Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly Spring 2008 by Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College

A lu m n ae Q uart e r ly

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Spring 2008

Big Picture ALumnae shape The Visual Arts

Artist Joan Edwards Jonas ’58

K eeper of the D ream

30 Y ears F ighting A ddiction

G overnment : M ore or L ess ?

O nline C ourses

Big Picture By H a r p e r m o n tg o m e ry ’ 94

Alumnae are making art relevant in a world where it’s becoming less and less visible.

Keeper of the Dream, Instrument of Change by l e a n n a ja m e s b l ac k w e l l

A portrait of professor, activist, historian, and writer Katherine Butler Jones ’57 (shown here at age 6)

Finding the Courage to Change by S u s a n b u sh e y ’ 9 6

MHC’s thirty-year-old Drug and Alcohol Awareness Program helps women move beyond addiction.

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On the cover:

Joan Edwards Jonas ’58 literally helped invent “installation art” and develop a multi-media approach to art making. Her current work continues to be critically acclaimed and internationally exhibited. Cover photo by Joseph Lawton

Mount Holyoke Quarterly Spring 2008 Volume 92 Number 1 Editor Emily Harrison Weir

Associate Editor Mieke H. Bomann

Class Notes Editor Erica C. Winter ’92

Designer

2 viewpoints 4 campus currents 30 off the shelf 34 alumnae matters 40 class notes 78 bulletin board & travel

Government: More or Less? Great minds don’t agree. Economics professor James Hartley argues for limited government; politics professor Douglas Amy favors a greater role for government.

James Baker Design

Editorial Assistant Anindita Dasgupta ’08

Quarterly Committee: Linda Giannasi O’Connell ’69 (chair), Kara C. Baskin ’00, Meg Massey ’08 (student rep.), Charlotte Overby ’87, Amy Springer ’87 (faculty rep.), Hannah Wallace ’95, Mary Graham Davis ’65, ex officio with vote; W. Rochelle Calhoun ’83, ex officio without vote Alumnae Association Board of Directors President* Mary Graham Davis ’65 Vice President* TBA Clerk* Sandra A. Mallalieu ’91 Treasurer* Linda Ing Phelps ’86 Alumnae Quarterly Linda Giannasi Matys O’Connell ’69

Inside the Global Classroom By H a n n a h Wa l l ac e ’ 9 5

Mount Holyoke pilots its first online courses for alumnae.

Alumnae Trustee Ellen Cosgrove ’84 Alumnae Relations Cynthia L. Reed ’80 Classes and Reunions Susan Swart Rice ’70 Clubs Lily Klebanoff Blake ’64 Director-at-Large Maureen McHale Hood ’87 Nominating Chair Jill M. Brethauer ’70 Young Alumnae Representative Lisa M. Utzinger ’02 Executive Director W. Rochelle Calhoun ’83 ex officio without vote *Executive Committee The Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College, Inc., 50 College St., South Hadley, MA 01075-1486; 413-538-2300; www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu. Mou n t Ho lyo k e Al u m na e Qua r t e r ly I

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 2008 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 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 Street, South Hadley, MA 01075-1486; tel. 413-538-2301; fax 413-538-2254; e-mail: eweir@mtholyoke. edu. (413-538-3094, ecwinter@mtholyoke. edu for class notes.) Send address changes to Alumnae Information Services (same address; 413-538-2303; ais@ mtholyoke.edu). Call 413-538-2300 with general questions regarding the Alumnae Association, or visit www.alumnae. mtholyoke.edu. POSTMASTER: (ISSN 0027-2493) (USPS 365-280) Please send form 3579 to Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly, 50 College Street, South Hadley, MA 01075-1486.

Wi n t e r 2 0 0 8

viewpoints

The Abbreviated College

What is the name of our college? Is it Mount Holyoke? Or is it Mt. Holyoke? Is it both? Does it matter? For many of my generation, Miss Harriet Newhall was the face of Mount Holyoke College. She told us never, never to abbreviate “Mount” to “Mt.” It simply was wrong. Unfortunately, with the Internet, we now have mtholyoke.edu everywhere. I think the integrity of our college name was sacrificed to save a few keyboard strokes; perhaps mhc. edu would have been a better abbreviation if that were the intent. Mine is a serious question provoked by a slide I recently saw in a presentation at Yale. Our college was shown as Mt. Holyoke, and I cringed a bit. Does the college now approve of that abbreviation in print or only on the Internet? Barbara Blanco Gaab ‘60 New Haven, Connecticut [Editor’s note: Miss Newhall would no doubt be pleased to know that Mount Holyoke is used in all college communications. (Mt. Holyoke refers to the mountain, not the college.) Our Web address

is mtholyoke.edu, but mhc. edu is already in use by another institution.]

Born Gay, Sister

It just rips my heart apart to read a homophobic letter such as the one Lenora Castles Bryant ’64 sent to the winter 2008 Quarterly. Her reaction to the Jolene Fund (which aids gay Mount Holyoke students who have been cut off from funding by their parents) is not unexpected, simply disappointing and cruel. One doesn’t choose to become gay. One is born gay. Throughout history there have been gay people who have chosen to live straight lives but at great mental and emotional cost. No one is forcing Ms. Bryant to live the life she has chosen; no one is insisting that she become gay. Why can’t she allow others the same kind of freedom to live an honest, open life? At Mount Holyoke, one gets a full view of what she terms “both sides” of the sexual orientation question. I always found Mount Holyoke to be strongly “straight” oriented. And I am outraged that she suggests

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that only straight people face “real” dilemmas. Gays also work, have families, have children, own homes, meet mortgages, put their children through school, and take care of their elderly parents. Ms. Bryant would throw away those young women who suddenly find themselves without support at Mount Holyoke. What a waste of potential! I suggest that anyone with true family values consider contributing to the Jolene Fund. It embraces what some might consider the more uncommon of Mount Holyoke’s uncommon women. It shows that no one is disposable. The sisterhood of Mount Holyoke is surely strong and thoughtful and charitable enough to embrace all its members. Pamela Thiele ’70 Lakewood, Colorado [Editor’s note: More comments on this topic are online at alumnae. mtholyoke.edu.]

Ethical Nepal

I was excited to see the article “Doing Well by Doing Good” (fall 2007 Quarterly), but

was disappointed that I missed the opportunity to promote my work. Himalayan Techies (www. himalayantechies.com) is an offshore software development company I founded in 2000 in Katmandu, Nepal. I moved here, after adopting the first of my two Nepali children, so that I could more easily “make a difference.” My company is dedicated to privatesector job creation; we employ educated Nepalis who would otherwise have to leave the country to find meaningful work. Foreign employment, and the resulting foreign remittances, is the single largest contributor to Nepal’s economy. This, in a country struggling to retain values such as multigenerational families living under one roof. Himalayan Techies is doing its bit to help Nepal retain its unique cultural identity while engaging in the global economy. Living in a part of the world in which aid money calls the shots, I am passionate about for-profit development. Himalayan Techies is living proof that this model works. We write software, under contract, for small to

viewpoints

midsized companies in America and the United Kingdom. Generally, the work would not be done at all if prevailing local wages had to be paid, so we are creating jobs, not stealing them. Significantly, our developers learn how to operate and thrive in an Americanstyle entrepreneurial organization. They learn to question plans and processes proposed by our clients, and me. This translates into a sense of having more power in society. Many of our developers are now actively involved in not-for-profit initiatives outside HT, using their newfound voices to build a better Nepal, and so a better world. Ellie Skeele ’75 Katmandu, Nepal

What’s Wrong With Me?

It’s alienating enough when you know something is wrong, health-wise; it’s worse when your concerns are dismissed. Hopefully, during Kara Baskin’s odyssey for answers (“Fear Itself,” fall 2007 Quarterly), she did not come across attitudes such

as, “What you’re looking for is a doctor who will tell you what you want to hear.” That comment from a medical doctor did not stop my searches, despite my debilitated state. Like Kara, I too, pored over Web sites, even subscribing to Medscape for the latest on osteoporosis—one of the manifestations of my condition. Finally, I found a new family physician who read my lab reports with care, discovering the underlying cause of several issues. Now in my third year of revisions, with proper attention to complications and better nutritional guidance, I’m aiming to fully function again someday. Kara’s article should help those debilitated by littleunderstood conditions, or by medical inattentiveness. It should also inspire those who persist in seeking solutions when something is not quite right. Sydney Hedderich ’74 Toronto, Canada

Outsourcing Childcare?

Today I received the news that the College is revamping its children’s services, which in effect will change the quality

of programming for MHC students studying in the Psychology and Education Department as well as for the children and families attending. I have been following the discussions from afar with interest since I have been an MHC student in the program, a parent of children attending the Gorse Child Study Center, and a teacher at Gorse. I know intimately the quality of the programming that Gorse provides for both students and children. I am so disappointed to hear that the program will be “outsourced.” Our college will be losing a program that is unique and serves the students in ways that will not be able to be replicated. Surely there is a way for the college to avoid following in the footsteps of major corporations that consolidate services to the detriment of the consumer. Suzannah Heard FP’77 Arrowsic, Maine [Editor’s note: For details on the college’s decision, see the brief in Campus Currents; more comments about Gorse are online at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu.]

New Letters Policy We continue to welcome letters for the printed Quarterly. In addition, readers are encouraged to post their comments to the Quarterly’s online “blogazine.” Letters for which we don’t have room in the printed magazine will be posted online. In turn, comments from the blogazine may be published in the printed magazine, as space permits. The editors will edit correspondence for accuracy and clarity and to meet space needs. Three ways to share your thoughts: 1. Post comments on the blogazine (Go to alumnae. mtholyoke.edu, click on “current issue,” find the article on which you’re commenting, and click on “add/view comments.”) 2. Send an e-mail to associate editor Mieke Bomann at mbomann@ mtholyoke.edu. 3. Mail a letter to Mieke Bomann, Alumnae Quarterly, Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College, 50 College St., South Hadley, MA 01075-1486.

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campuscurrents

New Track and Field the Stuff of Dreams

“Our old track wasn’t worthy,” explained track

coach Tina Lee, who has seen her share of tracks and straightaways in the twenty-one years she’s been with the college. It not only had just six lanes, which quickly became outmoded when competitive tracks started featuring eight, but also was showing signs of serious wear and tear. “We had a lot of injuries because the surface was so hard and worn down,”

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she said. “This surface will reduce the number of injuries.” She is also excited about the prospect of faster times across the board for competitors thanks to the new track’s improved resilience. Lee also noted that women’s steeplechase—a 3,000-meter race with a water barrier—is now a sanctioned event that the new track accommodates. When the college’s old

track was built, it had been a male-only event. Recruitment this year yielded some strong track applicants, who are excited about what they see. Said Natalie J. Martin ’08, a member of both the crosscountry and track teams, “This will help in bringing the best athletes to Mount Holyoke. When they look at us in comparison to our peers, now our fields are the superior ones.”

john Risley

Coaches and athletes are giving the college’s new track and field two thumbs up. A synthetic, multipurpose field completed late last fall, it is lit and surrounded by an eight-lane track with a nine-lane straightaway. The new facility allowed the college to host a home track meet in April, its first since 1996.

She noted her team now has the advantage of using a large, open space, rather than being confined in the field house. This allows competitors to work on every aspect of the game, Esber said, especially midfield transition, which is nearly impossible to understand and practice indoors. Updating the college’s athletic facilities is a priority of the Campaign for Mount Holyoke fundraising effort, currently under way.— M.H.B. Web Extra: for seasonal sports highlights, go to alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/go/ sp08sports.

