower, remote from the rest of the world. But what hap-pened? I started taking cours-es in history, sociology, poli-tics, and even New Testament studies, and my eyes opened

to the reality of other people’s experiences in the wider world. I grew discontent with the sheltered life on campus, started to participate in off-campus antiwar rallies, and transferred to another college where I felt I could be more involved in the “real” world. I became a liberal without benefit of faculty persuasion. In retrospect, I might have stayed and contributed to the embryonic campus discus-sion, but I was too impatient. So, my advice to the current young conservatives and liberals on campus is to read, think, discuss, argue, and develop open minds. Mount Holyoke sounds like an excit-ing and engaging place to be these days and very much a part of the “real” world!

Joanna Smith Weinstock ’69Jericho, Vermont

A Special Horse, Of Course, Of CourseI was so saddened to read about the passing of Trilogy, a school horse at the College from 1985 to 2001. Just two days before, I was looking fondly at the ribbons I won with Trilogy when I was a student. I was terrified of jumping, and he guided me through the courses with the attitude, “Don’t worry, I know what to do!” He gave

me the confidence to jump and to go on to ride much more difficult horses. When I think of the lessons I learned from Mount Holyoke, I count Trilogy as a valuable member of the faculty.

Elizabeth Marks ’94Westbrook, Connecticut

Re: “Rx for Success”Was Mary Lyon, a chemist?No! Neither science nor educational leadership were career paths available to wom-en in the early years of the nineteenth century. Yet with amazing energy and unflag-ging concern for women, she founded a distinguished insti-tution for their education, not “to unite teaching and research and to train women to enter the ranks of Ameri-can scientists,” as stated in the MHC Web site, but to enable women to become educated teachers. “Rx for Success” to the contrary, no women were admitted to graduate schools

before 1880, much less “the 1840s,” and even then they were regularly denied access to advanced degrees. None-theless, our own records tell us that we have had a long history as a prominent source of women who became doc-toral scientists. Today, the measurement of baccalaureate origins of doctorates is a task of considerable sophistication and complexity, yet scholarly research repeatedly docu-ments Mount Holyoke’s out-standing record of graduating women who earn advanced degrees in the sciences. How-ever, our relative standing with respect to doctorate productivity, as attributed to the National Science Founda-tion in this article, cannot be confirmed by current data specialists at the NSF and should not be promulgated as fact. Our true excellence need not be exaggerated; Mount Holyoke’s contributions are already remarkable.

Sources: Haywood, C. 1959. “Scientific Heritage.” Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly (Fall):122-25; MacLean, Sidney R. 1971. “Mary Lyon.” Pp. 443-47 in Notable American Women II. Cambridge, MA: Belknap/Harvard University; Green, E. A. 1979. Mary Lyon and Mount Holyoke: Opening the Gates. Hanover, NH: Univer-sity Press of New England; Tidball, M. Elizabeth, et al. 1999. Taking Women Seri-ously: Lessons and Legacies for Educating the Majority. Phoenix: American Council on Education and Oryx.

Elizabeth (Lee) Peters Tidball ’51, ’76

Adamstown, Maryland

International Interns The Quarterly recently high-lighted the Center for Global Initiatives (CGI) and invited alumnae living or working in international settings to get involved in the CGI Intern-

ship Program. Thanks in large part to alumnae support, our first sixteen CGI interns worked in eight different countries this past summer, several of them going abroad for the first time.

The CGI wishes to thank Akiko Kimura Kusunoki MA’68, Kavita Nandini Ramdas ’85, Ahyoung Kwak Chyun ’83, Linda Abetz-Webb ’88, Joy Shiferaw ’94, Carolyn Johnson Reese ’60, and Bar-bara Jones Guidera ’57 for providing internships. Special thanks also to Diana Latow Blank FP’00, Mary Clare Lead-er ’80, Anne Read Chalfant ’71, and Ernestina Carman ’01 for generously offering housing to the students.

Alumnae are welcome to contact me at adeeg@ mtholyoke.edu with ideas for international internships in the summer of 2006.

Anita Deeg-CarlinCGI coordinator of educational

opportunities abroad

We Want to Hear From You!

We love getting mail. Send your thoughts, with your full name, address, and class year to Mieke Bomann, Alumnae Quarterly, 50 College St., South Hadley, MA 01075-1486 or [email protected]. We reserve the right to edit let-ters, especially for length (300 words is ideal).

Be Part of a Quarterly Article

The Quarterly staff is gathering information for a feature article on “Redefining Retirement,” and invites your input. If you have something to say about living a vibrant, active, interesting life after retirement, please contact Emily Weir ([email protected], or c/o Alumnae Association, 50 College St., S. Hadley, MA 01075-1486).

“What is so unfortunate is that liberals and conservatives seem to have draw lines in the sand, and the word “compromise” has become a pejorative.” Sylvia Smith Campbell ’52


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in the department her last two years of college, needed a job related to her politics major. King, who says Donkova is “one of the most effective student assistants we’ve had,” needed a pair of experienced hands to begin sorting the Grasso papers. It was a perfect match. An anonymous donor, Clara R. Ludwig ’37, Mary E. Tuttle ’37, and Gwendolyn Glass ’46 pooled their resources to fund Donkova through the summer.

The Grasso papers document the years she spent as U.S. representative from Connecticut between 1970 and 1974. (Grasso went on to become the first woman elected governor in her own right.) MHC archives received the papers in 1983 at the request of her husband, Thomas Grasso. Particularly notable are her correspondence with J. Edgar Hoover and Cesar Chavez and drafts of bills facilitating the develop-ment of community colleges across the country, the adoption of Vietnamese orphans following the Vietnam War, and opposing abortion.

“The early 1970s was an especially politically active time,” says Donkova, who is reboxing the papers in acid-free containers and photocopying brittle newspaper clippings. She also will put together a detailed description acces-sible to researchers. The collection will be enormously useful to MHC students and scholars of history, politics, international relations, and women’s studies, King says.

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Bursting at the Seams, Archives Tackles Ella Grasso Papers

Imagine a row of storage boxes one-quarter mile long. Now fill them with historic records, letters, diaries, photo-graphs, artifacts, one-of-a-kind memorabilia, and priceless documentation of one institution’s march through history. Then imagine not being able to go through the boxes for lack of time and resources. You are now living the life of Jennifer Gunter King—and most college archivists, for that matter.

Like many of its peer repositories, Mount Holyoke’s Archives and Special Collections is bursting at the seams with unsorted papers and photographs relating to the College’s rich history. One particularly fruitful source, the legislative papers of former Connecticut governor and congresswoman Ella Tambussi Grasso ’40, alone fills seventy records boxes. According to King, who last year was hired to oversee the entire treasure trove, the backlog of unprocessed collections is at least 10 percent of a collection that totals over 9,000

linear feet—with one linear foot the equivalent of one stan-dard document box—and is growing annually.

“The paper backlog is safe in that it is on paper and will one day be accessible to researchers,” King says. “More threatening is the very real loss of e-mailed correspondence, digital photographs and electronic texts, and databases, which are not always being saved and will likely never make it into an archive.” She notes that because of the fleeting nature of technology, data is increasingly difficult to access as operating systems and file formats change.

The College’s two professional archivists have their hands full preserving, organizing, and making archival material accessible, as well as meeting the research and administrative demands of a collection. About 1,000 researchers are accommodated and anoth-er 1,000 reference requests answered every year. Thankfully, much-needed help arrived this past summer in the form of Ralitsa Donkova ’05. The Bulgarian native, who was a student worker

Ralitsa Donkova ’05, (left) and College Archivist Jennifer Gunter King discuss the voluminous papers of Ella Tambussi Grasso ’40.

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Archives’ Alternatives to Mary Looking for that special name for your newborn—or the animal in your life? The clever folks at MHC’s Archives and Special Collections have compiled a list of names given to Mount Holyoke students born between 1820 and 1850. It includes Adeliza, Happy, Cleantha, Keturah, Lodema, Experience, Persis, Silence, Electa, Luette, Tryphena, and Zoa. If nothing appeals from our sampling, dozens more can be found online at http://www.mtholyoke.edu/lits/library/arch/names/

Quick TakesMount Holyoke Responds to KatrinaAll dozen MHC students who hail from areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina are safe and attending classes this fall, Dean of the College Lee Bowie confirmed in early September. In addition, the College offered visiting-student status to academ-ically qualified undergraduates displaced by the storm. At least three Tulane stu-dents have already arrived. The Alumnae Association also began checking on the 143 alumnae who live in the states hard-est hit by the hurricane.

The MHC community will launch a fundraising effort this fall, and is providing support services to students with family and friends in the affected areas. Discussions about other possible relief efforts, such as a “Service and Leadership Odyssey trip to help with reconstruction,” were already under way

in September, according to Bowie. For updates, check alumnae.mtholyoke.edu or mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/news/.

Religious Life ChangesSeveral changes are in the works in the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life. Rabbi Lisa Freitag-Keshet has been named

interim dean of religious and spiritu-al life. The college’s Jewish chaplain, Freitag-Keshet replaces Rev. Andrea Ayvazian, who left MHC at the end of last school year after almost ten years of service. Freitag-Keshet is a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Rev. Sherry S.

One of the best things about col-lege is all the great reading you get to do. (OK, and sometimes don’t do.) Following are partial reading lists from two fall classes that caught our eye for their time-liness. The editions listed are read-ily available online, or check your local bookstore.

Written on the Body: Body Images and Practices in Religious Traditions, Religion 352, taught by Susanne MrozikThe Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, By Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Vintage, 1998.

Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West, By Margaret R. Miles, Vintage, 1991.

Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate,By Leila Ahmed, Yale University Press, 1993.

Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India, By Diana L. Eck, Columbia University Press, 1998.

Atmosphere and Weather, Geography 224, taught by Persaram BatraA World of Weather: Fundamentals of Meteorology, By Lee Grenci and Jon Nese, Kendall Hunt, 2001.

Is the Temperature Rising? The Uncertain Science of Global Warming, By S. George Philander, Princeton University Press, 2000.

Rabbi Lisa Freitag-Keshet

Assigned Reading

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“I am very excited and overwhelmed by this level of recognition,” said Packard. “My collaborators, student assistants, and I hope our work will challenge stereotypes about urban low-income youth and raise aware-ness that many are actively involved in their own education, as well as help to identify ways for schools, parents, and community organizations to support them.”

In 2004, Packard received a Faculty Early Career Development grant for $441,000 from the National Science Foundation for a five-year project, “Educational Trajectories of Low-Income Urban Youth in Science and Technology,” which focuses on working-class youth in Holyoke and Springfield. Through her work, Packard will continue to design mentoring programs that bring together Mount Holyoke College stu-dents and youth in the community.

Weissman Center Examines Law and Dis/OrderHow law, order, and disorder shape our understanding of contemporary events and political efforts at home and abroad is the focus of the fall series at the Weissman Center for Leadership and the Liberal Arts.

“The series is inspired by a num-ber of sobering social and political realities as well as the emerging and vital opportunities for reform and social change,” says Lois Brown, director of the center. Brown, an associate professor of English, African American studies, and American studies, is looking forward to beginning her five-year term at the center with this promising series. “It is my hope that Law and Dis/Order will enable our college community to consider together international issues such as the war on terror and uni-versal subjects such as the plight of incarcerated women, whether they


Tucker MAT ’92 has been named the new Protestant chaplain for the 2005–2006 academic year. A gradu-ate of Andover Newton Theological School, she is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. For the past two years, she served as the minister of the Mary Lyon Church in Buckland, Massachusetts.

Building Hours Expanded to Accommodate Night OwlsRemember those late nights you spent cramming for an exam in the library? Or babysitting a fragile lab experiment? Or planning the next social revolution? Students are famous for burning the midnight oil, and busier academic and extracur-ricular schedules are keeping them up even later these days. To accom-modate the trend, the College this fall started keeping academic and library buildings open until 2 a.m., an extra two hours. Access to residence halls will be extended to 3 a.m., an addi-tional three hours.

Rene Davis, director of residential life, says the changes were made at the request of students who are not only studying later, but also studying in groups and involved in lots of extracur-ricular activities. A recent survey by the Student Conference Committee found that an average student belongs to two or three student organizations. “Because they’re so involved, they have busier

lives,” said Davis. “They stay up later, they study later, and are just as active socially. [So] it all happens a little later.”

For Paul Ominsky, director of pub-lic safety, student security in the wee hours remains a top priority. One cards, the identification cards community members already use to access certain buildings after hours, will be required for all buildings after midnight. “The One card system gives us tremendous flexibility,” he notes. “Students wanted twenty-four-hour access, but what we are really trying to do is restore bal-ance. We’re trying to provide access and safety and security.”

Black Faculty Near the TopMount Holyoke employs the second-highest number of black faculty members among twenty-two top U.S. liberal arts colleges, a recent survey noted. It also ranks second for ten-ured black faculty.

In 2005, fourteen, or 7.7 percent, of MHC’s 182 full-time faculty mem-bers were black, according to the sur-vey compiled by the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. Eleven, or 7.7 percent, of the College’s 143 tenured faculty members were black.

Haverford College had the most black faculty members. In third place was Vassar, followed by Swarthmore College, Colgate University, Carleton College, Bates College, Bryn Mawr College, Pomona College, and Oberlin College.

Professor Receives Presidential AwardBecky Wai-Ling Packard, associate professor of psychology and educa-tion, this summer received the presti-gious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for her work examining the impact of com-munity organizations, mentoring, and home and school environments on low-income urban youth moving from high school to college or work.

Packard, who accepted the award at a White House ceremony, was one of twenty recipients and the only winner from a liberal-arts college and the field of educational research. The award is the highest honor given by the US govern-ment to young scientists.

It was a startling sight. In 1997, Lynn Morgan came across eighty-seven jars of human fetuses and embryos stored in the basement of Clapp Laboratory. Having long outgrown their usefulness in the classroom, the specimens were mostly forgotten. Morgan, a professor of anthropology with a long-standing interest in how different cultures address questions about the beginning of life, sensed that here in the recesses of the biology building was a new direction for her work: the social history of human embryo collection.

Before the First World War, medical researchers in the nascent field of human embryology started collecting embryo and fetal specimens in various stages

of development. Centered at the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s department of embryology in Baltimore, which eventually amassed

some 10,000 embryos, the practice also was common at many smaller colleges and universities, including Mount Holyoke. Examining preserved embryos and fetuses to better understand human gestational development was not considered irregular or controversial, Morgan says.

Ruby G. Jackson ’37 agrees. A retired obstetrician and gynecologist who worked in a hospital lab during her MHC days, Jackson remembers carting human specimens saved for her by the doctors back to embryology class. “I recall driving up [to campus] with the jars and bottles beside me in the car with no thought of being questioned—nor was I ever stopped for anything,” she told Morgan. “[If anyone asked,] I’m quite sure I’d have given a direct answer—‘for lab purposes’—and not been doubted.”

“In American society, whenever we see a fetus we assume abortion,” says Morgan. “That is a measure of the success of the right-to-life movement. But

fetal death [from other causes] is also a big part of the American woman’s experience,” she explains. Stillbirths, miscarriages, hysterecto-mies, spontaneous abortions, and autopsies also produced embryos and fetuses that ended up in the hands of the embryo collectors. She hopes in a new book to explain how and why embryo collections developed, and how these scientific collections affected the meanings we attribute to embryos and fetuses today.

By the 1960s, advancing imaging techniques had begun to make the collection of fetuses unnecessary. The study of human development became the purview of medical schools. When abortion was legalized in 1973, embryo collec-tions were further marginalized, as the human fetus became the center of a stormy political debate. Many collections were destroyed or

consolidated. That Mount Holyoke’s collection still exists is due in large measure to benign neglect, says Frank DeToma, chairman of the Department of Biological Sciences, and plans are in the works to find a new home for it.

“We are not equipped to deal with the cultural or political aspects of the col-lection,” says DeToma. A smaller collection of six fetuses on display in a Clapp hallway cabinet will likely be all that will remain of the department’s collection. Morgan would like to see the larger collection refurbished and permanently housed on campus. The role of fetuses in the history of science, as well as the meanings we attach to fetuses in the ongoing debate about personhood, makes them worthy of continued study, she says. —M.H.B.

Stages of Development

Brainstorms

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Starting this fall, campus buildings remain open later, and a One card is required for entry. Jaclyn Ruszala ’07 demonstrates.

Becky Packard

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By the Numbers: The Class of 2009

2,924 applicants (second highest in MHC history)

520 first-year students

36 Frances Perkins Scholars

27 transfer students

25 percent African American, Asian American, Latin American, and Native American (ALANA) students

16 percent international students

56 students with alumnae relatives

52 percent admittance rate

3.6 average high school grade point average

An orientation session got everyone into the rhythm of campus life.

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Mount Holyoke students are no longer exhorted, as they were in Mary Lyon’s day, to embrace a life of service explicitly tied to doing God’s work. Yet that

spirit—what College president Joanne V. Creighton calls “pur-poseful engagement with the world”—continues to galvanize the work of Mount Holyoke women around the world.

What Creighton describes as Mary Lyon’s revolutionary belief in “the transformative power of women to make positive change in the world” takes many forms. For Kristin Stueber ’65 it means leaving a busy surgical practice in Springfi eld, Mass., and traveling to Puno, Peru, where she and other vol-unteers from Interplast performed more than sixty reconstruc-tive surgeries in a small Peruvian hospital. For Amy R. Lesser ’94, it’s a realization that expanding access to technology for low-income people may be more meaningful than becoming a physicist. Lesser is now program director for the Community Technology Centers’ Network based in Washington, D.C.

Claire E. Dodds ’90 comes close to fulfi lling MHC’s early missionary vision, albeit with a twenty-fi rst-century perspec-tive and a blog (http://nencebajournal.blogspot.com). A trained hospice nurse, she is volunteering at a hospice in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province and will help its small staff evaluate their effectiveness. “I believe that where suffering is, God is also present, and I want to be there,” Dodds e-mailed.

“Hospice patients in the United States have virtually unlimited resources … I wanted to stretch myself clinically, emotionally, and spiritually by nursing in a resource-poor area, which is most of the world.”

Like Dodds, ThaoMee Xiong ’98 stepped outside her daily life by leaving law school in December 2003 to work with Hmong refugees in Thailand who, like her own family, sought to resettle in the U.S. She went without a job, but with street smarts she acquired while documenting the lives of Hmong woman on a traveling scholarship from MHC. Back at the Uni-versity of Pennsylvania, Xiong just completed an internship in the public defender’s offi ce.

Hard statistics about the world-changing ambitions of Mount Holyoke alums are diffi cult to come by, but consider these facts: Teach for America ranked as the second-largest employer for the class of 2004 six months after graduation. And in 2005, twenty alums joined the Peace Corps, ranking the College among the nation’s small schools that send the

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By Avice A. Meehan ’77

Activist Alumnae Are Changing Our World


forests. Jukofsky and Christopher Wille, a wildlife biologist who’s now her husband, began volunteering for the Rainforest Al-liance when it was

little more than an idea. Two years later, they quit great jobs in New York and moved to Costa Rica to learn more about rain forests.