Admission Holds Steady; Early-Decision Apps. Soar The new field replaced one at the eastern end of the outdoor playing fields at Woodbridge Street, Silver Street, and Dunlap Place. Made of a synthetic material, which enables play in inclement weather, it also has lights that make it possible for teams to practice and play after the sun goes down. “We started our traditional season practices February 4, and have been outside nearly every day since,”

While the Office of Admission could report no record numbers of applications by midFebruary, as it has done in recent years, it nevertheless had received 3,100 applications, its secondhighest number, down about 1 percent from last year. After a decline in early decision applications last year, Jane Brown, vice president for enrollment and college relations, said

the college had rebounded with 265. Approximately one-quarter of the class of 2012 will be enrolled from the early-decision pool. The applicant pool continues to be diverse, Brown noted, with 24 percent students of color, and all fifty states and 111 foreign countries represented. “The most significant challenge we face in admission this year is the highly publicized change in the financialaid landscape,” Brown noted. “Many of our more highly endowed peers have pledged to replace student loans with institutional grants. MHC has a proud legacy of serving more low- and middle-income students than most of these institutions and so ... we will continue to include moderate loans in our financial aid awards.”

’08-’09 Costs Set The MHC Board of Trustees in its winter meeting set tuition, room, and board for 2008–2009 at $48,500, a 4.8 percent increase over last year.

Penny Gill Named Dean of College Penny Gill, Mary Lyon Professor of Humanities and professor of politics, has been appointed dean of Mount Holyoke, a three-year position starting in the fall. Gill replaces Lee Bowie, professor of philosophy, who will take a yearlong sabbatical leave before returning to his department.

Lenore Carlisle, assistant professor of psychology and education and chair of the search committee, cited Gill’s broad understanding of Mount Holyoke and its students as a factor in her selection. “She has a good sense of the challenges students face in finding a balance between the curricular and cocurricular,” Carlisle said. “She was very well versed on every perplexing or challenging issue we raised, from diversity to grade inflation. She was very compelling.”

campuscurrents

said lacrosse coach Miriam Esber. “Already, we have practiced through rain, snow, fog, and sunny evenings. Currently, the team is much healthier and happier than they were at this time last year because the turf is so much softer on their legs than playing indoors.”

Penny Gill

Gill said her “numberone dream” is for Mount Holyoke to become “more self-aware and articulate” about itself. “We have a truly extraordinary opportunity now to consciously create something new, paradoxically something we also already are: a global women’s college,” said Gill. “I think the dean could help us all to think more deeply about what our students need to learn, and how they can best learn it, so they can take their rightful places at the tables where solutions to the world’s most pressing problems will be found.”

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Seniors (left to right) Mattie Ettenheim, Katrina Richards, and Anindita Dasgupta test the new crossing lights on Route 116.

Crossing the state highway in front of MHC is less daunting thanks to revamped pedestrian crosswalks that are now highlighted by pavement markings and street lighting. Traffic along Massachusetts 116 between Morgan and Park streets—the south and north ends of campus—is calmer due to blinking yellow lights installed this winter in the pavement of new graniteand-brick crosswalks and activated when pedestrians press a button at roadside posts. “Although some of our Five College neighbors have had serious injuries and fatalities involving pedestrians, so far we have been fortunate that no one

has been seriously injured,” said John Bryant, director of facilities planning and management at MHC. Still, in the past two years, one MHC employee and a student were hit by vehicles and sent to the hospital.

The cost of the project for the college, which took eighteen months to coordinate with the Massachusetts Highway Department and several local agencies, was $650,000.—M.H.B.

A study performed by civil engineers found 3,900 pedestrian crossings each day across Route 116 when the college is in session. Every hour, 800 to 1,200 vehicles pass in front of the college, at an average speed of 40 miles per hour.

Gorse, StonyBrook Consolidate Services

Similar to the crosswalks installed a few years ago on 116 in front of Amherst College, the textured stone, blinking lights, pavement reflectors, and streetlights on each side of the five crosswalks are meant to alert drivers that they’re entering a pedestrian zone, said Bryant.

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Director of Human Resources Lauren Turner announced in February that the college will integrate campus programs for children that “support child care and the needs of our psychology/ education faculty and students for research and observation.” The move will consolidate services currently provided by the Gorse Child Study Center and the StonyBrook Children’s Center. The

new Gorse Children’s Center will be managed by Bright Horizons. For details about the new model, and the process by which it was chosen, www. alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/go/ gorseinfo. An e-mail listserv to which you can direct questions and concerns is at childrenscenter@mtholyoke. edu.

Student Edge

Life-Changing Learning When Elizabeth Budd ’09 comes across an item begging to be recycled, she picks it up and carries it home. It’s part—albeit a small part—of the personal role she says is important in making the planet just a little less toxic. “There are things we can do to improve [the

Pau l S c h n a i t tac h e r

Local Highway Safer for Pedestrians

A part-time environmental organizer with Nuestras Raices, a communitydevelopment group in neighboring Holyoke, Budd has been actively involved in efforts to counter the city’s proposed waste-transfer station that would, Budd relates, result in up to 225 diesel trucks delivering 750,000 tons of garbage a day.

Kaufman: Donna Cote • Budd : Andrea Burns

Elizabeth Budd ’09

In an impoverished city with one of the highest asthma rates in Massachusetts, a respiratory ailment that has been linked to diesel pollutants, that’s not the kind of economic development that makes sense, she explains. “We need healthy, highquality development that doesn’t hurt people’s health,” says Budd, a Holyoke resident and one of the few MHC students who live off campus. Holyoke needs “small businesses, a bank … clothing stores, a place like Barnes and Noble. There’s no grocery store” in the city center, she adds. Speaking out about local issues and making herself vulnerable to criticism

has been life changing, Budd says. Introduced to Nuestras Raices through Visiting Assistant Professor of Earth and Environment Giovanna Di Chiro and the college’s Community-Based Learning Program, Budd says the work also gives her a chance to practice her Spanish, as nearly half of Holyoke residents are Hispanic. Using art as a form of empowerment also interests Budd, who has entered a video, Protecting our Environment Through Art in Action, in a contest sponsored by the Student Conservation Alliance. If she wins, Budd will use the prize money to create an arts project in Holyoke. “I have discovered that if you give people a place to discuss these issues, they will start taking part. It’s a learning process for everybody.”—M.H.B. Learn More: To see Budd’s video, go to youtube.com and search for “Protecting Our Environment Through Art in Action.” MHC’s environmental efforts are outlined at mtholyoke.edu/ offices/es/index.shtml.

Marjorie Kaufman: The Pleasure of Reading You could say Marjorie Kaufman operates in the no-cliché zone. Ask the MHC professor emeritus of English about her love of literature and you get this response: “If you use terms like ‘love of literature,’ I’ll gag on what

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environment] now,” the dance and environmental justice major points out. To those who would call saving a yogurt cup from the local landfill less than profound, she responds, “I think we have an opportunity to change, and if you think negatively all the time you can’t get anything done.”

Marjorie Kaufman

you are writing.” Press her for the plainspoken translation, and Kaufman explains, “I take pleasure in reading the good stuff.” Not only does Kaufman derive great joy from reading and discussing books, but she insists that it’s all she really knows how to do. So it isn’t surprising that at age eighty-five, she is the driving force behind three “literary groups for grownups,” as she refers to her peers. Every other week she meets for two hours with fellow devotees of the printed word at Loomis Village, a retirement community in South Hadley; at Jones Library in Amherst; and the Council on Aging, also in South Hadley. The last is a poetry writing and appreciation group. She has encountered some inspired work from “genuine poets” in the group who have already produced one book of verse and are working on another. “I want to get their poems out in the world,” she says.

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England,” she said. “But Mount Holyoke surprised me; it wasn’t the spoiled, plate-painting student body that I expected.” Most of her career was devoted to teaching American literature.

Coping with Study Stress

lots of lists of what I need to do. I also avoid the library completely if at all possible. (Stressed-out MoHos in the library are … constantly breaking down and proclaiming failure, making those they encounter feel doomed as well.) I go to get books and then leave.

Exam time finds students stressed out but also creative in their array of coping techniques. A few of them agreed to share their methodology: Julie Pfahler ’09 I make lots and lots and

Kaufman is slightly dyslexic, something she didn’t realize until

Maria Lena Garrettson ’10 I like to dress nice and put makeup on for an exam, just to feel good about myself. I also like to get a lot of sleep and a good breakfast. I know that if I’m tired I won’t function, and if I’m hungry I’ll think about that more than the exam. Jemilatu Abdulai ’09 Music! I study best with music ... and I also need a semi-active environment to study in. I don’t do well in very quiet rooms.

Above: Dana Capasso ’09 gets to work for final exams. Below: Friends take a break from studying in the library.

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late in her career. “I’m a very slow reader,” she says. “Therefore, I need writers to work as hard at writing as I do at reading,” Kaufman says. “Henry James rewards my slowness ... he writes for someone who reads all of the words and broods between the period of one sentence and the capital of the next.”

The groups she leads now give her a “reason to be,” Kaufman says. Initially, some participants thought she would lecture, but that’s not her style, she says. “So what I did was to ask if anybody wants to read. I mean it, I’ll read with anybody, anywhere.”—Eric Goldscheider

Natsumi Ajiki FP’08 I try to get as much sleep as possible.

Tidbits

Piper O’Sullivan’08 I always need a bottle of Coca-Cola from Blanchard. Or really cold ice water. Marcia Schenck ’09 I just look for quiet places to get my work done. I take walks around Upper Lake and “Skype” with my friends in Germany who are not in the same crunchtime mindset. I enjoy dinners with friends. Liz Brennan ’09 Before reading days, I frequent the library’s sixth-floor stacks. I have one particular table where I always sit, looking out to the Village Commons. Often when I start studying, I’ll pick one compact disc to listen to over and over again. If I can take the exam in the same room as the class, I’ll sit where I normally sit. Aleefia Somji ’09 When studying for an exam, I can’t study in one place for more than a few hours. I also generally need food or something to snack on. I make sure I sleep lots, and I always use a pencil to underline all my notes. I write down things to memorize on another piece of paper, and make sure I look at those before the exam.

• Laurie Priest, director of athletics, was named one of the 100 most influential sports educators in America by the Institute for International Sport. The project honors individuals and organizations who have used sport as a means to educate and shape positive values. .

• Focus the Campus, part of MHC’s continuing response to a nationwide teach-in on global warming solutions in January, hoped to reinvigorate campus efforts around energy conservation and recycling. See mtholyoke.edu/offices/ es/18001.shtml for links to college resources.

St u d y : Pau l S c h n a i t tac h e r • Fo c u s : Fr e d L e B l a n c

Kaufman, a Milwaukee native who did her doctoral dissertation on Henry James at the University of Minnesota, arrived at Mount Holyoke in 1954 not planning to stay very long. She didn’t believe in private colleges or gender-segregated education. “I’m not sure I even believed in New

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“ Standing next to glass makes people nervous—it makes me nervous.” Associate Professor Joe Smith

Brainstorms

important. Attentiveness is important to achieve.”

A Wonderful Confusion

Often referred to as a sculptor, Smith, who came to MHC in 1996, says that collage, especially the work of German Modernist Kurt Schwitters, has been formative in his development as an artist. Schwitters made collages and compositions from everyday objects such as stamps, train tickets, and cigarettes, and embraced the sensibility that anything in life is available as an art medium. That excited Smith, who worked for years as a carpenter and in construction.

Joe Smith likes an element of instability in his art.

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Whether he’s stacking bottles high up on glass plates and around the floor—risking shattering them—or fitting wooden blocks into a precarious construction from the top down—defying gravity— the associate professor of art says the attention that kind of daring work commands is essential. “Standing next to glass makes people nervous—it makes me nervous,” says Smith, whose work with varied materials has been exhibited across the country. “That [emotion] affects me, so I think it’s

“[Collage] is not just about painting or 3D or sculpture or film,” said Smith. “It opened everything up. We now have a tremendous confusion … working [and] it’s a wonderful confusion.”

Students might disagree. Smith says some find such an open-ended creative process both freeing and burdensome, when it comes to making decisions. Still, his primary goal is to have students shed their preconceived notions of what, exactly, art is, so he gives them “exploratory assignments, [that involve] different ways of making a drawing or a sculpture, [to shake] their ideas about what it takes to make art.” When Smith sets about creating a new work of his own, he considers how broadly varied materials might fit together to create space and evoke emotions and atmosphere. He’ll use just about anything in that process: furniture he finds in dumpsters, tree limbs pruned and donated by campus arborists, metal culled from steelyards,

rear-view mirrors collected from vehicles, recycled storm windows, raw and processed wood. “It’s about using things that we in our culture use, as they’re meant to be used—or not,” he explains. He is less interested in craft and the facile manipulation of material than in its imaginative use to create form, reflect light, and invite people “to slow down and look at something closely.” But they shouldn’t look too soon. Smith’s latest work-in-progress is hidden in a tarp pinched together with clothespins, the artist fearful that material and concept in the preliminary stages of development may be too fragile to withstand an outsider’s scrutiny. After that, who can say? —M.H.B.

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Big Alumnae Makers and Shakers in the Visual Arts

Mount Holyoke alumnae are major players in the art world today. Making art relevant in a world where it’s becoming less and less visible is the difficult challenge that all of these women embrace. None of them could imagine doing anything else. But their passion for art is matched with the vision and tenacity that has made them important leaders in the field. Being influencers in the art world—innovative makers and leaders in shaping conversations about how art is exhibited and studied—requires an intellectual curiosity and seriousness of purpose that was for all of them fostered by early experiences at Mount Holyoke.

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By Harper Montgomery ’94

To m m y L a Ve r g n e

picture

g Marcia Gagliardi Brennan â&#x20AC;&#x2122;88, art historian, Rice University Mou n t Ho lyo k e Al u m na e Qua r t e r ly

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the seductive beauty of objects was what first attracted Marcia Gagliardi Brennan (art historian, class of 1988) to the study of art. She remembers sitting in Louisa McDonald’s Asian art course first semester of her first year thinking, “These are the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen—I want to do this with the rest of my life.” Her professors in the art history department at Mount Holyoke gave her, she says, the vision of what was possible.

Even at its most theoretical, Brennan’s innovative scholarship has remained grounded in her love of objects. After developing her interest in critical theory and intellectual history at Brown University, where she earned a PhD in art history in 1997, Brennan pursued research in two books on how gender relationships have affected the reception of modernist paintings at different moments in the twentieth century. Although her early scholarship was grounded in gender theory, Brennan’s writing challenged gender studies to expand its breadth by looking at how Eros—heterosexual femininity and heterosexual masculinity—has historically framed viewers’ aesthetic experiences of art. The interdisciplinary nature of her approach to art history is most apparent in the courses she teaches at Rice University, where she has been a tenured associate professor since 2005 (and assistant professor since 2001). In a course cross-listed in the religious studies department, Brennan asks students to consider how modern museums function as ritual spaces. In another, designed for premed as well as art history students, she and her students examine how scientific and cultural meanings are inscribed onto images of the body. Although she is still engaged with questions of how bodies and art interact, Brennan’s interests have shifted during the past several years from gender to mysticism. In an upcoming book, she looks at how mysticism inflected the way modern paintings were exhibited and experienced during the mid-twentieth century. And she continues to work to insert visual art into cultural history, compelling us to consider how art contributes to broader questions about how we understand our world.

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Because she wanted to pursue her interest in feminism, as well as find a place that would nurture her intellectual independence, Elizabeth Dee, like many graduates since the 1980s, consciously chose a singlesex college. Dee pursued her studies of feminist theory and philosophy at Mount Holyoke, while majoring in studio art. The intellectual independence she developed in the process helped give her the confidence to pursue an unconventional career path in the visual arts.

“ I find that I’m attracted to working with women. They are just as ambitious as male artists, but issues of perception and power in the art market affect them differently ...”

Dee’s calling though, it turns out, was not making art. After graduating from Mount Holyoke, she moved to San Francisco, where she worked for Daniel Weinberg, a gallery owner who had helped develop the careers of artists including Brice Marden, Richard Tuttle, Carroll Dunham, Sherrie Levine, and other significant figures of the 1970s and ’80s. “I realized [at Weinberg’s] that a gallery was like a living museum and that one person could get so much done for great artists as a gallerist.” Working at the gallery helped her come to the thrilling realization “that I could be of real value” to the process of developing an artist’s career. Dee also discovered that she enjoyed bringing collectors and artists together. So, at the young age of

twenty-one, it became clear to her that this was what she should do with her life. Dee moved to New York and opened her own gallery in 1998; since the fall of 2002, she has run her gallery in a storefront space in Chelsea.

“ It’s our job to make things valuable because, with more power, artists have a bigger playing field to work on.”

J o e L aw t o n

Elizabeth Dee ’95, owner, Elizabeth Dee Gallery, NYC

Her roster of conceptual artists is intergenerational. Adrian Piper is a notable recent addition, and Josephine Meckseper is another conceptual artist whose career has gained critical recognition under Dee’s representation. “I

find that I’m attracted to working with women,” she has said. “They are just as ambitious as male artists, but issues of perception and power in the art market affect them differently, and I like the way this makes me

think more strategically and creatively about their careers.” Dee has also worked to fight the sexism of the market when it comes to contemporary art, raising the asking prices of her female artists’ work to prices comparable

to those of male peers’ art. “It’s our job to make things valuable,” she says, “because, with more power, artists have a bigger playing field to work on.”

Mou n t Ho lyo k e Al u m na e Qua r t e r ly

Spring 2008

Judy Mann (Curator,

class of 1972), curator of European Art to 1800 at the Saint Louis Art Museum, has also worked to level the playing field for women artists. Her work, though, has pertained to how we understand the history of art, a passion that was

ignited by a Romanesque and Gothic architecture course she took to fulfill a requirement during her first year. “I fell for it hook, line and sinker,” she remembers, and art history transformed her, as she tells it, into a serious student. Although she was not necessarily looking to

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attend a women’s college, Mann found that being in a single-sex environment gave her the confidence necessary to pursue her passion. She developed an interest in the more enigmatic artists of the Italian Baroque period

while pursuing a PhD at Washington University. Throughout her career as a curator and professor (she initially taught university students after earning her doctorate and continues to teach on occasion), Mann has focused on artists who challenge the conventions of their historical periods.

Ti m Pa r k e r

Judy Mann ’72, curator, Saint Louis Art Museum

The question, “What is the Baroque?” fueled her dissertation research on Guido Reni, and has continued to frame the research she has conducted as a curator on the sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury, respectively, Italian artists Federico Barocci and Artemisia Gentileschi.

J o e L aw t o n

Her rigorous scholarship has enriched audiences’ understanding of sixteenthand seventeenth-century Italian painting by expanding the canon of painters. While she does not see herself as a feminist scholar (although she does consider herself a feminist), her work on Artemisia Gentileschi brought recognition to a woman artist whose painting was still considered somewhat minor before the exhibition featuring Artemisia and her father, Orazio, appeared at the Saint Louis Art Museum in 2002. (Mann co-organized this exhibition with Keith Christiansen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; she was responsible for the aspects of the exhibition having to do with Gentileschi’s work.) Questioning the idea of greatness is a worthwhile endeavor for Mann. “There is no question that there are very few Michelangelos,” she has said, but she reminds us that looking “at only the great ones, you lose so much of the richness of the history of art.” The upcoming exhibition of the paintings and drawings of Federico Barocci that she is organizing, which is scheduled to open in 2010 at the Saint Louis Museum of Art, should further expand on the idea of Baroque painting, while also dazzling audiences with the paintings’ dynamic compositions and richly saturated palettes.

KC Maurer’84, CFO, Andy Warhol Foundation KC Maurer (chief financial officer of the Andy Warhol Foundation, class of 1984) came

to work in the visual arts largely by a stroke of good luck. Working in the private sector with an MBA, she found that “the bottom line was no longer getting her out of bed in the morning,” and during the summer of 1998 she decided to make a change. One of her first jobs after graduating from Mount Holyoke had been at the University of Massachusetts Fine Arts Center, where her office was in the art gallery. She had always wanted to return to work that supported the arts. For almost a decade, as chief financial officer of the Andy Warhol Foundation, Maurer has overseen the operations of a foundation that provides one of the most significant sources of support for contemporary art in the United States. What makes the foundation’s

Mou n t Ho lyo k e Al u m na e Qua r t e r ly

Spring 2008

Joan Edwards Jonas ’58, artist

work so rewarding, Maurer explains, is that its mission is broadly defined as promoting “the advancement of the visual arts,” which means that it can be extraordinarily nimble in how it responds to the needs of artists and institutions. Supporting innovative contemporary art, promoting art in underserved communities, and responding to the needs of artists in the Gulf area after Hurricane Katrina are just some of the ways the foundation has met its mandate. “I recognize we’re not curing cancer, but we are really adding to the fabric of people’s lives,” Maurer says. “One of the things that the foundation attempts to do is to provide funding for works and institutions that will make people think, in places in this country where contemporary art gets short shrift.”

J o e L aw t o n

A recent gift of Warhol photographs to a community college in western Wyoming and funding for arts organizations in isolated rural communities are just two examples of initiatives that amplify contemporary art’s presence outside of urban areas. Working with art and among artists (half of the foundation’s staff are working visual artists) has also brought Maurer an inordinate degree of job satisfaction. “One of the things I love most is that I learn new things every day.”

Joan Edwards Jonas’s

(artist, class of 1958) works in performance and video have been recognized as among the most innovative artworks produced during the 1960s and ’70s in the United States. Her current work continues to be critically acclaimed and internationally exhibited. In performances and videos that use her own body (and others’) to examine how we perceive space and understand narratives, Jonas literally helped invent “installation art” and develop a multimedia approach to art making. Both are now taken for granted as the lingua franca of contemporary art. After being encouraged to pursue art by sculptor/ professor Henry Rox at Mount Holyoke, more training at the Museum School in Boston, and an MFA at Columbia, Jonas became a part of a group of young artists active in the downtown art scene in New York during the early 1960s. Dissatisfied with her sculpture, she found herself attending happenings like the now-legendary Nine Evenings and events at Judson Church where historic figures such as La Monte Young and Claes Oldenburg presented the first iterations of performance art. In happenings and performance art, “you could include everything in one form, you weren’t confined to making an object,” she explains. She was attracted to these new genres’ omnivorous approaches to artistic media and traditional

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academic disciplines, which broke down the barriers among sculpture, painting, dance, and literature. Feminism and the gendered body became central themes in Jonas’s work at the end of the 1960s and during the early 1970s. The politics of feminism were, she remembers, “important for me and for my generation,” but thinking about her identity as a woman was intrinsic to her work from the beginning. In many ways, her work is more relevant today as critics and art historians reassess how women artists have influenced art production generally. Currently,

her work appears in the exhibition, WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and on view at PS1 in New York through May 12). Harper Montgomery ’94, a critic and independent curator living in New York, is writing a dissertation on avant-garde artists in Mexico City and Buenos Aires. Learn More: Links to information about the alumnae featured here are at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ go/alumarts

eeper of K the Dream, n t of

i s rum

ent

CHange

Katherine Butler Jo n e s ’ 5 7

Pau l S c h n a i t tac h e r

By Leanna James Blackwell

It was a warm Sunday in August 1953, and Katherine Butler Jones ’57 had one more person to visit before leaving her childhood home in Harlem for college. A family friend, Aunt Ida, was expecting her. Aunt Ida cooked her meals on a hot plate and worked in service, spending her small savings on gifts for others. Five-dollar bills were slipped quietly into Jones’s hand during every visit. But this time, when Jones arrived at the familiar brownstone, Aunt Ida had another surprise. It was a carefully folded hundred-dollar bill, enough for transportation to and spending money at Mount Holyoke. It was the biggest bill she had ever seen. Jones’s first-year tuition, room, and board were covered by her mother’s cashed-in life insurance policy. These sacrifices represented, she knew, years of hard work and the belief of a community in the power of education to change lives. Mou n t Ho lyo k e Al u m na e Qua r t e r ly