Today, Costa Rica is home, and the Rainforest Alliance, thanks in no small measure to their work, is a global organi-zation. The alliance works with farmers and the big companies that buy their products to develop standards for sus-tainable and socially responsible agricul-ture: timber, coffee, bananas, and other crops. Jukofsky runs a global commu-nications program from San Jose and an information network that supports con-servation groups and the efforts of rural communities throughout Latin America. She’s also written a major reference work on rain forests around the world.

“We want to change the way busi-nesses operate. We want them to ask, How can I be more responsible, socially and environmentally? If we had ever known how diffi cult it was going to be, we would have chickened out,” says Jukofsky.

Virginia Bulkley Whitehill ’50Dallas Community Activist“I was never much of a leadershipperson at Mount Holyoke. I decided ahead of time that I wanted to be a B student because I wanted to go out on dates,” says Ginny Whitehill. But she most certainly didn’t plan on an assign-ment from the Dallas Junior League that changed her life and turned her into a leader. The assignment was Planned Par-enthood. It was the 1960s. The feminist movement was stirring, and the stage was set for a Texas case that continues to shape national politics, Roe v. Wade.

“There’s nothing more important to a woman than controlling her own

fertility. The vote and birth control are the cornerstones for the emancipation of women,” says Whitehill, whose mother campaigned for women’s suffrage and was a charter member of the League of Women Voters. Today, the phrase “Dal-las activist” comes attached to White-hill’s name.

A career volunteer, Whitehill be-came a force for reproductive health, abortion rights, and equality for women. She’s proudest of founding the Fam-ily Place, the fi rst shelter for battered women in Dallas. “Even within the Ju-nior League there were people opposed to the idea, but I said it wasn’t about women’s rights. It was about fi ghting crime, and gosh, maybe it would be good to be safe from crime in your own home,” recalls Whitehill.

most volunteers. Count Meghan (“M.E.”) Housewright ’01 among that number. Housewright, a geology major with an interest in environmental engineering, works in Bamako, Mali. She hopes to ex-pedite construction of a transfer station for wastewater, and jokes, “I’m also a cheerleader on a trash collection project and [am] enthusiastically championing some latrines.”

“Virtually every student explicitly hopes to be able to better some aspect of the world—to help the poor or the sick, the weak or the abused,” said profes-sor Penny Gill when she delivered the Lyon Lecture to Boston area alumnae earlier this year. “I hear it from premed students, students intending to become lawyers, social workers, teachers, biolo-gists, and sociologists. They do graduate work in confl ict management, inter-national education, and public health. They become judges, advocates for women and children in the Philippines, and public defenders.”

And, Gill might have added, they become engineers, nurses, teachers, vol-unteers, and leaders of world-changing organizations.

Kavita N.Ramdas ’85President and CEO, Global Fund for Womenkavita ramdas believes all womenhave identical needs: economic inde-pendence, freedom from violence, free and unfettered access to education. “It is the same, no matter where you go, even in very wealthy societies,” says Ramdas. “The Global Fund has a simple but clear model to translate un-focused aspiration into tangible action for change.”

The California-based Global Fund has given voice to Ramdas’s own aspira-tions. Born in India, she had dropped out of college to work as a volunteer lit-eracy teacher before coming to Mount Holyoke. “I always knew that the world could be a fairer place for women. The principles I was clear about. I wasn’t so clear about how to do it,” she says, describing her surprise at being asked in 1996 to become the Global Fund’s president. “It had always been on my radar screen … but I was thirty-three and had never run anything in my life.”

The Global Fund adopts an unusual approach to philanthropy, and not only because it focuses on expanding wom-en’s rights and opportunities. Grants can be miniscule by foundation standards—many are under $5,000—and that gives even the smallest grassroots organiza-tions access to capital. The approach car-ries risks, but can also generate extraor-dinary results. It empowers women like Kaisha Atakhanova, whose organization led a campaign in Kazakhstan that suc-cessfully blocked importation of nuclear waste. It also gives a voice to a teacher like Sakena Yacobi, whose organization educated girls in Afghanistan during Taliban rule through an underground network of eighty schools and mobile libraries.

Ramdas, now a Mount Holyoke trust-ee, recently led the Global Fund through a $20 million fundraising campaign that will create its fi rst endowment. “Un-til this world is a more just place for women and girls, it’s not a just place for anyone,” says Ramdas. “Women’s rights have become what democracy was in the century before—a global good—so you have to mouth the words. But it turns out that people want to stop there because such a reality is too radical. The Global Fund is helping to make that vi-sion a reality.”

DianeJukofsky ’75Director, Communications and Education, Rainforest Alliancefrom her missouri grandmother (MHC ’25), Diane Jukofsky inherited a love for the environment. From Irma L. Rabbino ’53, then the College’s colorful public relations director, she learned that a passion for writing could serve a cause she loved. Those threads came together in 1987, when Jukofsky found her life’s mission: protecting the world’s rain


Kavita Ramdas ‘85

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Diane Jukofsky ’75 has been working for the Rainforest Alliance since it was little more than an idea. Now Costa Rica is home, and the Alliance is a global organization.

“We want to change the way businesses operate. We want them to ask, How can I be more responsible, socially and environmentally?”

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“I’ve come to appreciate my Mount Holyoke education and the obligation to give back to society that came with that education,” says community volunteer Virginia Whitehill ’50.


the call, as they would say in the South,” says Hebert. That call brought her to Liberia—a nation ravaged by a fourteen-year civil war—and responsibility for a $50 million program to reintegrate ex-combatants and “war-affected persons” into a civil society and help prepare the country for free elections.

“We do roads. We do bridges. We do clinics. We work with women. We work with children who have known nothing but war. It’s hard for children to relearn values that were stolen from them at such a young age,” she says. Hebert, who places little faith in the transitional gov-ernment’s effectiveness, draws strength from small changes: the women at her lo-cal church who began a sewing collective, an ex-child soldier prepared to move on with his life, women harvesting rice.

Lynn M.Kelly ’78Executive Director, MFY Legal Serviceslynn kelly may have learned morethan her students when she volunteered to teach English and math to migrant workers while at Mount Holyoke. The experience gave her a “glimmer of the possibility” that she could help others, but it quickly became clear that Kelly wanted to work on a bigger scale and do more than help a single worker add up a paycheck. As a law student at New York University, she helped fi le class-action lawsuits in Yuma, Arizona, to close a local jail and rectify voting rights viola-tions. “We didn’t know what we didn’t know; these cases take years,” she says.

Kelly has lost that naiveté, but her idealism remains fully intact. Since 1998, she has headed MFY Legal Services, a Manhattan-based nonprofi t law fi rm that represents poor people on issues that range from individual housing and wage disputes to major class-action litigation. Recently, for example, MFY represented

disabled adults who were abused while living in group homes and even subjected to unnecessary prostate surgery—the subject of a Pulitzer Prize–winning series in The New York Times.

Kelly thought twice about taking the job. The call came just as she headed to Mount Holyoke for her twentieth re-union. With two young children, retool-ing a traditional antipoverty law fi rm in New York’s competitive environment pre-sented more challenges than teaching at

Fordham University. “I wasn’t sure about stepping up to a leadership role … but my classmates encouraged me. The people who understand that poor people need lawyers are other lawyers,” Kelly says. “Someone has to run these organizations, and it’s time for women to run them.”

Avice A. Meehan ’77 is vice president for communications at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and chair of the Alumnae Quarterly Committee.

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As women’s suffrage marks its eighty-fi fth anniversary, Whitehill frets that young women too willingly accept the world on its own terms, whether it’s a workplace that makes raising children diffi cult or an environment that erodes their rights. “I was very late to fi gure this out,” she says. “You don’t have to like the world and you may not be able to change it, but you may be able to tweak it. Someone did it for you.”

Susannah M. Sirkin ’76Deputy Director, Physicians for Human Rightsthe fi rst paid professional employeeof Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) when it was founded, Susannah Sirkin speaks more easily about its mission than about herself. As the daughter of a career foreign-service offi cer, Sirkin saw extreme poverty during elemen-tary school in India and experienced life under a military dictatorship as a high-school student in Greece. But her

passion for human rights developed through a love of language and inter-national politics. By teaching English to refugees from the former Soviet Union, Cambodia, and Vietnam, she was inspired to volunteer for Amnesty International.

“I view this as a very long battle to create societies where we treat people with dignity and respect. It’s a lifelong effort that I don’t what to abandon,”Sirkin says. “It’s what I want to do with my short time on the planet.”

Sirkin, who is now responsible for many aspects of PHR’s programs, recently organized PHR and its international col-leagues to rigorously document genocide, torture, and other human-rights abuses in Darfur in western Sudan. Unable to obtain a visa to travel there, Sirkin organized training in London for Sudanese health professionals to help them learn how to in-terview and treat victims of rape, torture, and other violence. “We have to think about what information we need to bring back because this area is so remote—it’s one of the most untraveled corners of the

world,” she says. “How do we make [the Darfur situation] compelling to our own government and the public?”

Tracey N.Hebert ’92U.S. Agency for International Development, Monrovia, Liberiatracey hebert’s interest in africaoriginated with Eugenia Herbert’s African history course. Having African studies on campus fueled her fascina-tion with the continent and its peoples. The Texas native became interested in the role of women in Islam in Senegal, and received a fellowship to study in Dakar in 1990. From then on, she relates, “I was just taken by the continent, the language, and the people.”

Hebert, who graduated from the Fletcher School, has worked in French-speaking West Africa on numerous as-signments, gaining experience in manag-ing traditional development projects and working with the military. “Then I got


WEB EXTRA

For information about the organizations and causes these alumnae champion, please visit www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/go/superwomen.

To share your comments on this article, please use the new message board at www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/forum/superwomen (You’ll need to register once to post comments, but this will also give you access to many other password-pro-tected alumnae services.)

“I wasn’t sure about stepping up to a leadership role … but my classmates encouraged me. Someone has to run

these organizations, and it’s time for women to run them.”

Gri

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ican

s fo

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ts

Susannah Sirkin ‘76, deputy director of Physicians for Human Rights (left) net-works with a Ugandan medical student at a conference on AIDS advocacy.

Media pay attention as Tracey N. Hebert ’92 (in red) speaks about a peace resolution between the Lorma and Mandigo peoples of Liberia, following a fourteen-year civil war. She accepted the resolution on behalf of the US government.

Sudanese refugees from Darfur receive blankets at a refugee camp in Chad, where Physicians for Human Rights investigators documented atrocities in January.


the call, as they would say in the South,” says Hebert. That call brought her to Liberia—a nation ravaged by a fourteen-year civil war—and responsibility for a $50 million program to reintegrate ex-combatants and “war-affected persons” into a civil society and help prepare the country for free elections.

“We do roads. We do bridges. We do clinics. We work with women. We work with children who have known nothing but war. It’s hard for children to relearn values that were stolen from them at such a young age,” she says. Hebert, who places little faith in the transitional gov-ernment’s effectiveness, draws strength from small changes: the women at her lo-cal church who began a sewing collective, an ex-child soldier prepared to move on with his life, women harvesting rice.

Lynn M.Kelly ’78Executive Director, MFY Legal Serviceslynn kelly may have learned morethan her students when she volunteered to teach English and math to migrant workers while at Mount Holyoke. The experience gave her a “glimmer of the possibility” that she could help others, but it quickly became clear that Kelly wanted to work on a bigger scale and do more than help a single worker add up a paycheck. As a law student at New York University, she helped fi le class-action lawsuits in Yuma, Arizona, to close a local jail and rectify voting rights viola-tions. “We didn’t know what we didn’t know; these cases take years,” she says.

Kelly has lost that naiveté, but her idealism remains fully intact. Since 1998, she has headed MFY Legal Services, a Manhattan-based nonprofi t law fi rm that represents poor people on issues that range from individual housing and wage disputes to major class-action litigation. Recently, for example, MFY represented

disabled adults who were abused while living in group homes and even subjected to unnecessary prostate surgery—the subject of a Pulitzer Prize–winning series in The New York Times.

Kelly thought twice about taking the job. The call came just as she headed to Mount Holyoke for her twentieth re-union. With two young children, retool-ing a traditional antipoverty law fi rm in New York’s competitive environment pre-sented more challenges than teaching at

Fordham University. “I wasn’t sure about stepping up to a leadership role … but my classmates encouraged me. The people who understand that poor people need lawyers are other lawyers,” Kelly says. “Someone has to run these organizations, and it’s time for women to run them.”

Avice A. Meehan ’77 is vice president for communications at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and chair of the Alumnae Quarterly Committee.

Co

urt

esy

of

Trac

ey H

eber

t

As women’s suffrage marks its eighty-fi fth anniversary, Whitehill frets that young women too willingly accept the world on its own terms, whether it’s a workplace that makes raising children diffi cult or an environment that erodes their rights. “I was very late to fi gure this out,” she says. “You don’t have to like the world and you may not be able to change it, but you may be able to tweak it. Someone did it for you.”

Susannah M. Sirkin ’76Deputy Director, Physicians for Human Rightsthe fi rst paid professional employeeof Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) when it was founded, Susannah Sirkin speaks more easily about its mission than about herself. As the daughter of a career foreign-service offi cer, Sirkin saw extreme poverty during elemen-tary school in India and experienced life under a military dictatorship as a high-school student in Greece. But her

passion for human rights developed through a love of language and inter-national politics. By teaching English to refugees from the former Soviet Union, Cambodia, and Vietnam, she was inspired to volunteer for Amnesty International.

“I view this as a very long battle to create societies where we treat people with dignity and respect. It’s a lifelong effort that I don’t what to abandon,”Sirkin says. “It’s what I want to do with my short time on the planet.”

Sirkin, who is now responsible for many aspects of PHR’s programs, recently organized PHR and its international col-leagues to rigorously document genocide, torture, and other human-rights abuses in Darfur in western Sudan. Unable to obtain a visa to travel there, Sirkin organized training in London for Sudanese health professionals to help them learn how to in-terview and treat victims of rape, torture, and other violence. “We have to think about what information we need to bring back because this area is so remote—it’s one of the most untraveled corners of the

world,” she says. “How do we make [the Darfur situation] compelling to our own government and the public?”

Tracey N.Hebert ’92U.S. Agency for International Development, Monrovia, Liberiatracey hebert’s interest in africaoriginated with Eugenia Herbert’s African history course. Having African studies on campus fueled her fascina-tion with the continent and its peoples. The Texas native became interested in the role of women in Islam in Senegal, and received a fellowship to study in Dakar in 1990. From then on, she relates, “I was just taken by the continent, the language, and the people.”

Hebert, who graduated from the Fletcher School, has worked in French-speaking West Africa on numerous as-signments, gaining experience in manag-ing traditional development projects and working with the military. “Then I got


WEB EXTRA

For information about the organizations and causes these alumnae champion, please visit www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/go/superwomen.

To share your comments on this article, please use the new message board at www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/forum/superwomen (You’ll need to register once to post comments, but this will also give you access to many other password-pro-tected alumnae services.)

“I wasn’t sure about stepping up to a leadership role … but my classmates encouraged me. Someone has to run

these organizations, and it’s time for women to run them.”

Gri

tty.

org

fo

r P

hys

ican

s fo

r H

um

an R

igh

ts

Susannah Sirkin ‘76, deputy director of Physicians for Human Rights (left) net-works with a Ugandan medical student at a conference on AIDS advocacy.

Media pay attention as Tracey N. Hebert ’92 (in red) speaks about a peace resolution between the Lorma and Mandigo peoples of Liberia, following a fourteen-year civil war. She accepted the resolution on behalf of the US government.

Sudanese refugees from Darfur receive blankets at a refugee camp in Chad, where Physicians for Human Rights investigators documented atrocities in January.

http://www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/go/superwomen


Cas

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son

mate. Because we’re friends off the bike, when we’re on the bike we rely on and trust each other,” she says.

Having a team that works well together is crucial in elite racing, Curi points out, because competitors are almost evenly matched in terms of physical ability. “When looking at such a small difference [in ability], team tactics and being a smart bike racer will put you over someone who might be of equal strength,” she explains. “In bike racing, the strongest person doesn’t always win.”

And even the top competitors can’t push their hardest for every race. Curi’s trainer and coach Laura Charameda “peaks her”—builds her to her stron-gest level of ability—for only two or three races a year. Which races those are depends both on Curi’s individual goals and the team’s joint goals.

“I love the team aspect of road racing,” she says. “At MHC I was a rower and loved working with others toward a common goal.” Curi started competing as a mountain bike rac-er—a much more individual kind of competition—but switched to team-centered road racing in 2002. She says there’s nothing like the feeling of “crossing the finish line know-ing that, without my teammates, I couldn’t have won; or that by sacrific-ing myself, a teammate won.”

Curi races hard for seven or eight months a year, then gives her body a break by riding less intensely through the fall and winter. She works as a customer-service represen-tative at the women’s athletic clothing company Title 9 Sports during the off-season. “I like having the balance in my life, not just being a bike racer.

But biking seems destined to be part of her life “as long as I continue to meet my goals and continue to have fun with it. The day I stop having fun is the day I get out.”

The thirty-one-year-old plans to continue professional racing at least through the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing. Making the Olympic team is her ultimate goal; it seems like a long shot now, but a year ago she thought aiming for national cham-pion might be shooting for the moon. “When I look at pictures [of the national championship] and tell the story, I still get goose bumps,” she said in late August. “I know when I’m standing on the start line at the world championships, I’ll be think-ing, “This is what I wanted at the beginning of the year, and I got it!” Clearly, this cyclist is on a roll.

Katheryn Curi ’96 Rides to a National Championship

By Emily Harrison Weir

“I love the team aspect of road racing,” she says. “At MHC I was a rower and loved working with others toward a common goal.”

SPR CKETSC I ENCE

favored to win the national champi-onship, riders would pedal uphill at altitudes (7,200 feet) that could take anyone’s breath away, there were fifty-some other riders bent on nabbing the prestigious title, and she’d been plagued by injuries—including a twice-broken collarbone—for the past year.

But when Curi wants something, she tends to get it. “MHC taught me that if you work hard and you stay focused, what you want comes to you,” she says. “MHC in-stilled in me this ‘Go get ’em, girl’ attitude.”

So when Curi saw her chance to break out of the pack at the start of the first punishing hill, she attacked. Just as everyone’s leg muscles were making the tough transition between riding on the flat and climbing mode, Curi kicked into higher gear. She was only fourteen miles into the seventy-eight-mile course, so pushing hard then was a big, if calcu-lated, risk. If she peaked too soon, she’d be worn out long before the finish.