Spring 2008

That belief is the frame around everything Jones has achieved since, as professor, activist, historian, and writer. After Mount Holyoke, Jones earned a master’s in education from Simmons College and a doctorate in educational administration from Harvard. She settled in Newton, Massachusetts, with her husband, Hubert Eugene “Hubey” Jones. Together they raised eight children, an achievement Jones calls “a political act” for its “power to shape the future.” One of the first black families in the neighborhood (they were initially denied mortgages and prevailed against a petition to prevent them moving into their chosen home), the Joneses became community leaders, spearheading numerous efforts to improve educational opportunities for children in the greater Boston area. When the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunities began in 1965 to address racial imbalance in Boston-area schools, Jones joined the executive committee and wrote the guidelines used by suburban schools that voluntarily educate urban children of color. Jones directed the Newton METCO program for a decade before being elected to four terms on the Newton School Committee. She continued to promote hiring minority staff and a curriculum including African American history. “When I began teaching in Boston, in 1957, there were no pictures of black people in textbooks, and few teachers of color, ” Jones says. “I was formally educated with little Julie Holley was among those relivingof days on the knowledge black history—except slavery.” The need for Connecticut at an curriculum River reform was made explicitly clear to Jones in alumnae row this fall. requested an apron to bring to 1966, when onepast daughter school. She needed it for her role as a maid in the fourthgrade play. “The apron did not go to school, but mother did,” says Jones. Strong bonds between generations is a recurring theme in Jones’s life and career. That theme is reflected in her commitment to honoring role models from her mother and Aunt Ida to her distant ancestors, free landowners about whom she writes in her memoir, Deep Roots. It is also seen in her efforts to educate the next generation about the contributions of women and people of color by teaching that history at Simmons College and Boston University. For years, she and Hubey held an annual African American history contest in their home. Each child would present research, recite a poem, or write a short biography about an important African American. The entire family remembers when seven-year-old Tanya wrote directly to Roots author Alex Haley and received a personal letter in return. That novel inspired Jones to search her own family history, and brought her to Africa. Jones’s influence is also deeply felt at Mount Holyoke. The second black alumna trustee, she was instrumental in creating MHC’s Black Alumnae Conference. In her 1994 keynote speech, Jones addressed an audience of 150, all holding candles whose flickering light, she says, illuminated “many shades of faces.” Looking at each with

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pride, Jones concluded, “We are keepers of the dream, the prophets of the future, and the instruments of change.” Jones was talking about change not only in the world but also at her own alma mater. As an alumna trustee, she joined with students and alumnae to urge the board to divest its holdings from companies in racially segregated South Africa. Beginning in 1985, Mount Holyoke terminated those investments. Jones’s career as a writer is also a case study in the individual as an instrument of change. A chapter from Deep Roots won the 1996 New England PEN Writer Discovery award. It tracks Jones’s upbringing in Harlem and details her journey to find her family’s roots. Her search was spurred by discovering her great-grandparents’ marriage certificate in an old box. That yellowed piece of paper led Jones to a trove of historical records telling the story of landowning ancestors. Her relatives founded the first church for African Americans in Troy, New York. Some helped escaped slaves get to Canada. Jones’s research also fueled her first dramatic play, which had its premiere last April in Boston. The play, 409 Edgecombe Avenue: The House on Sugar Hill, draws on the history of the Harlem apartment building in which Jones was raised. “I grew up in a place where I was supported and cared for, where I came in contact with all kinds of people,” Jones says. Thurgood Marshall, the first African American U.S. Supreme Court justice, lived in 9E. W. E. B. Du Bois lived in the building, as did Walter White, executive secretary of the NAACP, and Eunice Carter, the first black woman appointed assistant district attorney in New York state. But the resident who most captivated Jones’s imagination was Madame Stephanie St. Clair. The millionaire businesswoman ran the Harlem numbers racket in the ’30s, holding her own against the notorious Dutch Schultz. Yet she was also a civic activist who “built immigration centers where new arrivals could learn English, and wrote a weekly column in the local press,” according to Jones. She made St. Clair the centerpiece of a play depicting the “thirteen-story vertical community” in which Jones and her spiritual ancestors came of age. A commitment to honoring the “spiritual ancestry” of her people may be the best way to describe Jones’s passion for educating the next generation about African American history. Fifty years from now, members of the class of 2007 will open a “time capsule” given to them at graduation by the class of 1957. In it, they will find memorabilia from 1953 to 1957, and a chapter from Jones’s memoir and a 409 playbill. In 2057, students will hear about life at Mount Holyoke a hundred years ago. They will learn about a gifted economics and sociology student who was one of two African Americans in her first-year class, a girl from Harlem who went on to accomplish great things, and made great things possible for others. Opposite: Young Katherine Butler with her father

Court esy of Kat herin e B. Jon es

Learn More: For more about Jonesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life and work, please visit alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/go/kbjones.

Mou n t Ho lyo k e Al u m na e Qua r t e r ly

Spring 2008

Finding the courage

to change

Kate* woke up from an alcoholinduced blackout her first month on campus with a student adviser handing her a telephone number, telling her to call it and ask for help. “I felt coerced into calling, but I later was happy for it,” she says. • Ann* vowed never to become her father—an alcoholic who got sober when she was fifteen, but who never found happiness. But in her junior year on campus, she picked up a bottle that she wouldn’t put down for another eight years. “I was a sick, sick girl,” she says. • BY SUSAN BUSHEY ’96 These are two of the many Mount Holyoke women who are recovering alcohol and drug addicts. It’s not a fact about which people brag, but being able to provide help is. ADAP—Mount Holyoke’s Alcohol and Drug Awareness Project—has been serving the needs of students and alumnae for thirty years, long before such programs were federally mandated. In the fall, anniversary events included a panel with alumnae who told their stories and students who read the stories of others, as well as speakers such as Susan Cheever, author of Note Found in a Bottle: My Life as a Drinker.

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Drug and Alcohol Program Helps MHC Women Move Beyond Addiction

Mou n t Ho lyo k e Al u m na e Qua r t e r ly

Spring 2008

Though the stories told at the October panel were not all happy or easy to hear, they were inspiring, and every alum had words of thanks—and sometimes tears—for McCarthy. “Without her, I wouldn’t be here today,” says one. “Thanks to Susan, and ADAP, I was able to come back to finish my studies at Mount Holyoke,” says another. McCarthy, who has been at Mount Holyoke for nineteen years, shared credit with Coordinator of Health Education Karen Jacobus, who has been at MHC for fourteen years. The two were given a standing ovation at the October panel—a tribute to the blood, sweat, and tears shed by those involved with ADAP.

Over the years, • Alumnae Network (recovering and alumnae have professional alumnae who provide played a large part support to students) in the ADAP’s success. McCarthy says the alumnae network program allows those entering recovery to see there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

ADAP helps students by offering counseling, support services, education, resources, referrals, and an alumnae network. It is confidential and free to Mount Holyoke students who are struggling with their relationship with alcohol or other drugs, or know someone who is. Some students are required to seek counseling through ADAP—those who use illicit drugs or have a serious alcohol-related incident, often involving a medical emergency. Roughly fifty students had mandated counseling in the 2006–07 school year. That number has hovered between thirty and fifty since 1999. Before that, the number was in the teens and twenties. (Note: changes in policies over time also affect those figures.) There are no statistics on how many seek help on their own, but between one and twenty students regularly attend the weekly ADAP lunches, according to Jacobus. Students who violate MHC’s drug/alcohol policy must attend ADAP education sessions. In the last full school year, nearly seventy students attended a session. McCarthy says she and the staff go to great lengths to provide confidentiality to all who use ADAP services. In the case of student counseling, this is a legal requirement, but she says the policy also builds honesty and trust. Confidentiality is the norm with alumnae too. “When we have events, we can’t articulate that someone has been a client, but some alums choose to share their ADAP experiences to help others,” says McCarthy. The alumnae network comprises about 135 women, including those in recovery, those working in the field of chemical dependency, and others committed to the project’s work. These alumnae offer support to students and alums who reach out to the network for help. The project was founded in 1977 as part of a grant from the R. Brinkley Smithers Foundation to counsel and educate

ADAP Services

students, and teach intervention. Mount Holyoke’s program was one of the first at an American college or university. “Mount Holyoke is a real leader in this issue,” says McCarthy.

The road to recovery, though paved with pain, can and should be one of hope, according to ADAP director Susan McCarthy. “Recovery is possible,” she says. “[Addiction] doesn’t have to go to the extreme.”

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• Counseling (individual and group) • Support Services (facilitated and peer-support groups that provide opportunities to meet others working on similar issues) • Education (workshops, training, and campus-wide events) • Resources and Referrals (to chemical-dependency treatment programs and other community resources)

“Alums have been extraordinarily generous with their time and energy, as well as financially,” she says. “It takes time for alumnae and students to establish a relationship and to build trust.” McCarthy works side-by-side with Jacobus to get the word out that ADAP exists. “Education is key,” says Jacobus. “Knowing that help is available is so important.” Ann’s Story Ann*, who graduated in the early 1980s, says she wishes ADAP had been better known at that time. “When I was at Mount Holyoke, I was a sick, sick girl,” says Ann, who would isolate herself and drink alone. “I didn’t know that much about ADAP [in college], and I was active in drinking,” she says, although she never took a drink or used drugs in high school. “I grew up in a family where a parent was an alcoholic. It was a really nice family, but there was a lot of inherent misery. I said I would never go the path Dad went,” she explains. Ann’s father got sober when she was fifteen, but things never returned to happiness, she says. “I started drinking when I got to Mount Holyoke. But I was a solitary drinker, never a partier. And I spent my twenty-ninth birthday in a rehab [facility],” Ann says, which capped her eight or nine years of drinking. What sent her to rehab? “I had a total meltdown, and my family was watching me,” she says. At the time, Ann’s husband had a job that kept him away for most of the month. On this particular night, he returned home from work to find her passed out and their fourteen-monthold baby crying hysterically. “He realized if he didn’t do something, I would die and no one would be able to care for our daughter,” she says.

Ann says her husband remembered someone who had just been through rehabilitation, and called him for help. He gave Ann’s husband a hospital’s number, and the hospital led an intervention over the phone. “My mother came, and they told me if I wanted to see my daughter again, I had to get help. They pretty much did a late-Saturday-night, on-the-spot intervention and gave me the choice of drinking myself to death or that there was help for me in the morning,” she says. That rehab hospital, she says, “saved my life.” Since her sobriety, Ann has been an active volunteer with ADAP, speaking on panels and sometimes attending recovery lunches, where she can connect with students and alums on a small-group basis. “I’ve been sober twenty-one years, and I have stayed active in ADAP because I wish I’d had the opportunity to use it. … It’s such an important tool for people to draw on the experience of others in recovery,” she says. “It’s very fulfilling on the level of being able to be in contact with the school where I was a sick woman. … To go back [to MHC] whole and say to them, ‘I’ve been there and there’s a way to get help.’ It’s been so healing for me and such an incredible gift,” she says. “My life looked so bleak at the rehab, but it has been incredibly wonderful since. My advice to someone who hasn’t taken that first step yet? Keep an open mind,” she says. “Don’t dismiss the idea that you might need help. Getting into recovery can be an incredible experience in a good way, even though it looks terrifying to start. … And don’t stay alone. Try to take the help, because that’s what makes [recovery] possible.”

“I grew up in an environment of angry, unhappy nondrinkers and footloose drinkers. … I didn’t see drinking as a problem. I grew up in a bar, so what I saw and how I lived wasn’t abnormal for me,” she explains.

Can You Help?

The Alcohol and Drug Awareness Project at Mount Holyoke College is always looking for alumnae volunteers. You can support an alumna in recovery, make personal contact with alums or students in recovery, or speak on a panel about your experiences. Your story could also be told anonymously to foster awareness. Volunteers who work in the fields of recovery and chemical dependency are also welcome. For more information, please call Karen Jacobus (413-538-2466; kjacobus@ mtholyoke.edu) or Susan McCarthy (413-538-2616; smccarth@ mtholyoke.edu).

But after her blackout, when Residential Life had her call McCarthy, Kate’s life started to fall in place. “I had an appointment with Susan. It was the start of planting seeds of my recovery,” says Kate, who met McCarthy late in 1989 and got sober in March 1990. “Susan showed great compassion with much direction and knew how to speak to me. She knew I was angry and volatile, so I credit Susan— and ADAP—for making it possible for me to get through the early insanity of not drinking.” The hardest part of her next three years at Mount Holyoke were Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. “It wasn’t that it was such a drinking culture, but I had no social skills to cope [with spare time and the social scene]. That’s where working with Susan was helpful. She kept me focused. She helped me put one foot in front of the other,” says Kate. Kate now helps as a member of the ADAP alumnae network when she has time. “I’ve done some panels, but mostly I go in and tell [administration and faculty] ADAP is important to people getting well—not the end of getting well, very much the beginning,” she says.

Kate’s Story Kate* graduated in the early 1990s. She says ADAP “is one of the most invisible, but most important, resources on campus. And I appreciate the confidentiality—Susan guards that with her life. … People know they can go there and know they will be protected. And that’s huge.”

Her advice to those who are where she was nearly twenty years ago? “As Mount Holyoke women, there is a strength about us, of us being high over-achievers, but [addiction] is so demoralizing and paralyzing because it requires that we seek direction and help,” she says. “We will only become independent again if we seek the direction and help we need to get us out of the problem.”

Kate was brought into ADAP by another student after having an alcohol-induced blackout. She had only been at Mount Holyoke for a month, but had taken her first drink at fourteen.

Learn More: The Alcohol and Drug Awareness Project’s extensive list of resources is at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/go/ adap.

Her family was aware of her problem, but “were powerless and baffled by it.” She had sought help before, but only when she was in trouble. As soon as the trouble was over, she turned her back on the help.

* Names of alumnae have been changed to preserve their privacy. Susan Bushey is public relations director for Regis College in Weston, Massachusetts, and lives in Worcester, Massachusetts, with her fiancée.

Mou n t Ho lyo k e Al u m na e Qua r t e r ly

Spring 2008

Government:

More or Less? What EVERYONE should know about ... A Quarterly series

Government Is Good

By Douglas J. Amy

When was the last time you heard someone say something positive about government? Most of what we hear about this institution is relentlessly negative. The news media focus almost exclusively on the problems of government— the scandals, the corruption, the policy fiascos. Government programs that work well are not considered news. News is when the Pentagon spends $400 for a toilet seat, or when a member of Congress is discovered to be a closet homosexual.

On top of this, the idea that “government is bad” has become one of the major themes of the Republican Party. Ever since Ronald Reagan quipped, “Government isn’t the solution, it is the problem,” conservatives have used every opportunity to disparage and demonize government. They Continued on page 27 Learn More: For more information about the professors (the animal aren’t speaking), visit alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/go/profinfo.

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Ben Barnhart

“Instead of less government, in many areas we actually need more government.” –MHC politics professor Douglas J. Amy

Limited Government Is Good By James E. Hartley

Sadly, all too often people demonize conservatives for arguing against big government without bothering to find out why exactly it is that conservatives would want to shrink the size of government. One is left with the impression that conservatives are a rather nasty group who hate healthy, happy children and polar bears. Is government good? Framed that way, the question is not one that can be answered. By “government,” do we mean the provider of the U.S. Marines and the CIA, or do we mean the subsidizer of the National Peanut Festival Fairgrounds? In asking if government is good, do we mean the Bush administration? Or the Clinton administration? Having the debate at this level is perhaps a nice parlor game, but not terribly illuminating.

“For those who want more government, the question is: how high does government spending have to get before you will be happy?” –MHC economics professor James E. Hartley

If we want to understand conservatives’ arguments about government, we need to think about the American Experiment itself. Governments that do too much are oppressive. That observation was, of course, at the heart of the American Revolution. America was designed to be a place where government was limited, where government had an important role to play, but was not meant to be the solution to all social problems. As Michael Novak details in The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, the Founding Fathers deliberately checked the reach of government by designing a society in which power was spread among three different groups. One part of society, what Novak calls the moral-cultural order, was to be dominated by religious and intellectual leaders. This arena was marked by freedom of speech and assembly and the lack of an official state church. The power of the leaders in this realm of society was simply persuasion. Set against that was to be an economic order marked by free enterprise based on voluntary exchange. Again the only power the leaders in this realm had was the ability to try to convince someone to give them money in exchange for their time, ideas, or products. Thirdly, there was the political order marked by a government with limited power and democratic elections.

Ben Barnhart

The purpose of setting up a society with power divided in this way was to prevent any one group from trampling on the rights of others. No longer would there be a state church with the power of law; no longer would feudal lords regulate every aspect of life. And, let us be honest here: this societal system has produced amazing results. The average American today enjoys more freedom and greater material prosperity than anyone before in history. But a strange thing has happened during the American Experiment’s triumphal march. A portion of the society has become hostile to the very experiment itself. Not content to let society as a whole work out the inherent conflicts that arise between large numbers of people, these discontented people have decided to enlarge the reach of government as a means of compelling others to bend to their will. Imagine there is a large social problem that is affecting millions of Americans. Who should solve the problem? For some members of our society, the answer is Continued on page 26 Mou n t Ho lyo k e Al u m na e Qua r t e r ly

Spring 2008

Limited Government Is Good

Continued

obvious: the government should solve the problem—no matter what the problem is. The result of this rush to enhance the reach of government has been an expansion of the size of government into every aspect of society. If you do not like the way something is going, then pass a law changing it. Regulate everything. Tax heavily. Spend freely. And if the result of this reach of government is a diminishment of the power of the leaders in the moral-cultural and economic orders, then so much the better. Conservatives oppose this idea that governments should be all-powerful. Conservatives believe that government has a proper role to play in a society, but that any attempt by the government to reach beyond that role is inherently despotic. Despite the fantasies of anarchists, governments are vitally necessary for a well-functioning society. Militaries and police forces, justice systems, roads, protections of fundamental rights—these are the things that governments are necessary to provide. Does anyone want to live in a society that does not have a law against murder, enforced by a police department and trial by jury? The problem with government comes when the political order encroaches on the realms better left to the free-enterprise system or the moral-cultural order.

Here is the quick test: do we really want the U.S. federal government spending as much as it did at the high point of FDR’s New Deal? Before the start of World War II, U.S. federal government spending rose to almost 10 percent of total gross domestic product. Today that number is a little over 20 percent. Perhaps FDR was a conservative too? And that’s just federal government spending; if we add state and local government spending, the total is over 30 percent. So, for those who want more government, the question is: how high does government spending have to get before you will be happy? If two-thirds is too much, how large a percentage of a paycheck will you let the average American keep? James E. Hartley is professor of economics at MHC. His list of related resources is at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/go/hartley.

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James O'Brien

There is great room for debate on the proper role of government; that is another one of the beautiful things about the American Experiment. As I said at the outset, sadly, this point is all too often lost in discussions about conservatives. I like happy kids and I like polar bears; that is not the issue. The issue is simply how we can best get those happy kids. In some ways we need more government to do so (a better national intelligence service, updated Air Force fighter planes); in other ways we need less government (breaking the public-school monopoly, less “nanny-state” style regulation). The question is not simply more versus less government; the real question is whether we can restore government to its proper function in the American political and social order. And restoring it to its proper role will mean a much smaller government than the one we see today.

Government Is Good

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are constantly telling us how awful it is: the enormous amount of waste, the poor service we get from bureaucrats, and the ever-increasing size of the public sector. However, these negative images of government are often based more on myth than reality. Many of the common criticisms leveled at government are highly exaggerated, misleading, or simply wrong. For example, studies have found that most government bureaucracies are actually quite efficient, with a level of waste of only 2–3 percent. And surveys show that the public gives high marks to government employees for the services they provide—on a par with the ratings for private-sector services. Also, if we look at the size of government as a portion of our gross domestic product—a common way to measure the size of the public sector—we see that government has hardly grown in the last thirty years. In 1976, all government spending made up 32.1 percent of GDP, and in 2006 it amounted to only 31.8 percent. In reality, then, government is not nearly as bad as it is often portrayed. More important, we rarely hear about all the good being done by a myriad of government programs. Consider just a few of the beneficial things that our local, state, and federal governments are doing for us every day: preventing economic depressions, putting out fires, providing roads, ensuring air safety, eliminating horrible diseases like polio and smallpox, repairing bridges, punishing criminals, ensuring drinkable water, enforcing contracts, protecting abused children, inspecting restaurants, predicting the weather, guarding our national security, providing unemployment insurance, protecting our bank deposits, funding public colleges and universities, zoning to protect neighborhoods, providing parks and recreation, taking care of the poor, treating our sewage, subsidizing childcare, righting civil wrongs, ensuring the safety of new construction, and regulating financial markets. And there is more. Our taxes are paying for programs that provide retirement security, prevent business abuses, promote food safety, care for veterans, sponsor stunning scientific breakthroughs, ensure breathable air, feed the hungry, fund libraries, recall unsafe products, ensure voting rights, dispense justice, educate our children, reduce workplace injuries and deaths, recycle our waste, prevent discrimination, respond to disasters and emergencies, prevent crime, inspect day-care centers, keep bad cars and drivers off the roads, rescue endangered species, provide money for college, subsidize the arts, ensure the safety of drugs, care for the elderly, and on and on. Far from being a scourge on society, government is a valuable and positive force in the life of every American. Democratic government is what allows us to pool our resources and to act collectively to address the serious social, economic, and environmental problems that we are unable to deal with as individuals. The public sector

is also how we provide for essential human needs that are neglected by the market—such as a clean air and water, safe workplaces, and accessible healthcare. What’s more, government serves as an essential instrument of moral action—a way for us to rectify injustices, eliminate suffering, and care for each other. In short, democratic government is one of the main ways we work together to pursue the common good and make the world a better place. This is not to deny that American government has its problems. There are incidents of waste, some regulations are poorly designed, and some politicians abuse their power. Also, our government is certainly not as democratic and accountable as it could be, and special interests have way too much political power. Such problems need to be fixed, and many groups are working for needed reforms. Nonetheless, whatever drawbacks this institution has right now are far outweighed by the enormous benefits that we all enjoy from a vast array of public-sector programs. So what difference does it make that many Americans continue to believe mistakenly that government is bad for them? Plenty. The myth that government is bad greatly aids conservative attacks on the public sector. It makes people more likely to support Republican efforts to slash taxes, neglect vital social programs, and undermine needed environmental, consumer, and workplace regulations. Instead of less government, in many areas we actually need more government. We can see what we are missing if we compare our governmental efforts to those of many western European democracies that have larger and betterfunded public sectors. Studies show that because of our relatively anemic public sector, Americans are more likely than European citizens to lack healthcare coverage, to be poor, to drive on dangerous roads, to breathe dirty air, to drink less-safe water, to have less access to good public transportation, and to be less economically secure. Less government here also means that we have less-affordable day care, higher infant mortality, more job-related injuries, less affordable housing, and a lower life expectancy. So there is a great deal at stake in how we view government. Americans need to adopt a more realistic view of this institution, a view that acknowledges the overwhelmingly positive role that government plays in our society. When conservatives are able to hamstring and reduce government, they are limiting our ability to protect our families from harm and improve all of our lives. We need to resist mindless government bashing and recognize that government is one of our best tools for making the world a better place. Douglas J. Amy is professor of politics at MHC. His views are more extensively presented at www.governmentisgood. com.

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MHC Launches Online Courses for Alumnae B y H a n n a h Wa l l a c e ’9 5

Online learning is one of the latest trends in higher education. Institutions such as Bowdoin, Duke, and Wellesley are offering downloadable lectures on iTunes U, while MIT is posting entire classes—exams and readings included—on its OpenCourseWare Web site. “Coursecasts,” such as the popular lectures of physics professor Walter Lewin, are not for credit, but they’re free. Mount Holyoke is taking a slightly different approach. Last fall, the college became one of the first in the country to launch online courses in conjunction with the New York Times Knowledge Network. The two classes—Ruth Lawson Professor of Politics Vinnie Ferraro’s “The End of History or the Clash of Civilizations?” and “Inside the Art and Craft of Film,” taught by associate professor of film studies Robin Blaetz—were open to the public, though MHC alumnae got first dibs. Because these classes were more interactive than mere lectures—including live Web chats and e-mail contact with professors as well as readings and other resources (including movies for Blaetz’s class)— they came with a small price tag: $140 for four sessions. Choosing which class to take was tough—I hadn’t studied with either Blaetz or Ferraro during my years at MHC, and I found both subjects equally compelling. Ultimately, wanting to immerse myself in the current debates surrounding globalization, I signed up for Professor Ferraro’s.