But Curi’s long hours of training and strong hill-climbing skills paid off, as

did her bet that none of her competitors would want to tire themselves out at that point in the race in order to catch her. “I banked on the idea that everyone would say, ‘I’m not going to chase her; you chase her.’ ‘Well, I’m not going to chase her …’”

Like cycling icon Lance Armstrong, Curi tries to ride the course for an impor-tant race before the competition begins. Because she knew the Park City course from “preriding” it, Curi also knew she was likely to win if she hit the two-kilo-meters-to-go mark at least a minute ahead of her chasers. She did just that and be-gan smiling. “At the one-kilometer-to-go point, I knew I was going to win. And at 200 meters to go, I wanted to get off my bike and run across the line,” she recalls. It was a while before Curi could do any-thing except pump the air with her fists and repeat, “Oh, my God!”

This biggest win in Curi’s four-year-old professional cycling career brought her prestige, exposure, and an automatic berth in September’s world

championships in Madrid [Note: Curi finished sixty-sixth among the 131 elite racers in that competition.]. As national champion, Curi will wear the coveted stars and stripes jersey in every road race for the next year.

Of course being a professional athlete isn’t all finish-line glory. She puts in “lots of long miles” on her bike from November through February. As a major race approaches, her time and distance on the bike decrease, but she works out more intensely. Then—just before a big race—Curi rests, so her body gets the benefit of her previous hard work. “When the key event hap-pens, your muscles are like, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve done all that hard work before; we’re ready to go.’”

TEAM SPIRITCuri races with the nine-woman Web-cor-sponsored team, based in California, and says the team aspect is what most attracts her to bike racing. “We’re all working to get one teammate to the fin-ish line first, and usually it doesn’t mat-ter which person it is in any particular race,” she explains. Dynamics shift a bit in high-profile races such as nationals, but “you’d never race against a team-

The odds were against Katheryn Curi ’96 as she rolled into the elite women’s national road race in Park City, Utah, this June. A competing team was


Marion Spencer Lebourveau ’44During World War II, most civilians couldn’t get color film, but I have thirty-five-millimeter color slides of my college days. The father of my freshman roommate Marge [the late E. Marjorie Fox Buckles ’44] introduced me to the medium in June 1941, predicting that I would never return to black-and-white film. Marge’s father, a high-ranking Army offi-cer, could [get color film] and periodically sent some to us. We were both enthusiastic photographers; I subsequently became the photographic editor for the Mount Holyoke News and the Llamarada. When I brought the slides to my thirti-

eth reunion, it had not occurred to me that Marge and I probably had the only slides of our class. Since then I have shown them to my local college club and at other reunions and provided some for a group studying the campus’s landscaping.

Shots of Mountain Day, winter on Lower Lake, graduation, and class-mates bring back to me my very special days at Mount Holyoke.

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F Renee Scialom Cary ’48, it’s the pen that she used for all her exams; for Margaret J. Wheeler ’67, it’s the recording of a

1966 Glee Club Christmas concert. And for Lee Eriksen Mohapatra FP’90, it is “the little blue plastic glass with the MHC

logo that I use every morning when I brush my teeth.” Little as they may be, these artifacts loom large as signifiers of

a hard-won education, close friendships, and bygone eras. Some were acquired the first day of college, such as the mug many wrote

about; some during junior year abroad, such as the enameled box depicting Mount Holyoke that Irene Spidalieri LoDolce ’84 was given

by Teresa L. Bulman ’73 in London; and others appeared after graduation, like the blue-and-white MHC Wedgwood bowl friends gave

Elizabeth Leslie Bagley ’83 as a wedding present. All these treasures alumnae keep on dining and bedside tables, bookshelves, dressers,

and desks evoke memories of a fine time in a fine place. Here are the stories behind some of the objects you’ve kept from your MHC days.

More stories (and additional photos) are online at www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/go/artifacts.


Ginny Smith Alexander ’56 I have an MHC dance card from 1934 or 1935. (The leather cover says 1935; the inside cover says 1934—typos even then!) One of the people listed in the receiving line was “Miss Woolley.” I bought the card on eBay recently, so I don’t know its history. I told the seller that I had graduated from Mount Holyoke, and he wrote back: “I was hoping it would go to an MHC graduate. I am very familiar with the college as I had a lady friend there, class of 1975.” It’s a fun piece. If you mention a dance card today, people give you a very confused look! [Note to the puzzled: They were used to record partners’ names for each dance at a social event.]

Jill M. Brethauer ’70 One of my artifacts from MHC is a Chinese evergreen plant that I acquired my junior year. I purchased it and a tarnished brass pot at a flea market in South Hadley center one beautiful day in the fall of 1969. I felt quite free that day, stealing time from course work to mingle with the townspeople who had set up tables on the green. And I was quite excited—it didn’t take much—to bring some life to my room in Abbey Hall. When I graduated, I took it with me to Philadelphia. Six years and two apartments later, the plant accompanied me to Pittsburgh, where it has survived another twenty-nine years, three moves, and numerous munchings by our cats. Over the years, it has been divided and pruned and has alternated between looking ragged and spindly and sprouting new leaves and shoots and showing signs of vigor. Through it all, it’s been a good friend!… After looking at my old photos from this time, I’m wondering if I’m the artifact!

THE OBJECTS of MY AFFECTION

PIECES OF MHC’S PAST—

WHAT YOU’VE KEPT, AND WHYEDITED BY FAYE WOLFE

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http://www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/go/artifacts


Marion Spencer Lebourveau ’44During World War II, most civilians couldn’t get color film, but I have thirty-five-millimeter color slides of my college days. The father of my freshman roommate Marge [the late E. Marjorie Fox Buckles ’44] introduced me to the medium in June 1941, predicting that I would never return to black-and-white film. Marge’s father, a high-ranking Army offi-cer, could [get color film] and periodically sent some to us. We were both enthusiastic photographers; I subsequently became the photographic editor for the Mount Holyoke News and the Llamarada. When I brought the slides to my thirti-

eth reunion, it had not occurred to me that Marge and I probably had the only slides of our class. Since then I have shown them to my local college club and at other reunions and provided some for a group studying the campus’s landscaping.

Shots of Mountain Day, winter on Lower Lake, graduation, and class-mates bring back to me my very special days at Mount Holyoke.

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F Renee Scialom Cary ’48, it’s the pen that she used for all her exams; for Margaret J. Wheeler ’67, it’s the recording of a

1966 Glee Club Christmas concert. And for Lee Eriksen Mohapatra FP’90, it is “the little blue plastic glass with the MHC

logo that I use every morning when I brush my teeth.” Little as they may be, these artifacts loom large as signifiers of

a hard-won education, close friendships, and bygone eras. Some were acquired the first day of college, such as the mug many wrote

about; some during junior year abroad, such as the enameled box depicting Mount Holyoke that Irene Spidalieri LoDolce ’84 was given

by Teresa L. Bulman ’73 in London; and others appeared after graduation, like the blue-and-white MHC Wedgwood bowl friends gave

Elizabeth Leslie Bagley ’83 as a wedding present. All these treasures alumnae keep on dining and bedside tables, bookshelves, dressers,

and desks evoke memories of a fine time in a fine place. Here are the stories behind some of the objects you’ve kept from your MHC days.

More stories (and additional photos) are online at www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/go/artifacts.


Ginny Smith Alexander ’56 I have an MHC dance card from 1934 or 1935. (The leather cover says 1935; the inside cover says 1934—typos even then!) One of the people listed in the receiving line was “Miss Woolley.” I bought the card on eBay recently, so I don’t know its history. I told the seller that I had graduated from Mount Holyoke, and he wrote back: “I was hoping it would go to an MHC graduate. I am very familiar with the college as I had a lady friend there, class of 1975.” It’s a fun piece. If you mention a dance card today, people give you a very confused look! [Note to the puzzled: They were used to record partners’ names for each dance at a social event.]

Jill M. Brethauer ’70 One of my artifacts from MHC is a Chinese evergreen plant that I acquired my junior year. I purchased it and a tarnished brass pot at a flea market in South Hadley center one beautiful day in the fall of 1969. I felt quite free that day, stealing time from course work to mingle with the townspeople who had set up tables on the green. And I was quite excited—it didn’t take much—to bring some life to my room in Abbey Hall. When I graduated, I took it with me to Philadelphia. Six years and two apartments later, the plant accompanied me to Pittsburgh, where it has survived another twenty-nine years, three moves, and numerous munchings by our cats. Over the years, it has been divided and pruned and has alternated between looking ragged and spindly and sprouting new leaves and shoots and showing signs of vigor. Through it all, it’s been a good friend!… After looking at my old photos from this time, I’m wondering if I’m the artifact!

THE OBJECTS of MY AFFECTION

PIECES OF MHC’S PAST—

WHAT YOU’VE KEPT, AND WHYEDITED BY FAYE WOLFE

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Dodie Hillger Merritt ’70I may not be the only one from my class who still has her white moratorium armband (a symbol of the idealism and passions that ran so strongly in 1970 when American youths were dying in Southeast Asia), but I am probably the only one with a slightly rusted gradu-ation tassel made of welding rods from the old sculpture studio. Someone had announced that there wouldn’t be enough tassels to go around. I think ultimately there were, but by then I’d already created my own. As a studio art major, my MHC life revolved around the sculpture studio and my sculpture professor, Leonard DeLonga. How appropriate that my graduation tassel reflects this.

Abigail Wolff Mariani ’82I have a metal key ring with the school seal engraved on it. I lost it, along with my room key, in the snow one winter while sledding on campus. A phys-ics professor let me borrow a metal detector, and I found it! The number of keys on the ring has greatly increased, but I’ve carried it every day since then, a constant reminder of a magical place and four wonderful years.

Ellen Manfredonia Nutter ’64My favorite artifact is an MHC beer stein that sits on my stovetop holding kitchen implements. The name on the back is “Pop.” My father, now deceased, was what might be called an old-world gentleman. He loved coming to campus and being sur-rounded by the “lovely young ladies.” His idea of a really good time was to have everyone get dressed up for him to take us out to dinner.

Catherine A. Mein ’92I still have the basketball music warm-up tapes I used my sophomore and junior years. Every now and again, when I need a pick-me-up, I pop those tapes in. They are still great to work out to.

Kristen M. Scheyder ’92I treasure a heart-shaped crystal box given me by the MHC Club of Monmouth/Ocean County in New Jer-sey. I received it at a picnic they gave in the spring of 1988 for high-school students who had been accepted to Mount Holyoke and were deciding whether to attend. That small box on my dresser reminds me of the gra-cious welcome the women of Mount Holyoke gave me that day, as well as of the moment when I first knew I truly wanted to be and actually was part of the MHC community.

My artifact is a plaster cast of an [ancient Greek goddess] from the old College collection, which was auctioned off after the new art building was built. Sue A. Dup-pstadt ’71, who bought it, left it to me when she graduated. At that time, it was decorated with a stick-on mustache, an earring, and an eye patch with “Mother” embroidered on it. The bust spent some time in my parents’ basement, but I reclaimed it in the 1980s, when I went to med school. By then only the mustache remained. When I came to Balti-more for my psychiatry residency, the bust came with me, and it remained in my home until my son started having nightmares about “Big Mustache.” The bust has been in my office ever since; my patients often ask about it.

Elizabeth A. Grzeszczyk FP’87 My most treasured Mount Holy-oke artifact is a Frances Perkins postage stamp. It was given to me, and all new Frances Perkins Schol-ars, by the late Debbie Light, who was the program’s associate direc-tor. She said it wasn’t really much at all, but it meant the world to me. It signified not only that I was now a Frances Perkins Scholar—still a dream come true—but also that I

had a reputation to live up to. Each time I look at the stamp it reminds me of the opportunities, encouragement, education, and confidence I received as a Frances Perkins Scholar. I graduated from Mount Holyoke with the belief that I could achieve anything I set my mind to.

Author Faye Wolfe is based in Northampton. She has kept an angel-wing begonia alive since receiving it her first year in college.

Rachel Happe Gravengaard ’93When I was growing up, my minister father encouraged me to build relationships with older members of the con-gregation. After school on Wednesdays I used to go to the women’s fellowship group. Many had gone to Rad-cliffe, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, etc. back in the 1930s and 1940s. One of them was the late Mary Nash Squier

Gates ’36. She had a grad nursing degree from Yale, was married to a doctor, raised three children, and kept a needlepoint Mount Holyoke pillow on her couch. When I decided to go to Mount Holyoke, Mary gave me her old college notebook and her songbook, with favorites like “The Goodnight Song.” During my college years, on my birthday or Christmas, Mary gave me a Mount Holyoke Wedgwood plate. (Her mother had given them to Mary when she was in college.) After she moved into a senior com-munity, Mary gave me the rest of her set, except for some cups and saucers, which she used to serve me tea when I visited. Through eBay, I have rounded out the set. I’m a horrible singer, so I don’t use the songbook all that much, but I do use the china, which reminds me of Mary and bonds me to the college and its history.

Kristin A. Lagerquist ’04 I may be the only alumna literally to bring a bit of Mount Holyoke Col-lege back home: I have a piece of my closet from 510 Ham Hall, my freshman-year room. I’m not sure why my roommate and I decided to redecorate one night in the middle of the year. After we moved around some furniture, we decided to put up pictures. Using a hammer borrowed from fellow firsties down the hall, we took out our school/money/boyfriend frustrations on our room, pound-ing nail after nail into the walls. We heard cracking and crumbling inside

the wall, but such sounds and the threat of a B&G fine were no deter-rent. I hammered a nail so hard that a huge chunk of concrete in my closet fell to the floor. Neither Elmer’s nor Crazy Glue would reattach it. When I moved out of the room, I put mask-ing tape over the hole, hoping no one would notice. I have yet to receive a damage bill, so I don’t think anyone did. The chunk makes me happy. It reminds me of my old room, the fun I had in there, and the wonderful view it had of Upper Lake and the moun-tains. Though I have been away from MHC for [a year], I am transported back whenever I look at the piece of my old room that now has a place of honor on my bookshelf.

Diane Kiffin Nardin ’80On a shelf in my home office, I keep the black-bound copy of my senior honors thesis on the novels of William Faulkner. The thesis was the product of a great deal of struggle; completing it was a real triumph for me. It was the most significant piece of writing I had done to date. Now that I work as a business writer—ghost-ing pieces for others or drafting by committee—I appreciate knowing that at the tender age of twenty-one, I developed a strong argument by myself and earned the accolades of a group of professors for whom I continue to have tremendous respect. I reread the thesis every so often, and I’m pleased to say it holds up. (Of course, I’d still like to tweak it a bit!) I hope one day to write something else of similar com-plexity that is truly my own; the thesis reminds me that I have a precedent.

Janet Hall Schwind ’60In the bottom drawer of my desk I kept various kinds of paper that are mostly obsolete now—tracing paper, carbon paper, graph paper, and hotel stationery. At the very bottom of the pile is one purloined piece that has printed on the top, “General Examina-tion, Psychology.” Each time I cleaned out the desk, I couldn’t bear to throw it out, so it has stayed there all these years. This piece of paper represents to me, even more than my degree, the effort, emotions, and culmination of my years in South Hadley.

Susan B. Wait ’73

20 21

TONGUE-TIED IN TIBETThe fi rst thing Leah K. Forehand ’04 did when she stepped off the plane in Tibet was stick out her tongue—a gesture she had planned to make since she was a preteen.

As a child, Forehand had a book that told of the Tibetan tradition of sticking out your tongue as a sign of respect. “I thought that was great,” she said. But her mother disagreed, reminding her that she was still in the United States, where there was no such tradition.

At Mount Holyoke, Forehand was an international relations major, with a focus on Tibet. She studied one semester both junior and senior years in Tibet, Nepal, and India, in refugee camps and villages. While there, Forehand studied interracial marriages in Tibetan refugee camps.

Forehand said that without her MHC experience, she might not have felt able to work on her own and complete a journey so far from home. “I felt really prepared to do academic research and discussion. At Mount Holyoke and within the global community,

I could offer my own insight and analysis. Even going into [it], I had my own perspective on the world,” she said.

Though she missed her friends, family, and hot showers, Forehand feels not an ounce of regret about studying on the other side of the world. In fact, she’s going back. “It solidifi ed my career path. It’s my passion, and once I was over there, I realized it was possible to have a career abroad. I’ve found a second home,” she said.

ROMANCING HER OWN LANGUAGEFor Carolina Pons de Vivó ’82, her experience at Mount Holyoke was studying abroad—she was born and raised

in Puerto Rico. She came to MHC knowing she wanted an experience she couldn’t get at home, one where the students weren’t all Latino and one where she would have to learn to be independent. “I wanted to study in a totally different place,” she said, crediting MHC for giving her a new direction in life. Coming to MHC, she initially wanted to study history and politics. But then, intrigued by the lens through which fellow students viewed her native language and culture, Pons de Vivó realized how much she loved her own language and chose to major in Latin American studies and Spanish. “All of a sudden being someone from a different culture ... impacted me deeply and I started taking Spanish seriously,” she said. But her true life calling was sparked when she had to read Don Quixote, a book she hated in high school. Reading it again at Mount Holyoke made her realize the universality of her language and culture. Did Don Quixote make Pons de Vivó a strong, independent woman? No. “Just being away from a Latin culture where everything is very conservative

... really helped me blossom,” she says. “I could do things on my own, and being in a different culture expands your horizons enormously. If I hadn’t gone abroad, I would not be the person I am today.”

CENTER OF ATTENTIONAfter deciding three weeks into her fi rst year at Mount Holyoke that Arabic was not a language for her, Joyce Stavro Vyriotes ’96 didn’t give up her dream of studying in Africa, she simply found a different path—through Kenya.

Since high school, the Massachusetts native had wanted to study anthropology in Egypt and fi gured she should study


Left: All of MHC was a study-abroad experience for Puerto Rican native Carolina Pons de Vivó ’82 (shown here on a 2003 trip to Spain).

RIght: Joyce Stavro Vyriotes ’96 models a tra-ditional Maasai wedding necklace, flanked by mem-bers of a family with whom she stayed in Kenya.

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Tales From Studying Abroad

by Susan R. Bushey ’96

Leah Forehand ’04 rides a yak in Tibet, where she studied interracial marriages in refugee camps.

MOUNT HOLYOKE STUDENTS are not the kind to take their studies or college experience

lightly. So while 40 percent of them choose to study off campus—most of them abroad—at some

point in their four years at MHC, they’re not looking for a carefree semester or year while they’re

away. The College expects students to take an equally rigorous course of study off campus. And

students accept the challenge wholeheartedly. MHC students travel around the world in hopes of

learning more, expanding their horizons, and simply drinking in the beauty of life everywhere. And

most come back with a new outlook on life. Following are tales from some whose lives have been

changed by studying abroad.

“If I hadn’t gone abroad, I would not be the person I am today.’’

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REBECCA B. GARFIELD ’05: TRANSITION IN CHILE When I first moved in with Paulina de la Paz Novoa and her family in Viña del Mar, Chile, I wasn’t allowed to help clear the table. Or wash the dishes. Or even enter the tiny kitchen where the poodle Lulú peed on the Las Últimas Noticias newspapers in the corner. Paulina served me breakfast in bed, washed and ironed my laundry, and left my sheets creaseless and my pillows fluffed. For five weeks she treated me like an American paying for an experience abroad in Chile. Then one day, finally, it happened. I had been homesick and asked Paulina for a hug. The next morning she left my breakfast—white bread, bland cheese, apricot jelly, fruit topped with yogurt, and tea—on the table next to her husband’s. I became the hija gringa, Paulina’s American daughter, her confidant, her cooking apprentice, her friend.