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In early October, Ferraro sent students (a staggering sixtythree of us registered) an e-mail welcoming us to the class and encouraging us to familiarize ourselves with the Epsilen Environment—the online learning platform in which we’d be “meeting”—before the first class. I logged on and easily found our virtual classroom and the two primary texts that Ferraro had structured his class around: Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 essay The End of History? and Samuel P. Huntington’s 1993 article The Clash of Civilizations? The classes were to be conducted on Wednesdays from 7 to 9 pm in an Epsilen chat room. For the uninitiated, this is like Instant Messaging with dozens of people simultaneously, with comments appearing on the screen one after the other, complete with typos and the occasional smiley face. The first session was chaotic, with provocative IMs ricocheting back and forth, making it challenging to follow any one thread. Many students got fed up; the numbers in Ferraro’s class dwindled. “The lag between statement and response was a bit frustrating,” admits Mary Baton Marx ’59. Di Pagnotti ’98, however, loved the chats’ discursive nature. “It wasn’t nearly as disorienting as I thought it would be,” says Pagnotti. “Usually having ADD is not an advantage. But it doesn’t occur to me that following six to ten trains of thought is unusual.” Those who hung in there were rewarded. By the second chat, there were only a dozen or so active participants— which kept discussions more measured and focused. (However, Felice Nudelman, director of education at the Times, points out that there were many more students eavesdropping on classes without actively chatting—a common phenomenon in e-learning.) Ferraro reined us in, too, posing three questions about the readings a few days before each class in an e-mail and—to add a human

José Ortega

Inside the Global Classroom

touch—on short videos posted on the Epsilen site. He also began calling “time-outs” during our chats so he could summarize the main themes of our conversations. Our chats ranged widely—from how globalization may be forcing China to adopt democratic values to the question of whether globalization threatens the diversity of human cultures. In one session, we brainstormed about how to institute international environmental standards that both poor and wealthy countries can afford to follow. (See alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/go/ecourse for an excerpt.) Overall, the two classes—a pilot program—were a resounding success, with 90 percent of students saying that they’d take another such class. “This was truly a steep learning curve,” says Patricia VandenBerg, the college’s executive director of communications and its unofficial liaison with the Times. “Vinnie and Robin were incredibly flexible and tenacious—they were real troupers.” Ellie Miller Greenberg ’53, who took Ferraro’s course and who has developed online master’s programs, agrees. “Ferraro’s congeniality was especially welcome,” she says. “To do an online course when people are out there and you don’t know who they are—you have to have a personality that allows you to build a relationship on thin air.” However, Greenberg thinks it would’ve been useful to have an online orientation—using the medium itself to walk students through the Epsilen system. Jill Agruss Breckenridge ’65, who considers herself fairly computer literate, agrees. “You should use the technology to teach the technology,” she says. Both Greenberg and Breckenridge wished the course had more than four sessions. The Times and the college will expand MHC’s e-course roster this summer with additional faculty and classes,

yet to be determined. (Ferraro and Blaetz will reprise their courses.) And based on students’ evaluations, says Nudelman, Epsilen is making improvements such as adding audio and real-time streaming video of both professors and students. Courses may be extended by two weeks. VandenBerg notes that the online format has a lot of potential—faculty could do one-off lectures or “evenings with” that would later be posted online for alumnae clubs around the world. The online format is ideal for alumnae who live in different time zones because it allows them to take the course on their own time—even if it means they’ll miss scheduled chats. “The chat room part is optional,” points out Nudelman, who says part of the appeal of e-learning is that you can access the class (in the form of archived chats) anytime you want. So, even though the number of chatters in Ferraro’s class hovered at twelve, the number of log-ons—students downloading texts, browsing the course material and resources, and reading chats—was much higher. As for me, I’ve already seen the benefits of taking Ferraro’s class. The other day I was editing a Q&A with scholar Parag Khanna, author of The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order, and I knew exactly what he was talking about when he referred to Fukuyama’s utopian vision of globalization and Huntington’s more fatalistic view that it will lead to a clash of cultures. Neither of these scenarios, Khanna, said, has come to pass. After four animated discussions in Ferraro’s online class, I tend to agree. Hannah Wallace ’95 is a Brooklyn-based journalist and the senior editor at JANERA.com, a new online magazine and social networking site for global nomads.

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offtheshelf

Words Worth a Second Look This Too Is Diplomacy: Stories of a Partnership By Dorothy J. Irving ’43 (AuthorHouse)

Nonfiction CEO of Me: Creating a Life That Works in the Flexible Job Age By Ellen Ernst Kossek ’79 and Brenda A. Lautsch (Wharton Press) Are you finding the line between your work and home life blurred? Are you sick of juggling work tasks while trying to spend time with your children? Ellen Kossek’s book helps people clarify their work-life values and learn new ways to manage work-life relationships. Ellen Ernst Kossek is a professor in the School of Labor and Industrial Relations at Michigan State University and a leading research expert on work and personal life. My Life and Battles By Jack Johnson; translated by Christopher Rivers (Greenwood Press) African American Jack Johnson (1878–1946), whose defeat in 1910 of heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries, who was white, spurred race riots across the country, has been called “the first African American pop culture icon.” My Life and Battles uncovers Johnson’s depictions of his colorful life and battles as well as the “color line” in boxing and American society in general. Christopher Rivers is a professor of French at Mount Holyoke. He is writing a book on Georges Carpentier, the celebrated French boxer of the pre– and post–World War I era.

An occupied city, an active volcano, and a presidential visit were all part of Dorothy Irving’s experience as a Foreign Service spouse, which she faithfully examines in this book. Irving paints a broad canvas of raising three children in numerous countries; coping with unfamiliar customs and languages; and how to accept humbly the special treatment often accorded diplomats. Dorothy Petrie Irving has long been involved in interracial and intercultural activities and has received several awards in this field, including an MHC Sesquicentennial Award. Taking the Pulse of the U.S. Health Care System By Catherine Farmer Hosmer ’49 (iUniverse) What has happened to a oncegreat health care system often proclaimed by many as best in the world? The author interviewed hundreds of people and was shocked by the disdain with which most of those questioned view the U.S. health care system. This book tries to answer the questions “How did it happen?” and “If our health care system is broken, how can we fix it?” Catherine Hosmer is author of several fiction and nonfiction books and contributes freelance articles to national newspapers and magazines. Democracy and Lobbying in the European Union By Karolina Karr FF’98 (Campus Verlag) Can interest groups and lobbyists operate in a democratic system without hindering the people’s interests? This timely book explores how the power of interest groups has developed, thanks to the growing distance between elected representatives and the European people, and forecasts what this might mean for government vitality. Karolina Karr lives in Berlin and works for German Rail. This book is part of her PhD in political science.

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Rediscovering Jacob Riis: Exposure Journalism and Photography in Turn-of-the-Century New York By Bonnie Yochelson and Daniel Czitrom (The New Press) This book takes a fresh look at the Progressive Era social reformer, journalist, and pioneer photographer who publicized the conditions of the desperately poor in turn-of-the-century New York. It includes ninety illustrations of Riis’s work and an eight-page duotone photo essay. Daniel Czitrom is a professor of history at MHC. He is the author of Media and the American Mind and coauthor of Out of Many: A History of the American People.

Global Capitalism Unbound Edited by Eva Paus (Palgrave Macmillan) This book brings together experts who analyze the rapid growth of offshore outsourcing and its huge implications worldwide. From the promise of rapid economic growth to the unraveling of social contracts, the diverse accounts of winners and losers offer a comprehensive look at the phenomenon and how policy might be used to spread its benefits more widely and equally. Eva Paus is a professor of economics and director of the Center for Global Initiatives at MHC. She is also the author of Foreign Investment, Development, and Globalization: Can Costa Rica Become Ireland?

Anger-Related Disorders: A Practitioner’s Guide to Comparative Treatments By Eva L. Feindler ’75 (Springer Publishing) In this groundbreaking exploration, Eva Feindler seeks to answer the following questions: What are anger-related disorders? What do they have in common and how is each different? How do we treat anger-related disorders? The book provides an overview of how clinicians can implement therapies and tailor numerous treatments to individual clients’ needs. Eva L. Feindler is professor of psychology at the Long Island University and is directly involved in programs to help children and families manage their anger and resolve conflict.

Shakespeare’s Genealogies: Plots and Illustrated Family Trees for All 42 Works By Vanessa James (Melcher Media) In Shakespeare’s Genealogies, Vanessa James uses a unique, fully illustrated, seventeenfoot-long, double-sided format to trace the genealogies of the more than 1,000 characters mentioned in all forty-two of William Shakespeare’s plays and dramatic poems. Beginning with Shakespeare’s own family tree and proceeding into plot outlines and charts organized by category of play, the book’s thorough and inventive scholarship makes it a must-have for any serious student of Shakespeare. Vanessa James is a professor of theatre and chair of the Department of Theatre Arts at Mount Holyoke. She has designed many offBroadway shows and her work is documented in the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute.

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Petit Guide de la Suisse insolite: Made in Switzerland By Mavis Guinard ’46 (Metropolis Editions) This is a collection of offbeat features on Switzerland that first appeared in the International Herald Tribune. From insights into why Switzerland became so clean to the birth of Frankenstein, Made in Switzerland will please fans of historic anecdotes and armchair travel as well as the practical traveler, who will benefit from the author’s tips and index of places.

Prisoner for Liberty By Marty Rhodes Figley FP’03 (Millbrook Press) Prisoner for Liberty follows the story of James Forten, a fictitious fifteen-year-old African American boy born during the American Revolution. Captured by the British while working on an American ship in 1781, Forten wonders where his fate will deliver him. Marty Rhodes Figley has written many children’s books and currently lives in the Washington, D.C., area.

Mavis Gaipa Guinard has lived in Switzerland for forty years. She has translated numerous books, including Mummenschanz and This Prison Where I Live.

Teaching About Scientific Origins: Taking Account of Creationism Edited by Leslie S. Jones ’77 and Michael J. Reiss (Peter Lang Publishing) The evolution/creationism controversy has crippled biological education. Many students finish school without a basic understanding of a theory that is a fundamental component of scientific literacy. This book takes an educational point of view that respects both the teaching of evolution and religious beliefs and offers a collection of perspectives that begin to dismantle the notion that religion and science are incompatible.

To Hell with Love By Sherri Erwin ’90 (Kensington Books) When Boston designer Kate Markham meets real-estate mogul Owen Glendower, sparks fly. Swept off her feet, Kate lets herself fall into a breathtaking sensual journey she hopes will never end, even when Owen reveals his little secret: he happens to be Hades, ruler of the underworld and the devil himself. Sherri Browning Erwin ’90 lives in western Massachusetts and writes women’s fiction with a paranormal twist. Her other novels include The Scoundrel’s Vow and Once Wicked.

Leslie Jones is a science educator in the biology department at Valdosta State University in Georgia.

Fiction Seven Blackbirds By Helen Black Medeiros ’81 (Four Elk Press) How do you reclaim your life after an abusive marriage? Seven Blackbirds follows Kimberly Baltakis as she stumbles along the road toward wholeness and independence. Shunning stereotypical characters, the novel gives the reader fresh insight into the dynamics of abuse. Helen Black Medeiros lives in Portland, Oregon.

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Murder New York Style Edited By Randy Kandel ’66 (L&L Dreamspell) Twenty-one stories of murder and mayhem in New York City make up Randy Kandel’s mystery anthology. Stories involve a labor strike in the early twentieth century; the gentrification of the Lower East Side; the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and the contemporary paranoia of a Westchester community college. Randy Altman Kandel is a New York City agency judge, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and president of the New York/Tri-State chapter of Sisters in Crime.