SIERRA C. THOMSEN ’05:IRONY IN CAIROSquished into the back of a taxi, I am face to face with this bright red sign. In partially rubbed-off letters of clear Arabic script it says “absolutely, no smoking.” I glance around: do any of my fellow cab mates recognize this irony? I nudge Claire and point toward the sign: “Does this mean what I think it does?” How can we be in a cab, blurring through this buzzing city where merely living here is the

equivalent of smoking two packs a day and have in front of us a no-smoking sign? We look up at the driver. “My father, he doesn’t like the smoke, he says it makes the car smell bad,” he explains as he reaches his hand out the window to ash his cigarette. Just as our immune systems have built up a tolerance for sweet potatoes off the sidewalk carts and tap water, our psyches have begun to accept without question the non sequiturs of life here.

KATY SMITH, ‘06:MORNING IN ITALYI rush out of the house, throwing cheerful buona giornatas behind me as I tumble down the stairs, thrilled by the cool morning air and the prospect of a new day filled with learning and unlearning. A half-remembered song left over from the night’s dreaming filters through my lips, and the long row of cypresses between me and the bus stop seems to come alive in a sympathetic dance inspired by these morning breezes. At the bus stop, which is represented only by a red-and-yellow sign hanging impudently from the corner of a stately villa, I peek through the gaps of my neighbor’s gate and stare, once again, at the expanding countryside, which has laid itself delicately in folds and rifts upon the land. Vineyards, fields, castles, and one ever-present flock of sheep lead most enticingly to the very doorstep of Siena.

Katy Smith ’06 with Giulio and Elena, part of the host family with whom she lived in Siena, Italy.

Sierra C. Thomsen ’05 (in pink) with friends at Giza’s Great Pyramid.

Arabic so she could communicate once there. When that didn’t work, with a push from her adviser, anthropologist Lynn Morgan, Vyriotes searched for programs in Africa whose main language was English.

After intensive study of Swahili—Kenya’s other national language and much easier than Arabic, she says—Vyriotes was immersed in Kenyan life. “MHC prepared me for some of the diversity I would experience overseas, and I was excited to learn new things and get different perspectives.” Vyriotes split her time between Nairobi, rural Nairobi, and “the bush”—extreme rural Kenya where some don’t even speak Swahili and where she lived with a family in the Maasai tribe. Though some of her time was spent in rigid classes, much involved “experiential learning.”

Vyriotes said there were times her race was a help and times it was a hindrance. Her white skin often brought extra, and unwanted, attention. Once, she and a classmate faced stares as the only white people in a van crowded with villagers and chickens. And, she recalls, “walking to school every day, I would have fifty kids walking around me touching my hair and my skin. It was a little overwhelming.” On the other hand, completing her research was easier because Africans wanted to talk to a white person.

Among the life lessons Vyriotes took with her from Africa, she says, was “the difference between what I need and what I want. I certainly lived on a lot less than I had at home. It’s OK to have things you want, but it’s important to recognize the difference and be thankful [for] that luxury.”

She also says Kenya helped her grow up. “I think it was the first time I felt really responsible for me. I increased my self-confidence; I realized if I can sleep in a bed with bedbugs for three weeks, I can do anything.”

PERSEVERANCE PAYS OFF What turned out to be an experience that changed Maya C. Aguilar’s life was almost cut short. Aguilar, a 2005 international relations graduate, had been studying Spanish

since middle school and wanted to attend a school that was in a city yet small enough so she wouldn’t get lost. She chose Salamanca, Spain. The experience “completely changed my life, but the first semester was very difficult,” she remembers. “I wasn’t ready for drastic changes, for cultural changes, for living with strangers, or interacting with others. ... I thought about coming home.” It didn’t help that the natives of Salamanca are known for being unfriendly. “My host family was great, but they were only three people,” says Aguilar.

In addition to feeling like an unwelcome visitor, Aguilar, whose father is Ecuadoran and mother is Japanese, said she was challenged by her race, something she has never had to deal with in the States. “Until I went to Spain, I never thought my race was an issue. I was never put in a situation where I was made to feel uncomfortable. That was a huge awakening for me,” she said.

But after a month home for the holidays, Aguilar gathered the strength to return and finish what she started. “I decided to go back with a positive attitude. I said I would see how it went and it turned out to be great. ... I found the inner strength to stick it out my second semester” through the help of a good friend she met in Spain who was going through the same thing.

When she returned to Mount Holyoke, Aguilar found herself missing the city that once nearly defeated her. “I missed the flexibility ... freedom, and independence,” she said. But she found that many friends at MHC had gone abroad and overcome their own challenges. “We bonded tremendously over that,” she says. “We were scattered all over the world, but we were still connected by this MHC link. It made our friendships stronger.”


SOUND BITES

STUDYING WITH AN ICON I think my studies with William Wordsworth’s direct descendant, Professor Jonathan Wordsworth, takes the cake [for best story]. Every time someone asked me who I was taking my tutorial with, I’d say, “Oh, I’m reading Wordsworth ... with Wordsworth.—Jaime C. Tung ’06, Oxford University, England

DREAMING OF TRAVELS When I returned to Mount Holyoke [after boarding in a Korean temple], I would wake in my Mead Hall loft to the sound of Buildings and Grounds staff hammering away on some project, and imagine, in that disoriented place between dreaming and waking, that it was the monks tapping their mok-toks for the morning chant.—Christabel Daly Hudson Choi ’90

TEACHING MEXICANS SPANISH I was learning Spanish immersion-style in Mexico, so I was shocked to enter the little world of this village where not even Spanish is spoken. The women were dressed in brilliantly colored taffeta-type skirts and clogs, but the men were dressed in jeans and T-shirts. I asked a man selling something in a covered dish what kind of food he had. He looked bewildered, pointed, and said, “tacos?” in a barely understandable way. It dawned on me that I spoke more Spanish than the majority of the Mexicans in this town. —Cait S. May ’05, Guadalajara, Mexico

Left: Sierra C. Thomsen ’05 traveled to Petra, Jordan.

Right: After a tough first semester, Maya Aguilar ’05 made the most of her year abroad in Salamanca, Spain.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

WEB EXTRA

There are expanded versions of many alums’ stories, and more photos, on the web at www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/go/new_world.

Jaime Tung

http://www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/go/new_world


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REBECCA B. GARFIELD ’05: TRANSITION IN CHILE When I first moved in with Paulina de la Paz Novoa and her family in Viña del Mar, Chile, I wasn’t allowed to help clear the table. Or wash the dishes. Or even enter the tiny kitchen where the poodle Lulú peed on the Las Últimas Noticias newspapers in the corner. Paulina served me breakfast in bed, washed and ironed my laundry, and left my sheets creaseless and my pillows fluffed. For five weeks she treated me like an American paying for an experience abroad in Chile. Then one day, finally, it happened. I had been homesick and asked Paulina for a hug. The next morning she left my breakfast—white bread, bland cheese, apricot jelly, fruit topped with yogurt, and tea—on the table next to her husband’s. I became the hija gringa, Paulina’s American daughter, her confidant, her cooking apprentice, her friend.

SIERRA C. THOMSEN ’05:IRONY IN CAIROSquished into the back of a taxi, I am face to face with this bright red sign. In partially rubbed-off letters of clear Arabic script it says “absolutely, no smoking.” I glance around: do any of my fellow cab mates recognize this irony? I nudge Claire and point toward the sign: “Does this mean what I think it does?” How can we be in a cab, blurring through this buzzing city where merely living here is the

equivalent of smoking two packs a day and have in front of us a no-smoking sign? We look up at the driver. “My father, he doesn’t like the smoke, he says it makes the car smell bad,” he explains as he reaches his hand out the window to ash his cigarette. Just as our immune systems have built up a tolerance for sweet potatoes off the sidewalk carts and tap water, our psyches have begun to accept without question the non sequiturs of life here.

KATY SMITH, ‘06:MORNING IN ITALYI rush out of the house, throwing cheerful buona giornatas behind me as I tumble down the stairs, thrilled by the cool morning air and the prospect of a new day filled with learning and unlearning. A half-remembered song left over from the night’s dreaming filters through my lips, and the long row of cypresses between me and the bus stop seems to come alive in a sympathetic dance inspired by these morning breezes. At the bus stop, which is represented only by a red-and-yellow sign hanging impudently from the corner of a stately villa, I peek through the gaps of my neighbor’s gate and stare, once again, at the expanding countryside, which has laid itself delicately in folds and rifts upon the land. Vineyards, fields, castles, and one ever-present flock of sheep lead most enticingly to the very doorstep of Siena.

Katy Smith ’06 with Giulio and Elena, part of the host family with whom she lived in Siena, Italy.

Sierra C. Thomsen ’05 (in pink) with friends at Giza’s Great Pyramid.

Arabic so she could communicate once there. When that didn’t work, with a push from her adviser, anthropologist Lynn Morgan, Vyriotes searched for programs in Africa whose main language was English.

After intensive study of Swahili—Kenya’s other national language and much easier than Arabic, she says—Vyriotes was immersed in Kenyan life. “MHC prepared me for some of the diversity I would experience overseas, and I was excited to learn new things and get different perspectives.” Vyriotes split her time between Nairobi, rural Nairobi, and “the bush”—extreme rural Kenya where some don’t even speak Swahili and where she lived with a family in the Maasai tribe. Though some of her time was spent in rigid classes, much involved “experiential learning.”

Vyriotes said there were times her race was a help and times it was a hindrance. Her white skin often brought extra, and unwanted, attention. Once, she and a classmate faced stares as the only white people in a van crowded with villagers and chickens. And, she recalls, “walking to school every day, I would have fifty kids walking around me touching my hair and my skin. It was a little overwhelming.” On the other hand, completing her research was easier because Africans wanted to talk to a white person.

Among the life lessons Vyriotes took with her from Africa, she says, was “the difference between what I need and what I want. I certainly lived on a lot less than I had at home. It’s OK to have things you want, but it’s important to recognize the difference and be thankful [for] that luxury.”

She also says Kenya helped her grow up. “I think it was the first time I felt really responsible for me. I increased my self-confidence; I realized if I can sleep in a bed with bedbugs for three weeks, I can do anything.”

PERSEVERANCE PAYS OFF What turned out to be an experience that changed Maya C. Aguilar’s life was almost cut short. Aguilar, a 2005 international relations graduate, had been studying Spanish

since middle school and wanted to attend a school that was in a city yet small enough so she wouldn’t get lost. She chose Salamanca, Spain. The experience “completely changed my life, but the first semester was very difficult,” she remembers. “I wasn’t ready for drastic changes, for cultural changes, for living with strangers, or interacting with others. ... I thought about coming home.” It didn’t help that the natives of Salamanca are known for being unfriendly. “My host family was great, but they were only three people,” says Aguilar.

In addition to feeling like an unwelcome visitor, Aguilar, whose father is Ecuadoran and mother is Japanese, said she was challenged by her race, something she has never had to deal with in the States. “Until I went to Spain, I never thought my race was an issue. I was never put in a situation where I was made to feel uncomfortable. That was a huge awakening for me,” she said.

But after a month home for the holidays, Aguilar gathered the strength to return and finish what she started. “I decided to go back with a positive attitude. I said I would see how it went and it turned out to be great. ... I found the inner strength to stick it out my second semester” through the help of a good friend she met in Spain who was going through the same thing.

When she returned to Mount Holyoke, Aguilar found herself missing the city that once nearly defeated her. “I missed the flexibility ... freedom, and independence,” she said. But she found that many friends at MHC had gone abroad and overcome their own challenges. “We bonded tremendously over that,” she says. “We were scattered all over the world, but we were still connected by this MHC link. It made our friendships stronger.”


SOUND BITES

STUDYING WITH AN ICON I think my studies with William Wordsworth’s direct descendant, Professor Jonathan Wordsworth, takes the cake [for best story]. Every time someone asked me who I was taking my tutorial with, I’d say, “Oh, I’m reading Wordsworth ... with Wordsworth.—Jaime C. Tung ’06, Oxford University, England

DREAMING OF TRAVELS When I returned to Mount Holyoke [after boarding in a Korean temple], I would wake in my Mead Hall loft to the sound of Buildings and Grounds staff hammering away on some project, and imagine, in that disoriented place between dreaming and waking, that it was the monks tapping their mok-toks for the morning chant.—Christabel Daly Hudson Choi ’90

TEACHING MEXICANS SPANISH I was learning Spanish immersion-style in Mexico, so I was shocked to enter the little world of this village where not even Spanish is spoken. The women were dressed in brilliantly colored taffeta-type skirts and clogs, but the men were dressed in jeans and T-shirts. I asked a man selling something in a covered dish what kind of food he had. He looked bewildered, pointed, and said, “tacos?” in a barely understandable way. It dawned on me that I spoke more Spanish than the majority of the Mexicans in this town. —Cait S. May ’05, Guadalajara, Mexico

Left: Sierra C. Thomsen ’05 traveled to Petra, Jordan.

Right: After a tough first semester, Maya Aguilar ’05 made the most of her year abroad in Salamanca, Spain.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

WEB EXTRA

There are expanded versions of many alums’ stories, and more photos, on the web at www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/go/new_world.

Jaime Tung


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It took a year to create the Association’s new strategic plan, which was previewed in the spring 2005 Quarterly. This fall, we’re putting the plan into practice. The flier bound into the center of this maga-zine highlights what the “new” Alumnae Association offers you. In reading it, we hope you’ll find many ways that the Asso-ciation can be a useful part of your life. In the following Q&A, Association President Susie Beers Betzer ’65 gives her take on the organization’s new direction. The text is adapted from her speech at the Associa-tion’s annual meeting in May.

The Alumnae Association is being “relaunched.” What does that mean?The Alumnae Association has a new strate-gic plan that relaunches the Association as a world-class organization that is both an independent entity serving alumnae and a strong collaborative partner with the Col-lege in supporting the goals and values of Mount Holyoke.

How will the Asso-ciation better serve alumnae?The cornerstone for our new direc-tion is this: find out what alumnae want and give it to them. Plain and simple, the Alum-nae Association is rededicating itself to its found-ing principles. We are, however, aware that 132 years have passed since the found-ing of our orga-nization. So we’ll be doing things a bit differently. We’re going to continue connect-ing, informing,

and involving alumnae in support of Mount Holyoke College—but our initiatives will be more global, more visible, more inclusive, more relevant. And that really is the point of this relaunch: our aim is not so much to make a change as to make a difference.

What are some of the things alumnae want that the Association has delivered?Alumnae said they wanted access to career-counseling services. So we hired career-development coach Cori Ashworth to offer consultations by phone, e-mail, and on campus. The response was overwhelming, and that pilot project quickly became a permanent one.

Alumnae wanted opportunities to share their career expertise with current students, so we developed a mentoring network. In its first year, the program attracted some 500 alumnae mentors worldwide and connected them with close to 100 students. Alumnae want to continue the intellectual excitement they

found at the College. So the Association is investigating distance learning and other opportunities to help alumnae continue their lifelong learning.

Alumnae also wanted students to get acquainted with the Alumnae Association early in their Mount Holyoke careers. So we asked firsties what kind of programs would interest them. They said they wanted advice about choosing a major, and the result was “M&Cs and Major Decisions.” Firsties showed up in record numbers to learn from alumnae and meet the Association.

Why should this matter to alumnae?All of us here believe in the power of a Mount Holyoke education. We know how it can transform women’s minds, ambi-tions, and lives. Likewise, we know the value of this organization—it celebrates our vibrant connections and facilitates opportunities for us to advance the goals and values of Mount Holyoke College. That always has been the Alumnae Association’s mission. The next five years are about serv-ing the alumnae—and Mount Holyoke. They’re about strengthening our network. I’d love everyone to join me as we forge new bonds with our beloved campus—and with the world outside its gates.

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alumnaemattersUPDATES FROM THE ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

AA President Susan Beers Betzer ’65 gives the “new” Alumnae Association a big “thumbs-up.” To

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The Alumnae Association has established two new annual awards for outstanding, long-term volunteer efforts by alumnae on behalf of a class, club, affinity group, the Association, or the College. The Loyalty Award and the Young Alumna Loyalty Award each will honor an alumna who has demonstrated consistent effort and active involvement in one area of service over an

extended period of time. “The Alumnae Association is excited to have a new way to recognize the wonderful work done by alumnae volunteers,” said Cynthia L. Reed ’80, who chairs the Alumnae Rela-tions Committee. Focused contribution of volunteer time is the cornerstone of the Association’s success, she added. Loyalty Award nominees this year should be from

classes that will hold reunions in 2006. Young Alumna Loyalty Award nominees may be from any class that has graduated ten years or fewer from the date of the upcoming reunion. The deadline for nomi-nating next year’s awardees is December 15, 2005. Nominating forms are available on the Alumnae Association Web site, www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu.

Mark Your Calendar for Reunion 2006It’s all about the planning! The Alumnae Association is already in gear for next year’s Reunion, and we want you to get it on your calendars, too. On the weekend of May 26–28, we will welcome back to campus the classes of 1931, 1936, 1946, 1956, 1966, 1981, 1996, and 2004, as well as Frances Perkins Program alumnae. The weekend of June 2–4, the classes of 1941, 1951, 1961, 1971, 1976, 1986, 1991, and 2001 will gather on the greens. If your class will be joining us on one of these weekends, look for a preliminary schedule in the mail in March. Information also will be posted on the Alum-nae Association Web site at www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu.

Olympic FeatsBarbara A. Cassani ’82 has raised a few eyebrows in her life. A suc-cessful businesswoman in London for many years, she was tapped in 1987 by British Airways to set up the no-frills airline Go, which she had up and running within six months. But her appointment in 2003 to secure the 2012 Olympics for London was an even greater coup. “I have taken this job because I know we can win,” she told report-ers at the time. Of course, she was right. This past June, London was named the site for the next Olympic games. “I’m proud to say that I played an active leadership role in bringing the games to London,” Cassani says. She has been on the Bid Committee since its inception in June 2003 as chairman, and then became vice chairman in May 2004 when she decided that her start-up, team-building skills, andbeing an American were not what was needed for the second phase. She brought in Sebastian Coe, an Olympic double gold medalist runner, to finish the job. “I was there in Singapore for the victory and take great pleasure in the fact that I hired the entire bid team! I only hired and inspired winners, and that’s what they delivered. Here’s to the Olympic and Paralympic games in London in 2012!” Cas-sani is currently developing a business plan for a new group of hotels.

New Alumnae Awards Will Celebrate Volunteer Service

Abbey Chapel was the site of a concert last year by the Kaiser-swerther Kantorei choir from Dusseldorf, Germany. The direc-tor of the choir, Nancy E. Poland ’62 (center, now retired) was not the only songstress with a MHC connection. Barbara Ward Bueh-ling ’81 (left) and Sophia Kellner ’08 (right) also sang with the group, as did Kellner’s parents and sister.

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Abbey Chapel was the site of a concert last year by the Kaiser-swerther Kantorei choir from Dusseldorf, Germany. The direc-tor of the choir, Nancy E. Poland ’62 (center, now retired) was not the only songstress with a MHC connection. Barbara Ward Bueh-ling ’81 (left) and Sophia Kellner ’08 (right) also sang with the group, as did Kellner’s parents and sister.

We’re Everywhere!

Alumnae Services the Focus of Revitalized Association

In Search of Board and Committee MembersAre you interested in volunteering for an Alumnae Association committee? The nominating committee is always eager to hear of potential volunteers. Recommendations should be sent to Catherine C. Burke ’78, nominating committee chair, at [email protected] or 310-376-5858, or to W. Rochelle Calhoun ’83, Association executive director, at [email protected] or 413-538-2300.


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Association Recommends Janet Falik Aserkoff ’65 as College Alumnae Trustee

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Alumnae Association Board of Directors

*PresidentSusan Beers Betzer ’65

*Vice PresidentKayla R. Jackson ’86

*ClerkSandra A. Mallalieu ’91

*TreasurerPatricia Steeves O’Neil ’85

Alumnae QuarterlyAvice A. Meehan ’77

Alumnae TrusteeNancy Drake ’73

Alumnae RelationsCynthia L. Reed ’80

Classes and ReunionMaureen E. Kuhn ’78

ClubsCerise Jalelian Keim ’81

Directors-at-LargePamela R. Broadley ’74

Maureen McHale Hood ’87Antoria D. Howard-Marrow ’81Joanna MacWilliams Jones ’67

Nominating ChairCatherine C. Burke ’78

Young Alumnae RepresentativeLisa M. Utzinger ’02

Executive Director*W. Rochelle Calhoun ’83

ex officio without vote

*Executive Committee

The Alumnae Association supports more than 100 clubs and informal groups around the world. Contact Assistant Director of Clubs Krysia Villón ‘96 at [email protected] or 413-538-2738 with club- related questions, ideas, comments, and brief overviews of activities for possible inclusion in this section.

Clubs Corner

The Mount Holyoke Club of Dallas-Fort Worth joined in a discussion of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books in July. The book was the “com-mon read” book for the class of 2008.

Professor Martha Ackmann’s book The Mercury 13, which looks at the first women who trained to be astronauts, was the subject of the April meeting of the Mount Holyoke Club of

Northern New Jersey, held in the home of Sylvia Davies Diehl ’49. In October, Director of Ath-letics Laurie Priest delivered a talk titled “A History of Sport at Mount Holyoke College” at a wine and cheese event.

Brunch at the Sundance Resort in Utah and a lecture by Pro-fessor Joseph Ellis (who came with an autographed copy of his book His Excellency: George Washington) were the high-

lights of a July event sponsored by the Mount Holyoke College Club of Utah.

Music professors Linda Laderach and Larry Schipull gave a concert for the Mount Holyoke Club of Greater South Hadley in June at the Willits-Hallowell Center.

The Mount Holyoke Club of Washington held its annual pic-nic on August 14 in Magnuson Park in Seattle. A silent auction

of MHC centennial china took place on October 9, as did a talk by music professor Allen Bonde, “Music in the American Musi-cal: The Golden Age.”

Members of the Mount Holyoke Club of New Hampshire enjoyed a Connecticut River Day in Sep-tember that included remarks from Sharon Fairley Francis ’59 and Rebecca Ann Brown ’81, staff members with the Connecticut River Joint Commissions.

Sixty-eight Mount Holyoke women, ages twenty to seventy-seven, celebrated their shared passion for choral music this summer during the first international tour by Glee Club alumnae. Singers converged in South Hadley for intense rehearsals and a farewell concert before jetting off to Great Britain in early July.

Conductor Catharine Melhorn, who will retire this spring after thirty-five years as MHC’s choral director, says she had long dreamed of taking an MHC group to the prestigious Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod competition in Wales. But entering this group took courage—although some participants sing regularly in community or church choirs, others hadn’t performed in years.

And—although singers had learned their parts beforehand via sheet music and a practice CD mailed to their homes—they had only two days for group rehearsals in which to create and perfect a cohesive sound.

The tour required a year of planning by Debby J. Hall ’74, travel agent Jean Johnson King ’47, and an alumnae committee. Mel-horn says they didn’t expect to win the tough international contest (and they didn’t), but “all reaped rewards beyond measure … It was touching to witness the ways in which so many [alumnae] reconnected to the College and to each other via our ‘serious’ yet joyful music-making.”

The alumnae group also set audiences buzz-ing at concerts in London and Chepstow, Wales, where their varied repertory included classical sacred works, folk-derived choral arrange-ments, and music from the African American tradition. MHC was also one of only two choirs invited to sing at the final Eisteddfod evening

concert. Participant Cindy White Morrell ’68 says that the audience of some 4,000 “seemed very appreciative.”

Participants were grateful too. Erika Mor-gan ’75 wrote Melhorn, “I loved singing again in the rich, four-part women’s chorus. While I knew that I had long missed that particular constellation of sound, I hadn’t really appreci-ated how much, and how deeply, I would be moved by the experience of doing it again.”

Melhorn says the alumnae trip renewed Mount Holyoke’s “tradition of international choral outreach,” which has taken student choirs all over the world since the late 1960s. “I have enjoyed all my trips with the undergradu-ate choirs,” she says, “but this tour was very, very special.”

Community Organizer Nominated For NobelPeace Prize An Albany, New York, alumna is among 1,000 women peace activists from around the world who have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by an international group hoping for greater recognition of women’s efforts to coun-ter injustice, discrimination, and violence. Barbara Smith ’69 is an author, activist, and independent scholar who focuses on promot-ing national, cultural, and political dialogue about the intersections of race, class, sexuality, and gender.

As an organizer, Smith has worked to end sterilization abuse; to ensure quality health care for all women regardless of race and class; to end apartheid in South Africa; to stop US-funded warfare against the indigenous people of Central and South America; to challenge police brutality; to eradicate violence against women; and to challenge homophobia and het-erosexism. She is currently running for a city council seat in Albany.

The 1,000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize campaign formally nominated women who “commit themselves daily to the cause of peace and justice.” Additional information about the international project is available at www.1000PeaceWomen.org. Since the first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 1901, only twelve women have received the honor.

In a worrisome and complex world, alumnae often crave a way to deepen their engagement with pressing issues of the day. To that end, the Association has engaged Harold Garrett-Good-year, professor of history, as its first faculty scholar in residence.

“Through the Alumnae Association and working with students, staff, and faculty on campus, alumnae will explore possible struc-tures and formats for collaborative learning that challenge the traditional model of educa-tion,” says the professor, who will serve in the position for two years.

Nancie L. Fimbel ’68 first mentioned providing alumnae with continued sup-port for intellectual exploration during the Association’s strategic-planning process last year, says Association Executive Director W.

Rochelle Calhoun ’83. Video conferencing was the first thing that came to mind, she added, and last spring a “virtual seminar” was orga-nized to discuss the Patriot Act, terrorism, and the College in the post–9/11 world. A second videoconference seminar—“Gender, Space and Power,” facilitated by Jennifer Gieseking ’99—is planned this fall.

Garrett-Goodyear will visit four alumnae clubs this year to gather ideas on how and in what other forms continuing education might take place. He noted that a shared effort by alumnae and the campus community may well serve the intellectual growth and contin-ued learning of alumnae and help “expand the spaces within our present world where thoughtful, imaginative, and critical inquiry may survive and even thrive.”

AA Scholar to Help Bring College to Alumnae

Glee Club Alumnae Tour an International Hit

JANET FALIK ASERKOFF ’65, general counsel to a Boston real estate and development firm that manages a $1.3 billion property portfolio and $550 mil-lion in equity capital, has been nominat-ed as alumnae trustee of the College by the Nominating Committee of the Alum-nae Association. Election to the five-year term will take place during the Associa-tion’s annual meeting in May 2006.

An economics major at Mount Holy-oke, Aserkoff earned a law degree from Emory University in 1968. She joined the law firm Jerome Lyle Rappaport—now Rappaport, Aserkoff & Gelles—in 1969, and has been the primary attor-ney for the Rappaport family-owned New Boston Fund, overseeing complex real estate transactions, since 1993.

Aserkoff has served the Alumnae Association in various capacities including membership on the board, Development Committee, and Alum-nae Honors Research Committee. She was chair of the Alumnae Fund from 1975 to 1977, which raised $1 million for the first time; and chair of her class’s twenty-fifth reunion gift, raising the largest gift up to that time. She also has been active for many years at Temple Israel, the Bureau of Jewish Education, and the Rashi School, all in Boston.

The advancement of women in soci-ety has been significant but is far from guaranteed, notes Aserkoff. “Mount Holyoke, as an institution of renown, has an obligation to stand for and speak for the continuation of a prominent productive role for women in all aspects of human endeavor. I hope to have the opportunity to be part of that process by representing Mount Holyoke’s alum-nae on the Board of Trustees.”

Note: Names of additional candi-dates may be sub-mitted to the Com-mittee on the Nomi-nation of Alumnae Trustees/Awards provided that such nominations shall be by written peti-tion, signed by at least 100 voting members, no more than 30 percent of whom shall be from the same class or from the same club area, and such writ-ten petition is received by the executive director by January 15 of the year of the election. Nominations by petition shall include the written consent of the nominee to serve if elected.

Three new members of the Alumnae Association communications team joined the staff this summer. Leanna James Blackwell (left) was named communications director, Lisa Clark was named designer, and Mieke Bomann was named staff writer. Blackwell, who most recently served as manager of alumni and development communications for Amherst College, has a rich background in arts and educational program man-agement, public relations, and teaching. Clark comes to the College after a career in academic and trade-book publishing, as well as stints in pro-duction and design at Adobe Systems and several magazines. Bomann is a longtime college publications writer and former staff writer for USA Today and the American News Service.

New Director Heads Communications Team


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cooking of old Mexico, Spain, and indigenous peoples into a unique local cuisine. The book is organized by geo-graphical region, and further subdivided into the major tourist areas of Santa Fe, Taos, and Albuquerque. Moore’s comprehensive guide pro-vides something for every taste and pocketbook, from gourmet groceries to cook-ing schools, farmers markets to food festivals, and elegant metropolitan bistros to mod-est mom-and-pop tacquerías. Sally Moore is a professional food and travel writer. She lives in Albuquerque, NM. Always Remember Me: How One Family Survived World War IIBy Marisabina Russo ’71Atheneum Books for Young Readers. 2005. $16.95Rachel’s grandmother has two picture albums. In one, the photographs show only happy times—from after World War II, when she and her daughters came to America. The other album includes much sadder times from before—when their life in Germany was destroyed by the Nazis’ rise to power. For as long as Rachel can remember, Oma has closed the other album when she’s gotten to the sad part, but today will share it all. Rachel will hear about what her family endured and see how the power of its love gave the family the strength to survive. (See interview with Russo on p. 38.) Marisabina Russo is the author and illustrator of numerous books for children, including The Line Up Book, which won an International

Reading Association Children’s Book Award. Always Remember Me is based on her family’s survival story.

The Last Dance: Facing Alzheimer’s with Love & LaughterBy Ann McLane Kuster with Susan Neidlinger McLane ’51Peter E. Randall. 2004. $15Throughout her twenty-five years in the New Hampshire legislature and run for Con-gress in 1980, Susan McLane advocated for the mentally ill, welfare mothers, and dignity in dying. She fought to save the environment and was a tireless advocate for women in politics. The Last Dance is the “painfully honest story,” says journalist and friend David Broder, of how McLane and her loving family dealt with her losing her memory and self to Alzheimer’s disease. More than five million Ameri-cans have Alzheimer’s disease. With the book, the author and her mother hope to pro-vide a model for coping with a heartbreaking illness. Susan McLane spent her fresh-man year at Mount Holyoke. Ann McLane Kuster is her daughter.

Living Medicine: Memoir SnapshotsBy V. L. Beckett ’45 Xlibris Corporation. 2004. $17.84At seventeen, Victoria Beck-ett fled occupied China with just $50 and a trunk full of clothes. After graduat-ing from Mount Holyoke, she completed her medical residency at the Mayo Clinic, worked in hospitals in Detroit and Ireland, and finished her

medical career in Minnesota. Now Beckett has written her memoirs, hoping to convince others that “the American Dream does exist,” and to encourage people to find the best medical care possible. The final chapters of the book trace her physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual development since retiring, which includes earning a mas-ter’s degree in psychology and teaching tai chi. The royalties she earns from the book will be donated to Doctors With-out Borders. V.L. Beckett is a retired phy-sician living an active life in Rochester, Minnesota.

Fire on Ice: Autobiography of a Champion Figure SkaterBy Sasha Cohen with Amanda Maciel ’00Avon Books. 2005. $9.99Champion figure skater Sasha Cohen captured the world’s attention at the 2002 Winter Olympics with her exquisite spiral and outstanding lay-back spin. Today she is the reigning queen of winter’s most competitive sport and the most serious contender for the gold medal in 2006. Fire on Ice is Sasha’s life story, from her discovery of

the sport at age seven to her comeback from the injury that nearly ended her career. The book is illustrated with a color insert and black-and-white photographs. Amanda Maciel is an editor in HarperCollins Publishers’ children’s department. She lives in New York City.

Ethical Issues in the Courts: A Companion to Philosophical Ethics (Second Edition)By Julie C. Van Camp ’69Wadsworth/Thomson. 2006. $13.95The study of legal cases is increasingly common in undergraduate classrooms. Ethical Issues in the Courts provides excerpts from sev-enty-three important court decisions considering ethical issues studied in courses in philosophy, political science, and other disciplines in the humanities and social sci-ences. This new edition adds fourteen more cases, includ-ing the latest decisions on euthanasia, gay marriage, the pledge of allegiance, affirma-tive action, and business and

Images of Congo: Anne Eisner’s Art and EthnographyEdited by Christie McDonald ’645 Continents Editions. 2005. $39Images of Congo explores the life and work of New York artist Anne Eisner, who lived in the former Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) during the 1940s and 1950s. Eisner came to live at Camp Putnam, a research station, lodge, and dispensary on the edge of the Ituri rainfor-est, and spent time in Mbuti

Pygmy camps. Unlike Paul Gauguin, for whom the Tahi-tians served mainly as artistic objects, Eisner entered into the lives of the people whose everyday gestures inspired her work. She transcribed legends, wrote ethnographic notes, and brought up three orphaned Pygmy children within a network of mothers. Celebrities, tourists, game hunters, and art collectors came to Camp Putnam for firsthand experience of the rainforest and the Pygmies. The writers in this volume discuss Eisner’s life, collecting of objects, art, and writings.Christie McDonald is the Smith Professor of French

Language and Literature and

chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University.

Viola Florence Barnes, 1885–1979: A Historian’s BiographyBy John G. ReidUniversity of Toronto Press. 2005. $45Viola Florence Barnes was one of the most prominent women historians in the United States from the 1920s to the 1950s. Educated at Yale, she began teaching at Mount Holyoke College in 1919. Barnes was an instrumental member of the “imperial school” of his-torians, publishing her best-known book, The Dominion of New England, in 1923. The later years of her life were marked by difficulty

and disillusionment, but she remained an active scholar almost to the time of her death in 1979. In this exhaustive and first biography of Barnes, John G. Reid examines her life as a female historian, provid-ing a revealing glimpse into the gendered experience of professional academia. John G. Reid is a history professor at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Culinary New Mexico: The Ultimate Food Lover’s GuideBy Sally Choate Moore ’58Fulcrum Publishing. 2005. $18.95Culinary New Mexico takes an adventurous look at anything and everything food-related in the Land of Enchantment. New Mexican food reflects the state’s history, fusing the

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for the gold medal in 2006. is Sasha’s life

story, from her discovery of


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cooking of old Mexico, Spain, and indigenous peoples into a unique local cuisine. The book is organized by geo-graphical region, and further subdivided into the major tourist areas of Santa Fe, Taos, and Albuquerque. Moore’s comprehensive guide pro-vides something for every taste and pocketbook, from gourmet groceries to cook-ing schools, farmers markets to food festivals, and elegant metropolitan bistros to mod-est mom-and-pop tacquerías. Sally Moore is a professional food and travel writer. She lives in Albuquerque, NM. Always Remember Me: How One Family Survived World War IIBy Marisabina Russo ’71Atheneum Books for Young Readers. 2005. $16.95Rachel’s grandmother has two picture albums. In one, the photographs show only happy times—from after World War II, when she and her daughters came to America. The other album includes much sadder times from before—when their life in Germany was destroyed by the Nazis’ rise to power. For as long as Rachel can remember, Oma has closed the other album when she’s gotten to the sad part, but today will share it all. Rachel will hear about what her family endured and see how the power of its love gave the family the strength to survive. (See interview with Russo on p. 38.) Marisabina Russo is the author and illustrator of numerous books for children, including The Line Up Book, which won an International

Reading Association Children’s Book Award. Always Remember Me is based on her family’s survival story.

The Last Dance: Facing Alzheimer’s with Love & LaughterBy Ann McLane Kuster with Susan Neidlinger McLane ’51Peter E. Randall. 2004. $15Throughout her twenty-five years in the New Hampshire legislature and run for Con-gress in 1980, Susan McLane advocated for the mentally ill, welfare mothers, and dignity in dying. She fought to save the environment and was a tireless advocate for women in politics. The Last Dance is the “painfully honest story,” says journalist and friend David Broder, of how McLane and her loving family dealt with her losing her memory and self to Alzheimer’s disease. More than five million Ameri-cans have Alzheimer’s disease. With the book, the author and her mother hope to pro-vide a model for coping with a heartbreaking illness. Susan McLane spent her fresh-man year at Mount Holyoke. Ann McLane Kuster is her daughter.

Living Medicine: Memoir SnapshotsBy V. L. Beckett ’45 Xlibris Corporation. 2004. $17.84At seventeen, Victoria Beck-ett fled occupied China with just $50 and a trunk full of clothes. After graduat-ing from Mount Holyoke, she completed her medical residency at the Mayo Clinic, worked in hospitals in Detroit and Ireland, and finished her

medical career in Minnesota. Now Beckett has written her memoirs, hoping to convince others that “the American Dream does exist,” and to encourage people to find the best medical care possible. The final chapters of the book trace her physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual development since retiring, which includes earning a mas-ter’s degree in psychology and teaching tai chi. The royalties she earns from the book will be donated to Doctors With-out Borders. V.L. Beckett is a retired phy-sician living an active life in Rochester, Minnesota.