Author Interview War at Home: One Woman’s Experience in the Bangladesh War of Independence Fiction, says Tahmima Anam ’97, encourages readers to make empathetic leaps into other worlds. And that’s exactly where this author of a much-celebrated first novel, A Golden Age (HarperCollins), wants them to go. Set against the backdrop of the war for independence in Bangladesh in the early 1970s, the book revolves around a young widow, Rehana Haque, whose political and emotional consciousness is transformed as she struggles to keep her two children safe and negotiate the turmoil and unexpected passions that the war ignites. While the conflict always fascinated Anam, who was born in Bangladesh in 1975, she originally researched the period’s events for an oral history as part of her doctoral thesis in social anthropology at Harvard. But her interviews with survivors so moved her that she felt she had to write the novel. “I just wanted to convey something of that mood; wanted people to feel transported to another time and place, and the only way to do that is through fiction.” Although she was born after the war, Anam’s parents and extended family were active in the independence movement and told stories throughout her childhood that not only piqued her curiosity but also deeply affected her sense of personal belonging. “I thought the novel would mostly be about the widow’s children, but this character, Rehana, took over,” Anam explains. “I felt much closer to her. [A native of India,] she’s not sure whether she belongs in this country or not.” Anam felt much the same way in all the places she lived as a child in a diplomatic family posted to Paris, New York, and Bangkok. “Wherever we lived, it was like we didn’t actually live there,” she recalls. “There was always an idea to go back [to Bangladesh] and give back—and that was my job, too.”

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Currently a resident of London, Anam has written for the New York Times, Granta, and the New Statesman, where she is a contributing editor. She has started to think about the second book of what she anticipates will be a trilogy. The next installment will focus on Rehana’s father and the dying days of colonialism in India, and will be set in Calcutta in the 1950s. “At the end of this book I thought, ‘I can’t let the characters go’ and I want to look at history through the lens of this family. There are so many things that happened in Bengal in the last hundred years. I have so much, so many things to [discover].”—M.H.B. This is the second in a series of occasional spotlights on books of particular note.

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alumnaematters the dean of student affairs at Skidmore College. Prior to taking on the executive director position at the association, Rochelle held a number of administrative positions at Mount Holyoke, including director of diversity and inclusion and acting dean of the college. “Rochelle will be part of all our spring reunion events, and will depart for Skidmore after June 30. This will give us time to fête her accomplishments and provide an appropriate farewell tribute. Meanwhile, the board of the association will commence a search to fill the executive director position, and we hope to have our new director in place this fall.”

W. Rochelle Calhoun ’83 Resigns as Association’s Executive Director In February, W. Rochelle Calhoun ’83 announced her resignation as executive director of the Alumnae Association.

Mary Graham Davis ’65, president of the association, wrote, “The Alumnae Association has enjoyed the

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executive director leadership of Rochelle Calhoun for the past five years. She has made a tremendous mark on the association and on alumnae and students, and we will miss her as she moves on to become

For details on how to apply for (or nominate someone for) the executive director position, and on the search process, visit alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ go/edsearch.

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A tribute to Rochelle and her impact on the college and the association will run in the summer Quarterly. Please send any accolades for possible publication to Emily Weir (eweir@ mtholyoke.edu or c/o Alumnae Association of MHC, 50 College St., S. Hadley, MA 01075-1486.

Keynoter Elizabeth Spiers—whose Dead Horse Media produces DealBreaker.com, Fashionista.com, and other Web publications— spoke on Web journalism and new media.

Future in Communic@tions, coproduced by the Alumnae Association and the MHC Office of Communications. As the printed word adapts to life with the Internet, alumnae working in communications gathered to network with students and each other—and to hear about their profession’s future.

The screen behind Elizabeth Spiers, founder of Gawker and Dead Horse Media, had a banner headline eliciting chuckles from all corners of the room: cryingwhileeating.com.

magazine or TV channel,” Spiers said. But in an age where traditional print media are scrambling to hold on to subscribers and searching for traction and profit, such niche markets have taken hold on the Internet. Online pioneers like Spiers may hold the key to how we get our news in the future.

“There’s never going to be a ‘crying while eating’

This was the subject of a winter conference, The

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Alumnae Ponder the Future of Communications

A panel moderated by Carol A. Sliwa ’80, which included Sheryl Y. McCarthy ’69, Linda Giannasi O’Connell ’69, Julie L. Sell ’83, and Avice A. Meehan ’77, reviewed the financial difficulties facing news outlets in the Internet age, the profession’s rewards, and their own career paths. That the conference was tailored to alumnae in a specific field resonated with Carlyn Saltman ’80. “I’m so glad this happened,” she said. “We get together with classmates during the year, but I would come every year to meet with other alumnae in my field.” The Alumnae Association plans to offer

alumnaematters

Barbara Lippert ’76 of Adweek (second from left), and Pamela Maffei McCarthy ’74 of The New Yorker (center right) led a discussion on trade and mass-market magazine journalism.

similar conferences for alumnae in other career areas; the next will be for educators, this fall. Spiers, Saturday’s keynote speaker, spoke about the inroads made by “new media”—online outlets such as blogs and podcasts—of which she is a pioneering entrepreneur. Gawker and Dead Horse Media sites have become enormously popular with the nine-to-five crowd, who would have picked up a newspaper in a previous era. New media have both transformed news sources and proven cost-effective. Spiers compared her venture to Condé Nast’s Portfolio, a new business magazine, which took $125 million to launch. “I think we spent about $125,000 to launch DealBreaker,” she said, referring to the WallStreet-gossip site she established. Spiers’s talk gave Amy L. Cavanaugh ’06 “a good feel for career

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options in nontraditional media.”

While “the Internet has cut into the news-breaking muscle of traditional journalism,” Painton admitted, bloggers “will never open Baghdad bureaus.” She seemed hopeful that journalism’s “holy trinity” of “patience, diligence, and focus will find a way to resurface” in this period of rapid media evolution. One thing hasn’t changed, Painton added. “The craft of old-fashioned walking the beat will always have to be there,” whether the result appears in The New York Times or online. —Meg Massey ’08 Learn More: For audio of the keynote speeches and other conference follow-up, visit alumnae. mtholyoke.edu/go/ commconf.

Ashfia Huq ’96, left, and Susan Butler Manning ’93 received Mary Lyon Awards this year.

Research Scientist and Pro Bono Attorney Honored Two young alumnae whose promise and sustained achievement are consistent with the humane values Mary Lyon exemplified in her life received Mary Lyon Awards in February. The award honors young alumnae who graduated no more than fifteen years ago. Ashfia Huq ’96, a research scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is an expert in neutron and X-ray powder diffraction. This technique allows scientists to characterize the structural properties of different types of materials used in both basic science and commercial applications. Huq is studying materials and mechanisms related to onboard-storage of hydrogen for cars, as well as the structures of pharmaceutical compounds, industrial catalysts, and superconducting compounds. Huq earned her doctorate in physics at the State University

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of New York, Stony Brook, and received a postdoctoral fellowship at Argonne National Laboratory, where she developed her expertise in neutron diffraction methods. She has been assigned to a new neutron powder diffractometer at Oak Ridge, POWGEN3, which once completed will enable Huq to work with hundreds of researchers annually on basic and applied materials research. Huq has published numerous papers in major scientific journals, including Science, Chemical Physics Letters, and the Journal of Physical Chemistry. “We feel strongly that she will be a major contributor to the success of POWGEN and the Spallation Neutron Source,” said Bryan Chakoumakos, a senior research scientist at Oak Ridge. Susan Baker Manning ’93 earned her law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law. A patent litigator and partner at Bingham McCutchen LLP in Washington, D.C., Manning has had a career distinguished both by

her expertise in the area of intellectual property and technology and by her extensive pro bono work. She has successfully defended clients in civil rights and domestic violence cases, as well as in cases of political asylum on behalf of those escaping oppression and violence in their home countries. She currently represents twelve Guantanamo Bay detainees who are Ughurs, an ethnic group of mostly Muslim people from farwestern China. Picked up in Pakistan by bounty hunters, they were initially held at the military prison for three years without legal counsel. Their story has received significant news coverage from the Washington Post and PBS NewsHour, among other outlets. “It’s been the adventure of a lifetime,” says Manning, who has traveled to Cuba four times. “It’s the saddest place I’ve ever been … and an unbelievably worthy cause. What’s happening to them is not fair and not how the American system operates. Everybody deserves their day in court—including these guys.”—M.H.B.

Fred LeBlanc

Friday’s keynote address was delivered by Priscilla Painton ’80, who recently left Time magazine to serve as editor-in-chief at Simon & Schuster. Painton focused on the pros and cons of Internet and traditional news reporting. The instantaneous nature of the Internet and pressure to break news quickly makes it less likely that what is released has been fully fact-checked, she explained. “Big stories that change minds or the course of events take the one thing we’re missing lately—time.”

Ben barnhart • Blaetz: Mary Noble Ours •

Take an Intellectual Trip—Come Back to Class at Reunion Would you like to spend an afternoon immersing yourself in Spanish? Want to know more about women leaders in South Africa? The Back-toClass program offers more than twenty classes on the Friday of each Reunion weekend (May 23 and 30) for returning alumnae and their guests. With no cost and no homework, there’s just the pure pleasure of enriching your mind. Sign up when you register for the weekend. Or arrive Thursday night (we’ve got plenty of rooms on campus) to register and ensure a seat.

Hungry sous chefs in Greenwich, Connecticut surround Chef Nicole Straight.

Clubs Corner Chef Shares Quick and Easy Recipes Members of the Mount Holyoke Club of Fairfield Villages grabbed their whisks in January and joined chef Nicole Straight for an interactive cooking class featuring easy-tomake meals—in fifteen minutes, no less—for singles or families. “We had eleven alums and one daughter turn out for the class,” said organizer Kathleen Turland ’90. “It was a lot of fun.” Dishes prepared in class at Christopher Peacock Cabinetry in Greenwich included Baja fish tacos, moo shoo beef, and spinach tortellini with garlicky swiss chard. “I have already made the fish tacos at home with great success,” added Turland. Check out Straight’s Web site and cookbook at www.timetoeat.info.

By now you should have received a questionnaire in your e-mail inbox (or in your mailbox) from our alumnae directory publisher, Harris Connect, asking for updates about you. If you have moved, changed jobs, had a baby, or have been promoted—or even if things are exactly the same—please let us know by completing the questionnaire. (If you haven’t had a chance to complete it yet, you’ll receive a reminder postcard or e-mail in early May with information about how to call in to Harris Connect.) We’re preparing now for the next alumnae directory, which will be published (in book form and online) in November. We’re also converting to a new, more advanced data system, so when you send that questionnaire, you help us make sure that your alumnae information is 100 percent correct.

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Association President Nominations Sought The Nominating Committee has begun its triennial task of selecting the next president to lead the Alumnae Association. The committee strongly encourages alumnae to participate by recommending qualified candidates. The president’s responsibilities include setting priorities for programs and the budget, representing the Association on the College’s Board of Trustees, communicating with College President Joanne V. Creighton and senior staff, overseeing the policy function of the Association board, evaluating the executive director, serving as a role model for students and alumnae, and maintaining a strong Alumnae Association with an increasingly global reach. Jill M. Brethauer ’70, nominating committee chair, asks that alumnae submit candidates’ names—along with details about their qualifications—to her by e-mail at Jill_Brethauer@alumnae.mtholyoke.edu, by phone at 724-443-6575, or by regular mail at 4046 Dickey Road, Gibsonia, PA 15044-9714.