Fire on Ice: Autobiography of a Champion Figure SkaterBy Sasha Cohen with Amanda Maciel ’00Avon Books. 2005. $9.99Champion figure skater Sasha Cohen captured the world’s attention at the 2002 Winter Olympics with her exquisite spiral and outstanding lay-back spin. Today she is the reigning queen of winter’s most competitive sport and the most serious contender for the gold medal in 2006. Fire on Ice is Sasha’s life story, from her discovery of

the sport at age seven to her comeback from the injury that nearly ended her career. The book is illustrated with a color insert and black-and-white photographs. Amanda Maciel is an editor in HarperCollins Publishers’ children’s department. She lives in New York City.

Ethical Issues in the Courts: A Companion to Philosophical Ethics (Second Edition)By Julie C. Van Camp ’69Wadsworth/Thomson. 2006. $13.95The study of legal cases is increasingly common in undergraduate classrooms. Ethical Issues in the Courts provides excerpts from sev-enty-three important court decisions considering ethical issues studied in courses in philosophy, political science, and other disciplines in the humanities and social sci-ences. This new edition adds fourteen more cases, includ-ing the latest decisions on euthanasia, gay marriage, the pledge of allegiance, affirma-tive action, and business and

Images of Congo: Anne Eisner’s Art and EthnographyEdited by Christie McDonald ’645 Continents Editions. 2005. $39Images of Congo explores the life and work of New York artist Anne Eisner, who lived in the former Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) during the 1940s and 1950s. Eisner came to live at Camp Putnam, a research station, lodge, and dispensary on the edge of the Ituri rainfor-est, and spent time in Mbuti

Pygmy camps. Unlike Paul Gauguin, for whom the Tahi-tians served mainly as artistic objects, Eisner entered into the lives of the people whose everyday gestures inspired her work. She transcribed legends, wrote ethnographic notes, and brought up three orphaned Pygmy children within a network of mothers. Celebrities, tourists, game hunters, and art collectors came to Camp Putnam for firsthand experience of the rainforest and the Pygmies. The writers in this volume discuss Eisner’s life, collecting of objects, art, and writings.Christie McDonald is the Smith Professor of French

Language and Literature and

chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University.

Viola Florence Barnes, 1885–1979: A Historian’s BiographyBy John G. ReidUniversity of Toronto Press. 2005. $45Viola Florence Barnes was one of the most prominent women historians in the United States from the 1920s to the 1950s. Educated at Yale, she began teaching at Mount Holyoke College in 1919. Barnes was an instrumental member of the “imperial school” of his-torians, publishing her best-known book, The Dominion of New England, in 1923. The later years of her life were marked by difficulty

and disillusionment, but she remained an active scholar almost to the time of her death in 1979. In this exhaustive and first biography of Barnes, John G. Reid examines her life as a female historian, provid-ing a revealing glimpse into the gendered experience of professional academia. John G. Reid is a history professor at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Culinary New Mexico: The Ultimate Food Lover’s GuideBy Sally Choate Moore ’58Fulcrum Publishing. 2005. $18.95Culinary New Mexico takes an adventurous look at anything and everything food-related in the Land of Enchantment. New Mexican food reflects the state’s history, fusing the

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Haunted in the New World: Jewish American Culture from Cahan to the GoldbergsBy Donald WeberIndiana University Press. 2005. $29.95Drawing on scholarship from a wide range of disciplines, Weber traces the tension for immigrant Jews between nostalgia for the world they left behind and the desire to blend into American cul-ture. James E. Young, profes-sor of English and Judaic studies at the University of Massachusetts, called the book the “wisest, most sophisticated exploration of Jewish culture … to appear in thirty years.”Donald Weber is Lucia, Ruth, and Elizabeth MacGregor Professor of English at Mount Holyoke; his essays on Jewish American literature have appeared in numerous periodicals. He also wrote

Rhetoric and History in Revolutionary New England.

The Art of Creative LivingBy Thomas Kinkade and Pam Proctor ’67Time Warner Book Group. 2005. $19.99Through a series of exer-cises and personal anecdotes, Kinkade, who is America’s most collected living artist, offers a unique prescription for readers interested in apply-ing “creative intention” to the challenges of family, faith, fit-ness, and relationships. Pam (Priscilla Moore) Proctor is the author of nine books of nonfiction, including Song of Saigon: One Woman’s Journey to Freedom.

The Burning BushBy Polly Laszlo Brody ’55Antrim House. 2005. $17 A collection of essays on top-ics as varied as rainforests, evolution, avian behavior, the experience of Alzheimer’s

disease in a family, and archeology, The Burning

Bush offers a deep appre-ciation for the natural world. Employing the tools of scien-tific mysticism, field biology, and a deep affinity

for nature, Brody’s work is “an engag-ing record of par-ticipation, love and memory,” writes the poet Mark Doty.

Polly Brody is a biologist and conservationist and has been published in numerous liter-ary journals. Her first book, Other Nations, was a collec-tion of poetry.

I Fell in Love with a Con Man: A True StoryBy Elizabeth Grzeszczyk FP’87Lulu, Inc. 2005. $12.95While on a business trip to Miami, Elizabeth Grzeszc-zyk meets a man who intro-duces himself as Dr. Jonathan Palmer, a British former For-mula One Grand Prix racecar driver. He quickly steals her heart, and she is swept up by the whirlwind of his glamor-ous lifestyle. Then Elizabeth discovers that he is actually an internationally wanted con man, Jonathan Nigel-Philip Kern, and her life spi-rals downward. Determined not to let this man ruin her life, Elizabeth fights back and wins the chance to tes-tify against him in a Paris court. Elizabeth’s story has been featured on Unsolved Mysteries and in

Marie Claire and Sports Illus-trated magazines. A warm climate and love of the outdoors lured Elizabeth Grzeszczyk to Florida, where she enjoys swimming, golf-ing, walking, and biking year-round. Her book is available from www.lulu.com/egrzeszczyk. You Bake ’Em Dog Biscuits Cookbook By Janine Adams ’84Running Press. 2005. $12.95While a host of alternatives to big-brand dog foods is now available, there’s nothing like home-baked goodies for that special pooch in your life. Combining mouth-watering recipes for superior snacks like “cheesy salmon train-ing treats” and “pupsicles” with tips on which work best for training purposes, extra energy on hikes, and special diets, Adams’s book will be useful for all but the profes-sional handler. Janine Adams is the author of numerous books on the health, care, and training of dogs and cats. She is a book reviewer for Dog World magazine and lives in St. Louis with two standard poodles.

computer ethics, and includes a glossary, study guides, and discussion questions. Julie C. Van Camp is profes-sor of philosophy at California State University, Long Beach. She is also the coauthor of Applying Ethics: A Text With Readings (eighth edition).

DoorBy Peter ViereckHigganum Hill Books. 2005. 14.95Enjoyed by readers for more than fifty years, Peter Viereck’s poems explore the themes of sacrifice, time, sexuality, nature, and the divine. With a continuing commitment to rhyme, the poems in this new collection create, as one reviewer put it, “startling ver-bal effects.” German and Rus-sian poems that have inspired the author are also included in the book. Peter Viereck is professor emeritus at Mount Holyoke and author of numerous books, including the recently re-

released Conservative Thinkers From John Adams to Winston Churchill, Conservatism Revisited, Unadjusted Man in the Age of Overadjustment, and Metapolitics.

Valenciennes, Daubigny, and the Origins of French Landscape PaintingBy Michael Marlais, John Varriano, and Wendy M. WatsonMount Holyoke College Art Museum. 2004. $20This catalogue accompanied a 2004 exhibition held at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. For the show, “a well-chosen selection” of French landscapes was brought together from Ameri-can museums and private collections to assess the role of the work of Valenciennes and Daubigny in the develop-ment of nineteenth-century French landscape painting, a reviewer from the London-based Burlington Magazine wrote. The subject is further explored in the book’s “ele-

gant” introductory essays. John Varriano is Idella Plimpton Kendal Professor of Art and Art History at MHC, and Wendy Watson is curator of the Mount Holyoke College Museum of Art.

Dangerous CurvesBy Judith Skillings ’72Avon Books. 2005. $6.50Rebecca Moore has aban-doned her career in journal-ism to run her late uncle’s classic car restoration shop. She’s looking for a little peace and quiet. Too bad, then, when she finds the corpse of a dancer—brutally stabbed, of course—in the back seat of a Bentley that’s being towed to her shop by a bunch of ex-cons who hap-pen to work for her. When the body of a second dancer is found in a nearby river, Moore feels compelled to investigate. Flesh, fantasy, vintage cars—it’s all a part of life for what one reviewer has called a “witty, indepen-dent, resilient heroine.”Judith Skillings and her hus-band own a Rolls-Royce and Bentley restoration shop in

Pennsylvania. She is the author of one previous novel featuring Rebecca Moore, Dead End.

The Battlefield of Your BodyBy Bessy Reyna ’70Hill-Stead Museum. 2005. $11.50This new collection of poems by Bes-sie Reyna has been called “a clear-eyed guide to the world we see but don’t see.” The third in a series

of poetry chapbooks from the Connecticut-based Hill-Stead Museum, The Battle-field of Your Body considers loss, a father’s drunken stupor, the intimacy of bod-ies, and the beauty of fallen leaves with bravery and honesty, reviewers note. Bessy Reyna recently retired as assistant reporter of judi-cial decisions for the state of Connecticut and is an opinion columnist for the Hartford Courant, as well as a mas-ter teaching artist with the Connecticut Commission on the Arts.

Defending Rights in Russia: Lawyers, the State, and Legal Reform in the Post-Soviet EraBy Pamela Jordan ’87University of British Colum-bia. 2005. $85Lawyers often play pivotal roles in building democra-cies. Pamela Jordan’s study of the Russian bar (advoka-tura) provides a richly tex-tured portrait of how, after the USSR’s collapse, practic-ing lawyers called advocates began to assume new, self-defined roles as contributors to legal reform and defenders of rights in Russia. Jordan argues that the post-Soviet advokatura gained more autonomy from the state as it struggled to redefine itself as a profession. She suggests that the advocates’ work is supporting the growth of civil society and strengthen-ing human rights but that the gains could be reversed if the Putin regime continues to flout due process rights.Pamela Jordan is an assistant professor of his-tory at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada.

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Rhetoric and History in Revolutionary New

heart, and she is swept up by

disease in a family, and archeology,The Burning

Bushdeep appre-ciation for the natural world. Employing the tools of scien-tific mysticism, field biology, and a deep affinity

for nature, Brody’s work is “an engag-ing record of par-ticipation, love and memory,” writes the

Bentley restoration shop in

The Battlefield of Your BodyBy Bessy Reyna Hill-Stead Museum. 2005. $11.50This new collection of poems by Bes-sie Reyna has been called “a clear-eyed guide to the world we see but don’t see.” The third in a series

Children are always asking picture-book author and illus-trator Marisabina Russo ’71 where she gets her ideas. She likes telling them about her childhood habit of sliding underneath the coffee table in the living room and drawing on the bottom of it. That memory gave her the idea for her book, Under the Table, she points out. Real life.

Russo’s latest book, Always Remember Me: How One Fam-ily Survived World War II, is also drawn from her family life and is perhaps the most heartfelt of her career. It features dozens of family photos on the endpapers as well as paintings drawn from other photos and is based on the sorrowful but ultimately inspiring story of her family’s experiences during the Holocaust.

As a young girl, Russo was fascinated by two photo albums kept by her grandmother. One depicted her family’s good fortunes in Germany before the rise of the Nazis, and the other illustrated life in America following the war. It wasn’t until Russo was older that her grandmother shared what had happened in between. “To me, it was always such an amazing story,” said Russo of her mother, two aunts, and grandmother, who endured concentration camps, mountain hideouts, and uncertainty about one another’s fates before being reunited after the war.

When her mother died, Russo inherited the albums and began to make paintings of the photographs, just for herself. An established children’s author, Russo says her editors took a particular liking to the new work and suggested she look for a way to tell the story that would move and educate children. So she contacted Holocaust experts, got in touch with relatives in Canada and Israel, and returned to Germany with one aunt who had been at Auschwitz. Only then did she begin to think about the words.

“The language took a lot of writing and rewriting,” she says. While she first thought the narrator should be her grand-mother, she settled on the granddaughter instead, realizing this was, in fact, her own story. “I had to dig in and remember why I responded so much” to the story and the photo albums, she explains. The result, said an enthusiastic reviewer in Publishers Weekly, is a “moving yet unsentimental” book that “presents tragedy in the context of family love, and hope.”

Russo began her career as a magazine illustrator, but she always loved children. With the help of a supportive editor, in 1986 she published The Line Up Book, named to this year’s New York Public Library list of “100 Picture Books Everyone Should Know.” Nineteen more books followed. But despite her suc-cess, Russo says writers have to be flexible in the fast-changing world of publishing. So she’s working on her second young-adult novel. Says the author, “You need to always be challeng-ing yourself.”

This is the first in a series of occasional spotlights on books of particular note.

A Picture Book Everyone Should KnowMarisabina Russo has written and illustrated twenty books for children.

Her latest is about the Holocaust.



announcements

Equestrian Center Saddle DriveThe Mount Holyoke College Equestrian Center accepts donations of horses, tack, and stable equipment. Please contact Joy Collins at 413-538-2493 or [email protected] if you can help.

Save the Date: Christmas Vespers ConcertMark your calendars now and plan to attend the traditional Christmas vespers concert on Friday, December 9, at Old South Church in Boston. This year’s vespers will be the final official performance by conductor Catharine Melhorn, Hammond-Douglass Professor of Music and choral director. For more information, contact Cerise Jalelian-Keim ’81 at 781-861-7446.

classifieds

Santa Fe Condo RentalCozy 2 BR, 2 bath adobe condo with kiva fireplaces, short walking distance to historic plaza. Rent by

week or month. Mary Kimmel Helne ’62, www.casa-sonrisa.com

Italy Home Vacation RentalsHigh-quality villas, farmhouses, apartments in several price ranges. Rome, Florence, Venice apartments. Personalized service from Italy experts. Italian Vacation Villas Inc. Alice Tetelman ’62. 202-333-6247, www.vil-lasitalia.com

Private Edition MemoirsPersonal & Family History Writing & Publishing helps families and indi-viduals record and preserve their sto-ries, memories, accomplishments, and adventures for the generations that follow. Based on a series of personal interviews, and perfected through a collaborative editing process, life stories are transformed into elegant, keepsake books. The gift of a lifetime for special birthdays, anniversaries,

reunions, holidays. Available nation-wide. 727-866-6607 or [email protected]. Jane Ross ’60.

Tortola B.V.I. RentalTortola: Three-bedroom house sixty feet above Long Bay Beach. [email protected] or 203-869-7344.

Florence Apartment for RentRestored 2-BR apartment (A/C and CH), from $1,000/week. Walk to all Italy’s Renaissance capital offers. Jeffrey and Judith Holland Bairstow ’66. [email protected].

Piñata Party PacksThematic children’s party activities and favors for groups of 6, 8, 10, or 12. Affordably exclusive! Limited number available; reasonably priced. Call 718-834-9086 or email [email protected].

MHC Wedgwood ChinaFour 9” plates; four cups; four sau-cers. blue, mulberry, green. $45 per set (cup, saucer, plate) plus shipping. Contact [email protected].

Personal and Professional CoachingI can help you reach your goals. Coaching can assist you in many areas, such as personal growth, life transitions, career development, and completion of projects and balance of life. Sessions are conducted by phone. Would you like to explore it? Contact me for a complimentary coaching session. Laura Schreiber Washburn ’71, master’s from Stanford, licensed clinical social work-ers, member International Coach Federation. [email protected], www.LauraWashburn.com. 413-270-9759.

Preserve Memoirs and MemoriesStamp and Stencil Studio, journal-ing, and artistic scrapbook services. Let your thoughts count for the

ages! Kendall Tarr Inglese ’80. [email protected], 781-334-5699. Over 200 pages completed for Gallery of Tributes, Massachusetts Cultural Council.

New Christmas Vespers Through the Years CDVolume 3 (1 and 2 sold out). Glee Club, Concert

Choir, Orchestra, Handbells, V8s, Voices of Faith, more! $15 (MA residents $16) plus $3 mailing. Benefits MHC Choral Music Fund. Send checks [Mount Holyoke College] to Cindy White Morrell ’68, [email protected], 135 Woodbridge St., South Hadley, MA 01075.

Book: From Amherst to Cashmere Fifteen copies still available of Margaret Jean Taylor’s From Amherst to Cashmere, a handmade, boxed, bound-in-silk edition of fifty books, with ten color etchings for selected poems of Emily Dickinson. Cost $1,600. Between now and March 2007, 25 percent will go to the class of 1957’s fiftieth reunion gift. Send $5 for pro-spectus to Taylor, 46 Hillcrest Place, Amherst, MA 01002-2528 or visit www.mjtgallery.com

Surviving a Double LossMy Life Closed Twice: Surviving a Double Loss, by Sandra Klamkin Schocket ’58: an inspirational story of one woman’s journey following the sudden deaths of her husband and son. This heartwarming and useful guide offers where-to-go-next informa-tion and encouragement on how to get there. At bookstores and Amazon.com. www.multipleloss.net.

class and club productsFor the benefit of the Alumnae Asso-ciation’s Alumnae Scholar Program

CLASS OF 1988Commemorative Jewelry and GiftsUnique jewelry and gifts available to you from the class of 1988. Sterling

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This column carries announcements of services and events sponsored by the Alumnae Association, alumnae clubs, and Col-lege-related organizations for the benefit of MHC or members of its community. Announcements (except for classifieds) are free, but space is limited. Club and class products, most of which benefit the Alumnae Association’s Alumnae Scholar Fund, are included once a year in the fall issue. Products are always view-able at www.alumnae. mtholyoke .edu, or a listing may be requested by calling 413-538-2300.

For details about placing classified ads, contact Mieke Bomann (413-538-3159; [email protected]).

deadlines

WINTER ISSUE (received in early February) November 15

SPRING ISSUE (received in early May) February 15

SUMMER ISSUE (received in early August) May 15

FALL ISSUE (received in early November) August 15


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CLASS OF 1999Mountain Day Care Packages Craving a taste of Mount Holyoke? The class of 1999 is offering Mountain Day care packages (avail-able year-round) from Atkins Farms for $20 plus $6 s/h. Please check out our Web site (www.mhc1999.com) for the order form or call Atkins Farms Country Market (800-594-9537) directly.

BOSTON CLUBMount Holyoke Mirrors,Desk Boxes, and PaintingsMary Lyon Tower and Field Memorial Gate in reverse painting on glass surmounts a handsome mirror, the whole framed (15” x 26”) in antique sil-ver and gold tones. Crafted by Eglomise Designs of Boston’s university series, the view is also available atop a walnut desk box with brass fittings (123/4” x 73/4” x 25/8”). Painting also comes alone in silver-toned frame (15” x 10”). Prices: mirror, $180; desk box, $180; painting, $150; shipping, handling, and sales tax included.

Mount Holyoke ChairsFinished in semigloss black with hand-screened gold-leaf College seal on back, they’re great for home or office. Armchair (natural cherry arms), $310 + $35 freight prepaid; Boston rocker, $300 + freight (billed after shipment, estimated at $100–$150 preassembled; $25–$50 unassembled); child’s rocker, $190 + $25 freight prepaid; swivel desk chairs and lamps (prices available upon request). Freight via UPS except for rocker. Prices subject to change; allow 12–16 weeks for delivery.

Reed and Barton Silver-PlatedPaul Revere BowlsFrom Taunton, Massachusetts. 41/4”, $38; 51/4”, $42; 6”, $49; 8”, $65; 9”, $73. Plus $5 s/h. Engraving, $5 flat fee for simple name or date; additional text 35¢/letter. Gift-boxed with clear plastic liner. Massachusetts residents, add 5 percent tax.

Lobsters by MailLive lobsters shipped to your destination by UPS Next-Day Air. Call number below for prices at seasonal market rates. Tax, shipping/ handling included.

Chelsea ClocksFrom Chelsea, Massachusetts: Paperweight brass desk button clock (2” diameter), $105; Newport: wall-mounted clock (41/2” diameter), $170; Chatham: round dial with mahogany base (41/2” high), $215; Carriage clock: Roman numer-als (63/4” high), $245; Presidential: mahogany base (71/2” high), $315. Plus $5 s/h, plus $25 flat fee for engraving costs, plus $5/line; Massachusetts resi-dents add 5 percent tax. Gift-boxed.

Ordering through the Boston Club. Send all orders, with checks payable to Boston Mount Holyoke Club, to Jane Chandler Weiss ’59, 492 Beacon Street #33, Boston, MA 02115-1002 (617-267-5504).

BRITAIN CLUBPlacemats and CoastersAnnouncing new Mount Holyoke placemats and coasters from England—the perfect gift. Beautiful campus scenes in all seasons grace these specially commissioned placemats and coasters from the

well-known English company Lady Clare Limited. First created in 1932 by Lady Clare Pigott for din-ner parties at the British Embassy in Paris to save on laundry bills for stiff white tablecloths, these heatproof, long-wearing mats became an instant success with guests. In sturdy melamine with green felt backing, our placemats and coasters are supplied in sets of four in a gift box. Each set fea-tures four different campus photographs (including Mary Lyon Hall and clock tower, Field memorial gate, the library, and the chapel) surrounded by a dark green border and gold banding. For photos and ordering information see www.mtholyoke.edu or www.mountholyoke.co.uk. Commissioned by the Mount Holyoke Club of Britain to support the Alumnae Scholar Fund.

CAPE COD CLUBNotecards and Postcards“Boats and Fishing Shacks” notecards (6”x7” with matching envelopes in packets of four) reproduced in six colors from an original hand-cut woodblock. “Sandpipers on the Beach” postcards reproduced from an etching in aqua in a packet of ten. $5 each. Massachusetts residents, add 5 percent sales tax. Make checks payable to Mount Holyoke Club of Cape Cod; send with order to Barbara H. Tucker (daughter of the artist, Marcia Herrick Howe ’24), 175 Winter St., Lincoln, MA 01773 (781-259-0204).

GENESEE VALLEY (NEW YORK) MOUNT HOLYOKE CLUBPet Leashes Sturdy, polypropylene pet leashes are each 6’ long and 3/4” wide with a heavy-duty metal clasp. Leashes are royal blue, with the words MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE woven in white block let-ters with decorative paw prints. $13 each. Please send a check payable to the Genesee Valley Mount Holyoke Club to Sara Greenleaf ’92, 10 Bay Heights Circle, Geneva, NY 14456.

GREATER SOUTH HADLEY Cocktail Napkins White, two-ply with College seal in royal blue. Packages of 25, $3 each. Minimum of four packages if order is to be shipped; add $3 for shipping.

Hand Towels11” x 16” white terry cloth with blue MHC seal. A subtle, but distinctive, way to promote MHC to your guests. $5 each.

Luggage Straps1” woven luggage straps, quick-release buckle, small plastic luggage tag, royal blue, MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE in white block letters writ-ten four times. $15 plus $1 s/h.

100 Percent Silk Scarves8” x 54” depicting the Mount Holyoke Range in color groups of sunset (red/purple and black), sum-mer (blues and white), and winter (black, gray, and white). Hand painted by Sally Hall Dillon ’68 of Amherst. $62 includes s/h, no tax. New additional size: 12” x 60”. Same color selections. $68 includes s/h, no tax. You may choose charmeuse (plain) or jacquard (patterned fabric). Allow three weeks for delivery. Be sure to specify size, color group, and fabric choice when ordering.

“The Orchards” DVD/VHSProduced by WBGY in Springfield, “From

Tee to Green: The History of The Orchards” chronicles the story of this 18-hole champion-ship golf course designed by the legendary Donald Ross for the daughter of industrialist Joseph Skinner, and once owned by Mount Holyoke College. From its beginnings to its 2004 role as the site of the USGA’s 59th U.S. Women’s Open, it has long been referred to as a gem, an adjective used by many who attended the event as well as the women who played the course last summer. The story, told with photographs from the College’s Archives and Special Collections and rare memorabilia, traces its rich history, lore and traditions. Available in either DVD or VHS form (please specify). Cost is $19.95 plus $2 s/h. An excellent gift to yourself, or for alumnae friends and golfers in general.

Ordering information: send order and check, payable to the Mount Holyoke Club of Greater South Hadley, to Cindy White Morrell ’68, 135 Woodbridge St., South Hadley, MA 01075-1128, 413-532-1864, [email protected]. Massachusetts residents should add 5 percent tax for all items except the scarves.

HOUSTON CLUBMontblanc PensGeneration Pens. Rich medium blue. MHC seal engraved on pen cap. Fountain pen (14 kt. gold nib)—#13101, $235; rollerball—#13301, $175; ballpoint—#13201, $165; and pen-cil—#13401, $115. Meisterstück Solitaire Doué Pens. Jet black with 925 sterling silver Mount Holyoke College engraved on pen cap. Fountain pen (18 kt. gold nib)—#144DS, $495; rollerball—#163DS, $375; ballpoint—#164DS, $375; pencil—#165DS, $375. Black leather pen case avail-able for one (#30301, $85) or two (#30302, $95) writ-ing instruments. All nibs are medium (nib exchange pos-sible through Montblanc); Generation writing instruments can be engraved on left or right side (please specify). Special Edition Millennium Noblesse Oblige Pens. Available in red, green, blue, or black with MHC seal engraved opposite “1837–2000.” Pencil—#15440, $120; ballpoint—#15240, $120; roll-

travel opportunities Sponsored by the Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College

Ancient Treasures of EgyptFEBRUARY 10–20, 2006—with photojournal-ist/historian Payne Johnson and Linda Murray Johnson ’74This trip has been filled.

Cruising the Mighty MississippiAPRIL 20–29, 2006This trip has been canceled.

Exploring Spain’s History and ArchitectureMAY 20–31, 2006—with Professor of Art Michael Davis, a specialist in Gothic archi-tectureSpain’s ancient civilization has left a wealth of architecture to explore, from prehistoric caves and Celtic settlements to Roman and Moorish monuments; Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance structures; Art Nouveau palaces; and more recently, Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim. Join Michael Davis, professor of art, as we explore these wonders, beginning in Madrid, where we will visit the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, the Prado Museum, and the eighteenth-century Royal Botanical Gardens, among others. In Toledo we will visit the Gothic-style cathedral; the Church of Santo Tomé, which houses El Greco’s masterpiece, The Burial of Count Orgaz; the synagogue of El Tránsito; and the cloister of the Church of San Juan de los Reyes. In northern Spain, we will see the Cathedral of Burgos and the Monastery of Las Huelgas Reales. In Bilbao, we’ll visit the Guggenheim Museum, then stop in Pamplona to visit the Gothic-style cathedral and the Museum of Navarra before arriving in Olite for a two-night stay. Our final stop will be Barcelona, where we will take a walking tour explor-ing the Gothic Quarter and Las Ramblas and visit the Cathedral, Santa Maria del Mar

Church, and Antoni Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia. Outside of Barcelona, we visit the impressive Roman ruins of Empurie; Gerona, and finally, Montserrat.

Waterways of RussiaJULY 26–AUGUST 7, 2006—with Professor of Russian Studies Stephen Jones, an expert on post-Soviet societiesThis distinctive tour follows the network of rivers, lakes, and canals that link Moscow with St. Petersburg. Golden-domed churches and quaint wooden villages dot the verdant landscape, and the gentle light of summer evenings gives an otherworldly dimension to Russia’s great “blue road” of waterways. This travel program will include three full days in Moscow; six days of cruising the Volga, Svir, and Neva rivers and Lakes Rybinskoye and Beloye; and three full days in St. Petersburg. Accommodations throughout the program will be aboard the comfortable ninety-four-passenger MS Yesenin. By virtue of its low passenger capacity, this Austrian-managed vessel offers a personal level of service not found on larger ships. Highlights include a visit to the Kremlin and a tour of Red Square. Among your ports of call along the great “blue road” are Uglich, Yaroslavl, Goritsy and Kizhi Island. Conclude in St. Petersburg, Russia’s “window to the West,” with its exquisite architecture, canals, and bridges.

Village Life in the Italian Lake DistrictSEPTEMBER 13–20, 2006—accompanied by a local, professional guideCentered at the four-star, deluxe Palace Hotel on the shores of Lake Como, this village life program will offer an in-depth cultural explo-ration of the Italian lakes, with talks by local experts, meetings with villagers, and guided

tours of the art, architecture, and history of this extraordinary region.

During our tour we will explore the town of Como, viewing wood-beamed houses, mag-nificent Renaissance churches, and spectacu-lar lakefront promenade; travel by boat to the Borromean Islands, and visit the palazzo and gardens of Isola Bella; and tour Bellagio, one of the prettiest towns in Europe. We also will visit fashionable Milan, and witness one of the key images of the western civilization, the Cenacolo (Last Supper) by Leonardo da Vinci.

Australia and New Zealand: From the Outback to the GlaciersOCTOBER 21–NOVEMBER 7-with Professor of Music Allen Bonde, a pianist and composer who will offer insights into the two nations’ musical history. Join us on this trip “down under” to explore a place that is quite unlike any other on earth. Our tour will begin in Melbourne with tours of the Fitzroy Gardens, the Shrine of Remembrance, the Parliament House, and the renowned nature reserve, Phillip Island. Then we fly to Alice Springs to discover the beliefs and customs of the Aboriginal people. Near Cairns, we board a high-speed catamaran to the Great Barrier Reef. In New Zealand, our first stop will be in the beauti-ful English-style city of Christchurch. Then we journey across New Zealand’s spectacular Southern Alps before crossing the Haast Pass to arrive in Queenstown, set on the edge of a glacial lake. On to the rugged grandeur of the Hollyford Valley and Milford Sound, where we will enjoy a fascinating cruise. The trip culminates in New Zealand’s most famous national park, Mount Cook. An optional two-night stay in the beautiful island of Fiji is available at the end of the tour.

NOTE: Nancy Lech, director of Lech Educational Travel since 1996, will retire March 1, 2006. Nancy has run the educational travel pro-gram for the Alumnae Association for many years. Hundreds of alumnae and their families have traveled with Nancy, and we will miss her. After March 1, trip inquiries may be directed to W. Rochelle Calhoun, Alumnae Association executive director, 50 College St., South Hadley, MA 01075-1486; 413-538-2300; [email protected]. Until March 1, please contact Nancy at [email protected].

hand-engraved tag bracelet(s), key fob/slide, and pill box to commemorate your or a loved one’s experience at MHC. Go to www.MFJinc.com and click on

Mount Holyoke Jewelry and Gifts.

CLASS OF 1992 MHC Beach TowelsPlush white beach towels with the new Mount Holyoke logo. A great gift for current students and alums! $15.

Brigham Blend and Deacon Porter Decaf Fair-Trade CoffeesThe class of 1992, in conjunction with Dean’s Beans, is selling MHC-themed fair-trade, whole-bean coffee. Brigham Blend and Deacon Porter Decaf, certified by the Fair Trade Federation. Brigham Blend: $9/lb. + s&h; Deacon Porter Decaf: $10/lb. + s&h.

Poster of Mount Holyoke Blue LawsCalligraphy by Andrea Pax ’92. $20. Ten actual blue laws transcribed from the Holyoke Transcript-Telegram of 1862. Think the rules are tough now? Be thankful you weren’t at MHC then.

To purchase any of these items, please contact Erin Ennis ’92 at [email protected] or go to www.mhc1992.com/devo/stuff.asp.

CLASS OF 1995Got Milk (& Cookies)?Share the M&Cs tradition with a white onesie, printed in black with our take on this now-classic phrase. Available in six-month and twelve-month sizes and a steal at $12 each! Proceeds benefit the class of 1995. To order, visit www.mhc1995.com.

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rd ]CLASS OF 1999Mountain Day Care Packages Craving a taste of Mount Holyoke? The class of 1999 is offering Mountain Day care packages (avail-able year-round) from Atkins Farms for $20 plus $6 s/h. Please check out our Web site (www.mhc1999.com) for the order form or call Atkins Farms Country Market (800-594-9537) directly.

BOSTON CLUBMount Holyoke Mirrors,Desk Boxes, and PaintingsMary Lyon Tower and Field Memorial Gate in reverse painting on glass surmounts a handsome mirror, the whole framed (15” x 26”) in antique sil-ver and gold tones. Crafted by Eglomise Designs of Boston’s university series, the view is also available atop a walnut desk box with brass fittings (123/4” x 73/4” x 25/8”). Painting also comes alone in silver-toned frame (15” x 10”). Prices: mirror, $180; desk box, $180; painting, $150; shipping, handling, and sales tax included.

Mount Holyoke ChairsFinished in semigloss black with hand-screened gold-leaf College seal on back, they’re great for home or office. Armchair (natural cherry arms), $310 + $35 freight prepaid; Boston rocker, $300 + freight (billed after shipment, estimated at $100–$150 preassembled; $25–$50 unassembled); child’s rocker, $190 + $25 freight prepaid; swivel desk chairs and lamps (prices available upon request). Freight via UPS except for rocker. Prices subject to change; allow 12–16 weeks for delivery.

Reed and Barton Silver-PlatedPaul Revere BowlsFrom Taunton, Massachusetts. 41/4”, $38; 51/4”, $42; 6”, $49; 8”, $65; 9”, $73. Plus $5 s/h. Engraving, $5 flat fee for simple name or date; additional text 35¢/letter. Gift-boxed with clear plastic liner. Massachusetts residents, add 5 percent tax.

Lobsters by MailLive lobsters shipped to your destination by UPS Next-Day Air. Call number below for prices at seasonal market rates. Tax, shipping/ handling included.

Chelsea ClocksFrom Chelsea, Massachusetts: Paperweight brass desk button clock (2” diameter), $105; Newport: wall-mounted clock (41/2” diameter), $170; Chatham: round dial with mahogany base (41/2” high), $215; Carriage clock: Roman numer-als (63/4” high), $245; Presidential: mahogany base (71/2” high), $315. Plus $5 s/h, plus $25 flat fee for engraving costs, plus $5/line; Massachusetts resi-dents add 5 percent tax. Gift-boxed.

Ordering through the Boston Club. Send all orders, with checks payable to Boston Mount Holyoke Club, to Jane Chandler Weiss ’59, 492 Beacon Street #33, Boston, MA 02115-1002 (617-267-5504).

BRITAIN CLUBPlacemats and CoastersAnnouncing new Mount Holyoke placemats and coasters from England—the perfect gift. Beautiful campus scenes in all seasons grace these specially commissioned placemats and coasters from the

well-known English company Lady Clare Limited. First created in 1932 by Lady Clare Pigott for din-ner parties at the British Embassy in Paris to save on laundry bills for stiff white tablecloths, these heatproof, long-wearing mats became an instant success with guests. In sturdy melamine with green felt backing, our placemats and coasters are supplied in sets of four in a gift box. Each set fea-tures four different campus photographs (including Mary Lyon Hall and clock tower, Field memorial gate, the library, and the chapel) surrounded by a dark green border and gold banding. For photos and ordering information see www.mtholyoke.edu or www.mountholyoke.co.uk. Commissioned by the Mount Holyoke Club of Britain to support the Alumnae Scholar Fund.

CAPE COD CLUBNotecards and Postcards“Boats and Fishing Shacks” notecards (6”x7” with matching envelopes in packets of four) reproduced in six colors from an original hand-cut woodblock. “Sandpipers on the Beach” postcards reproduced from an etching in aqua in a packet of ten. $5 each. Massachusetts residents, add 5 percent sales tax. Make checks payable to Mount Holyoke Club of Cape Cod; send with order to Barbara H. Tucker (daughter of the artist, Marcia Herrick Howe ’24), 175 Winter St., Lincoln, MA 01773 (781-259-0204).

GENESEE VALLEY (NEW YORK) MOUNT HOLYOKE CLUBPet Leashes Sturdy, polypropylene pet leashes are each 6’ long and 3/4” wide with a heavy-duty metal clasp. Leashes are royal blue, with the words MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE woven in white block let-ters with decorative paw prints. $13 each. Please send a check payable to the Genesee Valley Mount Holyoke Club to Sara Greenleaf ’92, 10 Bay Heights Circle, Geneva, NY 14456.

GREATER SOUTH HADLEY Cocktail Napkins White, two-ply with College seal in royal blue. Packages of 25, $3 each. Minimum of four packages if order is to be shipped; add $3 for shipping.

Hand Towels11” x 16” white terry cloth with blue MHC seal. A subtle, but distinctive, way to promote MHC to your guests. $5 each.

Luggage Straps1” woven luggage straps, quick-release buckle, small plastic luggage tag, royal blue, MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE in white block letters writ-ten four times. $15 plus $1 s/h.

100 Percent Silk Scarves8” x 54” depicting the Mount Holyoke Range in color groups of sunset (red/purple and black), sum-mer (blues and white), and winter (black, gray, and white). Hand painted by Sally Hall Dillon ’68 of Amherst. $62 includes s/h, no tax. New additional size: 12” x 60”. Same color selections. $68 includes s/h, no tax. You may choose charmeuse (plain) or jacquard (patterned fabric). Allow three weeks for delivery. Be sure to specify size, color group, and fabric choice when ordering.

“The Orchards” DVD/VHSProduced by WBGY in Springfield, “From

Tee to Green: The History of The Orchards” chronicles the story of this 18-hole champion-ship golf course designed by the legendary Donald Ross for the daughter of industrialist Joseph Skinner, and once owned by Mount Holyoke College. From its beginnings to its 2004 role as the site of the USGA’s 59th U.S. Women’s Open, it has long been referred to as a gem, an adjective used by many who attended the event as well as the women who played the course last summer. The story, told with photographs from the College’s Archives and Special Collections and rare memorabilia, traces its rich history, lore and traditions. Available in either DVD or VHS form (please specify). Cost is $19.95 plus $2 s/h. An excellent gift to yourself, or for alumnae friends and golfers in general.

Ordering information: send order and check, payable to the Mount Holyoke Club of Greater South Hadley, to Cindy White Morrell ’68, 135 Woodbridge St., South Hadley, MA 01075-1128, 413-532-1864, [email protected]. Massachusetts residents should add 5 percent tax for all items except the scarves.

HOUSTON CLUBMontblanc PensGeneration Pens. Rich medium blue. MHC seal engraved on pen cap. Fountain pen (14 kt. gold nib)—#13101, $235; rollerball—#13301, $175; ballpoint—#13201, $165; and pen-cil—#13401, $115. Meisterstück Solitaire Doué Pens. Jet black with 925 sterling silver Mount Holyoke College engraved on pen cap. Fountain pen (18 kt. gold nib)—#144DS, $495; rollerball—#163DS, $375; ballpoint—#164DS, $375; pencil—#165DS, $375. Black leather pen case avail-able for one (#30301, $85) or two (#30302, $95) writ-ing instruments. All nibs are medium (nib exchange pos-sible through Montblanc); Generation writing instruments can be engraved on left or right side (please specify). Special Edition Millennium Noblesse Oblige Pens. Available in red, green, blue, or black with MHC seal engraved opposite “1837–2000.” Pencil—#15440, $120; ballpoint—#15240, $120; roll-

travel opportunities Sponsored by the Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College

Ancient Treasures of EgyptFEBRUARY 10–20, 2006—with photojournal-ist/historian Payne Johnson and Linda Murray Johnson ’74This trip has been filled.

Cruising the Mighty MississippiAPRIL 20–29, 2006This trip has been canceled.

Exploring Spain’s History and ArchitectureMAY 20–31, 2006—with Professor of Art Michael Davis, a specialist in Gothic archi-tectureSpain’s ancient civilization has left a wealth of architecture to explore, from prehistoric caves and Celtic settlements to Roman and Moorish monuments; Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance structures; Art Nouveau palaces; and more recently, Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim. Join Michael Davis, professor of art, as we explore these wonders, beginning in Madrid, where we will visit the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, the Prado Museum, and the eighteenth-century Royal Botanical Gardens, among others. In Toledo we will visit the Gothic-style cathedral; the Church of Santo Tomé, which houses El Greco’s masterpiece, The Burial of Count Orgaz; the synagogue of El Tránsito; and the cloister of the Church of San Juan de los Reyes. In northern Spain, we will see the Cathedral of Burgos and the Monastery of Las Huelgas Reales. In Bilbao, we’ll visit the Guggenheim Museum, then stop in Pamplona to visit the Gothic-style cathedral and the Museum of Navarra before arriving in Olite for a two-night stay. Our final stop will be Barcelona, where we will take a walking tour explor-ing the Gothic Quarter and Las Ramblas and visit the Cathedral, Santa Maria del Mar

Church, and Antoni Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia. Outside of Barcelona, we visit the impressive Roman ruins of Empurie; Gerona, and finally, Montserrat.

Waterways of RussiaJULY 26–AUGUST 7, 2006—with Professor of Russian Studies Stephen Jones, an expert on post-Soviet societiesThis distinctive tour follows the network of rivers, lakes, and canals that link Moscow with St. Petersburg. Golden-domed churches and quaint wooden villages dot the verdant landscape, and the gentle light of summer evenings gives an otherworldly dimension to Russia’s great “blue road” of waterways. This travel program will include three full days in Moscow; six days of cruising the Volga, Svir, and Neva rivers and Lakes Rybinskoye and Beloye; and three full days in St. Petersburg. Accommodations throughout the program will be aboard the comfortable ninety-four-passenger MS Yesenin. By virtue of its low passenger capacity, this Austrian-managed vessel offers a personal level of service not found on larger ships. Highlights include a visit to the Kremlin and a tour of Red Square. Among your ports of call along the great “blue road” are Uglich, Yaroslavl, Goritsy and Kizhi Island. Conclude in St. Petersburg, Russia’s “window to the West,” with its exquisite architecture, canals, and bridges.

Village Life in the Italian Lake DistrictSEPTEMBER 13–20, 2006—accompanied by a local, professional guideCentered at the four-star, deluxe Palace Hotel on the shores of Lake Como, this village life program will offer an in-depth cultural explo-ration of the Italian lakes, with talks by local experts, meetings with villagers, and guided

tours of the art, architecture, and history of this extraordinary region.

During our tour we will explore the town of Como, viewing wood-beamed houses, mag-nificent Renaissance churches, and spectacu-lar lakefront promenade; travel by boat to the Borromean Islands, and visit the palazzo and gardens of Isola Bella; and tour Bellagio, one of the prettiest towns in Europe. We also will visit fashionable Milan, and witness one of the key images of the western civilization, the Cenacolo (Last Supper) by Leonardo da Vinci.

Australia and New Zealand: From the Outback to the GlaciersOCTOBER 21–NOVEMBER 7-with Professor of Music Allen Bonde, a pianist and composer who will offer insights into the two nations’ musical history. Join us on this trip “down under” to explore a place that is quite unlike any other on earth. Our tour will begin in Melbourne with tours of the Fitzroy Gardens, the Shrine of Remembrance, the Parliament House, and the renowned nature reserve, Phillip Island. Then we fly to Alice Springs to discover the beliefs and customs of the Aboriginal people. Near Cairns, we board a high-speed catamaran to the Great Barrier Reef. In New Zealand, our first stop will be in the beauti-ful English-style city of Christchurch. Then we journey across New Zealand’s spectacular Southern Alps before crossing the Haast Pass to arrive in Queenstown, set on the edge of a glacial lake. On to the rugged grandeur of the Hollyford Valley and Milford Sound, where we will enjoy a fascinating cruise. The trip culminates in New Zealand’s most famous national park, Mount Cook. An optional two-night stay in the beautiful island of Fiji is available at the end of the tour.

NOTE: Nancy Lech, director of Lech Educational Travel since 1996, will retire March 1, 2006. Nancy has run the educational travel pro-gram for the Alumnae Association for many years. Hundreds of alumnae and their families have traveled with Nancy, and we will miss her. After March 1, trip inquiries may be directed to W. Rochelle Calhoun, Alumnae Association executive director, 50 College St., South Hadley, MA 01075-1486; 413-538-2300; [email protected]. Until March 1, please contact Nancy at [email protected].

hand-engraved tag bracelet(s), key fob/slide, and pill box to commemorate your or a loved one’s experience at MHC. Go to www.MFJinc.com and click on

Mount Holyoke Jewelry and Gifts.

CLASS OF 1992 MHC Beach TowelsPlush white beach towels with the new Mount Holyoke logo. A great gift for current students and alums! $15.

Brigham Blend and Deacon Porter Decaf Fair-Trade CoffeesThe class of 1992, in conjunction with Dean’s Beans, is selling MHC-themed fair-trade, whole-bean coffee. Brigham Blend and Deacon Porter Decaf, certified by the Fair Trade Federation. Brigham Blend: $9/lb. + s&h; Deacon Porter Decaf: $10/lb. + s&h.

Poster of Mount Holyoke Blue LawsCalligraphy by Andrea Pax ’92. $20. Ten actual blue laws transcribed from the Holyoke Transcript-Telegram of 1862. Think the rules are tough now? Be thankful you weren’t at MHC then.

To purchase any of these items, please contact Erin Ennis ’92 at [email protected] or go to www.mhc1992.com/devo/stuff.asp.

CLASS OF 1995Got Milk (& Cookies)?Share the M&Cs tradition with a white onesie, printed in black with our take on this now-classic phrase. Available in six-month and twelve-month sizes and a steal at $12 each! Proceeds benefit the class of 1995. To order, visit www.mhc1995.com.

NEW


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$200. To order, please call Laurie Krebs Hesse ’87 at 281-997-6557.

LYON’S PRIDE Mount Holyoke NotecardsMount Holyoke College students sledding on campus in the 1920s adorn these beautiful note-cards—perfect for holiday greetings. A set of ten top-quality notecards with matching enve-lopes, 4” x 5.5”, on white card stock; $12 per set (plus shipping: $2 for one set, $4 for 2–4 sets, $5 for 5–6 sets and $6 for 7–9 sets). The notecards are reproduced from an original vin-tage photograph. Send check, payable to Mount Holyoke Lyon’s Pride, to Amy Pelletier ’94, 163 Aldrich Rd, Belchertown, MA 01007.

MYSTIC VALLEY (MASSACHUSETTS) CLUB License Plates Show your pride in MHC with this fine aluminum vanity plate displaying the College name and

logo; blue on white; $5 plus $1.50 postage. Massachusetts resi-dents, add 5 percent sales tax. Send check, payable to Mount

Holyoke Club of Mystic Valley, to Nancy Bancroft Ghareeb ’59, 91 MacArthur Rd., Stoneham, MA 02180-3411.

NEW YORK CITY CLUBMHC-NYC Exclusive Zagat GuideThe Mount Holyoke Alumnae Club of New York City is offering the exclusive MHC edition of the indispensable Zagat restaurant guide. The guides are custom designed with gilt edges and the Mount Holyoke logo emblazoned on an elegant dark blue cover. The 2006 restaurant guides are available for New York City, Long Island, Westchester/Hudson Valley, New Jersey, Connecticut/So NY, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, and Washington, DC. Quantities are limited. $15 each, please add $1 per order for shipping. Please go to www.mountholyokeclubofnewyork.com or contact [email protected] for more information.

NORTHERN NEW JERSEY CLUBGift CandyMints for Mount Holyoke are thick and creamy, covered in dark chocolate, leaf-shaped, and individually wrapped in green foil. Eight oz. box, $10. Almond Butter Crunch, 12 oz. box with College seal, $14. From Buddy Squirrel in Wisconsin—bite-size Almond Butter Toffee, 10 oz. box, $12. Add $7 s/h. Send check, payable to Mount Holyoke Club of Northern New Jersey, to Suzanne Fresh Anderson ’58, 32 Druid Hill Rd., Summit, NJ 07901; [email protected].

Alumna Window DecalAn alternative to conventional college decals, ours includes the College seal in blue with the words “Mount Holyoke” around the top and “Alumna” below the seal; approximately 3” in diameter. Get

several for cars and other windows. $2, payable to Mount Holyoke Club of Northern New Jersey; send to Carolyn Conant-Hiley ’83, 15 Pomeroy Rd., Madison, NJ 07940-2638.

PITTSBURGH CLUBBlazer Buttons—Closeout Sale!Mount Holyoke College 24-kt. gold-plated blazer buttons with enameled logo from the Ben Silver Collection. Originally $125, now only $70! One set includes six small and three large but-tons—the perfect gift for all MHC women. Make checks payable to the Mount Holyoke Club of Pittsburgh and send to MHC Blazer Buttons, 5700 Munhall Rd., Apt. 4, Pittsburgh, PA 15217.

TURKEY CLUBHandmade FIMO NecklacesFIMO is a versatile, pliable polymer clay with brilliant color intensity. (FIMO is an acronym for the clay’s inventor, Fifi Rehbinder, and for mosaic.) The FIMO clay is kneaded by hand and sculpted by layering, pressing, squeezing, pinching, rolling, and cutting—a process that requires much skill. Once it is oven-baked it becomes a sturdy, durable object. A talented

young friend of our club is making the most incredible necklaces with this material. The patterns are influenced in part by personal percep-tions and in part by dynamics from the environment, but mostly it is whim and inge-

nuity. Consequently each single bead of each necklace is unique. These exquisite necklaces are handcrafted to delight you and your close friends and family; they are much too pretty to give to just anyone. The cost of one necklace is $15 plus $5 for s/h. The necklaces can be seen at www.angelfire.com/mt/holyoke/products.html. To order, please contact Arzu Gurz Abay ’94 at [email protected].

WASHINGTON STATE CLUB Let’s Go Camping in a National ParkDelightful book about a family’s first camping trip, by Jean Valens Bullard ’46, for children and grandchildren. Full-color drawings by a National Park naturalist are highlighted by “scratch-and-sniff” scents (pine tree, campfire smoke, skunk, wildflowers, etc.); some pages have music for singing. $5 postpaid; half of book price goes to club. Write “MHC Gift” on check, payable to Sirpos Press, 2323 46th Ave. SW, Seattle, WA 98116-2416 (206-938-0837). Autographed if desired. Give information for names or special message. Guaranteed to delight. More than 105,000 copies sold.

Alzheimer’s AdviceCatch a Falling Star: Living with Alzheimer’s, by Jean Valens Bullard ’46 and Betty Spohr, is an informative, comforting, true story of an artist whose husband had Alzheimer’s. Full of ideas on how to cope, it offers spouses, relatives, caretak-ers, nursing-home attendants—anyone who is facing this disease—a clear understanding of what

actually happens to the Alzheimer’s patient. The late Siegried Achorn Centerwall ’46, M.D., once described this book as “compelling; in truth, the ultimate love story.” $9.95 postpaid (one-third of price goes to club); paperback, 215 pp., 103 draw-ings. Order from the author at Sirpos Press (see above). Alumnae have called to thank Jean for writing this helpful book.

WESTCHESTER (N.Y.) CLUBCollege Seal Embroidery KitsThe original version of these cross-stitch kits sold very well during Mount Holyoke’s sesquicenten-nial. This improved version features an easy-to-follow, full-color, inkjet-printed design chart. The seal, in three shades of blue, measures 11” square, just the right size for a 14” square frame or pillow form. Also included are fourteen-count ivory Aida cloth, DMC floss, tapestry needle, and full instruc-tions from which the uncommon woman can teach herself this easier-than-it-looks craft. One alumna reports that her framed, cross-stitched seal hangs on her office wall, where it attracts far more atten-tion and admiration than the law-school diploma hanging next to it! $23 per kit plus $4 postage for any quantity. Add $2 each if you would also like a 5” spring-tension embroidery hoop. New York residents, please add sales tax. Send orders, with check payable to Sharon Campbell Rubens ’73, to 188 Deerfield Lane North, Pleasantville, NY 10570; 914-769-1505; [email protected]. The Mount Holyoke Club of Westchester receives one-quarter of the proceeds.

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION The DeLonga Print

Limited edition (of 500) linocut print of block carving by Leonard A. DeLonga, who taught sculpture at MHC from 1964 until his death in 1991. Features medieval subject matter, a recur-ring theme of his work, in a variety of media. Printed on Rives light-weight rag paper (9” x

12” on 131/8” x 171/8” paper) by Nancy L. Coleman ’71, former chief assistant to DeLonga, at Benoni Press, Damariscotta Mills, Maine. Signed and num-bered by DeLonga’s wife, Sandy. $50 each. Sales benefit the scholarship fund, particularly students who have encountered unexpected financial set-backs in their senior year.

Logo Pendants/CharmsMHC logo in 14 kt. gold. Chain not included. $90

Logo PinMHC logo in 14 kt. gold. $95

Ordering Through the Alumnae AssociationMake check payable to Alumnae Association of MHC. Massachusetts residents, add 5 percent sales tax. Prices include postage. Send with order to the Alumnae Association (Attn: Products), MHC, 50 College St., South Hadley, MA 01075-1486.

Truly, mine is a global classroom, and we are becoming a global college. Of our 2,100 students, 22 percent are ALANA students, and the 16 percent who are international students come from seventy countries; our domestic students come from forty-eight states.

The students bring such a complex world with them into the classroom that it can nearly serve as a laboratory in which to figure out how that world “works.” In my intro-ductory comparative politics class, twelve of the twenty-five had grown up outside the United States—in Kenya, Bhutan, Bulgaria, Pakistan, Ghana, Costa Rica, India, Latvia, and Saudi Arabia. Several of the American students had lived and studied in France and Germany, and more would leave in six months for their junior year abroad.

The purpose of the course is to investigate the twin pro-cesses of democratization and development, and try to under-stand how they affect each other, and how each is affected by the multiple dimensions of globalization. Class became a forum where these central political questions could be dis-cussed, sometimes with a good deal of passion. Any time anyone would argue that democracy would eventually solve all kinds of problems, for example, the Saudi student would remind us that democratic elections can be extremely desta-bilizing under certain circumstances. Then everyone would have to engage at a much deeper level, to articulate the con-ditions under which democratic elections could help resolve conflicts and not exacerbate them.

In my advanced seminar on the European Union, only two of the twenty students were without a substantial experience abroad. Five students from Bulgaria, Romania, and Poland made our discussions of the expansion of the EU into central Europe anything but remote or abstract. And the seniors fresh from their junior years [abroad] were quick to grasp what is at stake when a country adopts the euro or is subject to the European Court of Justice.

So, in many ways, these young women are quite different from those I taught thirty years ago. They assume they can and will live and work in other countries, speak another lan-guage perhaps, and certainly negotiate across ethnic, cultural, and racial “boundaries.” The non-US citizens are all bilingual

or even trilingual. Most of the US and international students are multicultural as well, [with] significant experience and deep knowledge of more than one culture. They are all deeply suspicious of any claim to superiority, be it based on national identity, gender, or religious practice.

Because they live in such an expanded world, they are also well acquainted with violence, war, poverty, and other forms of social disorder and suffering. There is no easy optimism anymore, much less a romantic belief in the inevitability of progress. They are skeptical of any simple program that guar-antees radical change. They know too much about systems of privilege, exploitation, and injustice. They have known vio-lence in their families, in their schools, on their streets, and in all the media. They are not fearful, but they are alert, cau-tious, and sophisticated about the ways of the world.

The last essential difference shapes and animates all the others. They have grown up “inside” the Web. Here is a fas-cinating paradox about our experience of globalization: [the world] seems limitless in scope, diversity, and complexity [yet] that limitless diversity is also present right here on my screen, with the click of a few keys. In some profound way, space and distance have collapsed into a nearly overwhelming Now, a present “moment” of infinite possibility.

If it is true that young people experience space and time quite differently than do older generations, it may also be true that they learn differently. I notice an ease with visual infor-mation and less skill in working out complex textual argu-ments, for example. I wish they were more critical of what they read on Web sites, especially since authorship is so much more difficult to ascertain. For them, information is more fluid. For older readers, it comes in more discrete “chunks,” and we can evaluate its source and point of view more easily.

These are significant, but I am much more impressed by the deep similarities from one generation to the next. I think even Mary Lyon, after a little acclimatization, would recognize us all as “her” students.

Penny Gill is Mary Lyon Professor of Humanities and professor of politics. This piece was adapted from a talk she gave for the Lyon Lecture Series.To

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lastlookAre Today’s Students Different?

One Professor’s ‘Report from the Field’

By Penny Gill

I arrived at Mount Holyoke exactly sure of where I was going. It took four years in the College’s diverse, challenging, and welcoming environment to develop a comfort with the unknown. Now I eagerly face each day having no idea what will happen.

Jennifer E. Gieseking ’99

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Embodying orientation’s theme, “Women Leading/Leading Women,” returning stu-dent leaders in pink and green T-shirts helped new students find their way—and get their bearings—during their first days on campus.

mount holyoke alumnae quarterly fall 2005

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