Learn the Art and Craft of Film Robin Blaetz understands film. An associate professor of film studies at MHC, she has collaborated with the New York Times in creating the immensely popular online course, Inside the Art and Craft of Film, and more recently offered insight into the aural and visual elements of film as part of the Lyon Lecture Series. The best news is that Blaetz is also a member of the Speaker’s Bureau for the Alumnae Association and is willing to speak to your club. Call or e-mail Krysia Villón ’96, assistant director of clubs, at 413-538-2738 or e-mail her at kvillon@mtholyoke.edu for more information, or go to alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/volunteers/res/speakers/index.php. Mou n t Ho lyo k e Al u m na e Qua r t e r ly

Spring 2008

Nominees for Alumnae Association Directors and Committee Members In accordance with Article VI, Section 2 of the Bylaws of the Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College, the Nominating Committee has prepared and recommends the following slate for election at the Annual Meeting to be held on May 24, 2008. Each candidate has been fully informed of the responsibilities and rights of the position and has indicated consent to serve if elected. Alumnae may submit additional nominations according to the procedure outlined in Article VI, Section 4 of the Bylaws. Terms are for the three years ending June 30, 2011, unless a different year is noted. FOR ELECTION TO THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS: Young Alumnae Representative: Akua S. Soadwa ’03, Brooklyn, N.Y. Former membership co-chair, New York Club. Founder, Gye Nyame Empowerment Project and A Touch of Soadwa. MA, urban planning, design, and development, Cleveland State University. Urban analyst, N.Y. State Banking Department. Clerk: Julianne Trabucchi Puckett ’91, Chapel Hill, N.C. Class co-vice president, Reunion co-chair, Website coordinator. Former class co-vice president and Reunion co-chair, Reunion booklet chair, co-scribe, class agent; club president/contact, Alabama Club; admissions or assistant admissions representative, New Orleans, Huntsville, Baltimore, and Orange County clubs; Enrollment Task Force. Loyalty Award. MA, English, University of South Carolina. Senior user experience designer, Motricity Inc. Director-at-Large for Information Technology: Elizabeth A. Osder ’86, Culver City, Calif. Former class nominating committee, Reunion scribe, Reunion gift caller, class agent. MJ, journalism, University of Missouri. Knight Fellow, Stanford University; director of product development, NYTimes.com; vice president, iXL Media and Entertainment, senior director, product innovation, Yahoo! News; visiting professor, University of Southern California; principal, The Osder Group, Consultancy. Alumnae Relations Committee Chair: Mari Ellen Reynolds ’91, Mountain View, Calif. Head class agent. Former Alumnae Association Alumnae Relations Committee and Program Committee; Reunion gift caller, class agent; vice president, Peninsula Club; vice president, membership chair, book award chair, assistant admissions representative, Christmas Concert, New York Club; admissions representative, Mid-Hudson Valley Club; program chair, Westchester County Club. Biological sciences major. Chief of staff and chief of development and communications, Silicon Valley Community Foundation. FOR ELECTION TO THE COMMITTEES:

Alumnae Honors Research Committee

Chair: Frances M. Lussier ’73, Silver Spring, Md. Class Reunion gift caller. Former Alumnae Association Alumnae Honors Research Committee; Reunion gift caller, Reunion nametag chair, Reunion lead gift Committee, class vice

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president, Cornerstone Representative, class agent. PhD, physical chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Senior analyst, Congressional Budget Office. Former senior research analyst, Rand Corporation; program analyst, Office of the Secretary of Defense; systems analyst, Institute for Defense Analyses. Member: Beverly Lang Pierce ’74, Alexandria, Va. Former Alumnae Association Finance Committee, class agent. Asian Studies major. Nonprofit management consultant; edited several volumes of the recently published “Virginia Slave Births Index, 1853–1865” for the Alexandria Library. Retired director of administration, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian Institution.

Alumnae Quarterly Committee

Member: Emily A. Dietrich ’85, Redmond, Wash. Former Alumnae Association Outreach Committee; class agent, Reunion gift caller; admissions representative, vice president, program chair, Peninsula Club. MA, English, University of Michigan, and CED, Education, San Jose State University. Freelance writer and novelist; has published in Ms. magazine and Seattle Woman, and has been a teacher.

Alumnae Relations Committee

Member (to 2010): Sharon A. Wynne ’90, New York, N.Y. Former class agent; various roles, New York Club. English and politics major. Senior special events manager, Essence magazine. Former English teacher and account executive. Member: Jennifer L. Mele ’93, Arlington, Mass. Former Alumnae Association Strategic Planning Committee and Program Committee; class co-scribe, Reunion sign chair; admissions representative, membership chair, Boston Club. Politics major. Senior marketing manager, Northeastern University.

Classes and Reunions Committee

Member: Sara A. Stiltner ’02, Tacoma, Wash. Reunion gift caller. Former Reunion chair, class agent, reunion gift caller. Currently attending Bainbridge Graduate Institute for Business Administration. Independent consultant in database management. Member: Joan (“Wink”) Winkel Ripley ’55, Mount Kisko, N.Y. Class Website coordinator. Former Reunion vice-chair, originator of class Web site, Reunion Website coordinator, class vice president, Reunion gift caller; class nominating committee; treasurer, ways and means chair, and director, board member at-large, Westchester County Club. President, Second Story Bookshop, Chappaqua, N.Y.

Clubs Committee

Member: Christine A. Vaughn ’01, Durham, N.C. Former president, Atlanta Club. Studying for master’s degree in public policy at Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Duke University. Education policy and public school reform is focus of graduate work; working on thesis on ensuring accountability within the new Georgia Special Needs Scholarship Program. Former elementary school teacher. Member: Erin K. Purcell ’93, Seattle, Wash. Former class agent, Reunion gift caller; president, secretary, Webmaster,

Proposed Changes to the Alumnae Association’s Bylaws

Finance Committee

The following bylaws amendments (changes are in bold type) will be considered at the annual meeting of the Alumnae Association on May 24. The bylaws are available on line at www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu. (Choose “About us” then “Governance.”)

Member: Lynda (“Lyndy”) Dean Alexander ’80, Louisville, Ky. MBA, New York University. Career in finance and accounting, specializing in nonprofit finance primarily with the Girl Scouts. Senior director of operations, chief financial officer for the National Center for Family Literacy, Louisville.

Nominating Committee

Member: Lydia J. Young ’75, Palo Alto, Calif. Class agent; assistant admissions representative, Peninsula Area. Former Alumnae Association Alumnae Honors Research Committee; Reunion gift caller, Cornerstone Representative, class agent. MS, applied physics, and PhD, nuclear science and engineering, Cornell University. Vice president of technology and chief technical officer, Photon Dynamics Inc., San Jose, Calif. Member: Mayra Garcia ’94, La Jolla, Calif. At-large director, San Diego Club; former co-president, assistant admissions representative, San Diego Club. JD, Boston University. Criminal defense attorney.

Nomination of Alumnae Trustees and Awards Committee

Chair: Mary Kamerling Allyn ’63, Sarasota, Fla. Former Alumnae Association Nomination of Alumnae Trustees and Awards Committee, vice chair of Executive Director Search Committee 2002-03, Program Committee chair of Board of Directors, chair of Executive Director Search Committee 1990; Sesquicentennial Auction Committee; class president, Reunion welcome/hospitality chair, Reunion gift caller. Alumnae Medal of Honor. Community volunteer. Retired associate dean of students, MHC. Member (to 2010): Alma Tina Hogan ’74, San Francisco, Calif. Resident Dormitory Oversight Committee. Former MHC trustee, alumnae trustee, MHC Finance Committee, Campus Master Planning Committee and Construction Oversight Committee. Major gifts volunteer; Reunion gift caller, class nominating committee chair, Cornerstone Representative; assistant admissions representative, San Francisco Club; admissions representative, Northern Calif. Medal of Honor. Graduate, Duke University School of Law. Licensed real estate broker, independent consultant in real estate law; development, strategic and project management. Member: Ashanta Evans-Blackwell ’95, Chicago, Ill. Former young alumnae trustee, Presidential Search Committee; Alumnae Association ALANA Committee chair; class agent, Reunion gift caller; assistant admissions representative, Chicago Club; admissions representative, New Orleans Club. Graduate, Vanderbilt University School of Law. Lawyer in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois for the Honorable William J. Hibbler. For a list of alumnae recently appointed to the Board of Directors, committees, and task forces, please visit alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/go/app08.

Article IV, Board of Directors Section 1, Membership 2. Elected members. All members of the Board except two approved members-at-large shall be elected by the Membership. 3. Appointed Directors. No more than two (2) membersat-large may be appointed by the President to serve as shall be determined by the President, but in no event shall a term of an appointed director run beyond the term of the President appointing her.

alumnaematters

newsletter editor, board member, Puget Sound Club. MBA, Washington University. Finance manager, Quantum Corp., a technology company.

Article VI, Nominations and Elections Section 1, Nominating Committee 2.a. Members Rotation. … The number of members of the Nominating Committee shall be determined by the Board. Article VII, Standing and Special Committees Section I, Standing Committees There shall be the following standing committees of the Board: Alumnae Honors Research Committee, Alumnae Quarterly Committee, Alumnae Relations Committee, Classes and Reunion Committee, Clubs Committee, Finance Committee, Nominating Committee, and Nomination of Alumnae Trustees/Awards Committee. Section 4, Composition and Responsibilities of Standing Committees 2.a. Alumnae Quarterly Committee Composition. … Editor of the Quarterly shall be an ex officio member of the Alumnae Quarterly Committee without vote. 4.b. Classes and Reunion Committee, Responsibilities. The Classes and Reunion Committee shall be a resource to encourage, support and coordinate class organization of alumnae and to be responsible for reunions. 5. a. Clubs Committee, Composition. The Clubs Committee shall include the chair and eight members elected by the Alumnae Association membership. 5.b. Responsibilities. The Clubs Committee shall be a resource for alumnae who organize or wish to organize into a club based on their geographic location or an affiliate group based on special interests and to encourage, motivate and coordinate with such clubs/affiliate group. 7. a. Nomination of Alumnae Trustees/Awards Committee, Composition. … No member of the Nomination of Alumnae Trustee/Awards Committee, with the exception of the chair, shall be a member of the same class or from the same club area as any other member of the committee.

Mou n t Ho lyo k e Al u m na e Qua r t e r ly

Spring 2008

• CFO of an arts nonprofit • Crazy about theater, yoga, and books • Knows her way around a Warhol

• Lawyer • Loves animals, gardening, and travel • Knows her way around a kayak

• Political scientist • Promoted peace in Northern Ireland • Knows her way around a model U.N.

Q: WHAT DO THESE THREE ALUMS HAVE IN COMMON? a) Pride in their Mount Holyoke degree b) Passion for their work c) Profiles on LifeNet ✔ d) All of the above But they aren’t the only ones who would answer “d.” KC Maurer ’84, Sarah Lockhart ’02, and Nan Somasundaram ’83 are just three of hundreds of alums who have updated their profiles on LifeNet—the Alumnae Association’s online career and social networking tool. Curious about a career in the arts? Interested in law schools? Or how about joining a few alums and their dogs for a walk in the park? LifeNet is where it all begins. To get started, go to http://www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/connect/ and click on “LifeNet.” In minutes, you’ll be connected to a powerful network of alums—MHC women who really know their way around.

LifeNet. A networking site for every part of your life.

Announcements

New Andy Warhol Acquisitions at the Art Museum In February, alumna Kathleen C. Maurer ’84 made a stop at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum to drop off a precious package. Maurer, chief financial officer of the Andy Warhol Foundation, was on campus for an Alumnae Association meeting and took the opportunity to hand-deliver the muchanticipated gift of 153 original photographs by the legendary American artist.

appear in the photos, as well as celebrities such as author Truman Capote, Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos, designer Paloma Picasso, and archaeologist Iris Love. “These images offer a fascinating glimpse into both the Warhol social circle and the artist’s particular working methods,” notes museum curator Wendy Watson. “Multiple images of the same person reveal how Warhol visualized his models, captured them on film, and then, in many cases, translated their likenesses into prints and paintings. This gift offers an unparalleled opportunity to get an ‘inside look’ into Andy Warhol’s mental processes.” Self Portrait by Andy Warhol

Mount Holyoke’s was among a select group of teaching museums to receive these remarkable images through the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Photographic Legacy Program. The photographs, both Polaroids and black-andwhite prints, portray individuals whose likenesses were later recorded in paintings and prints by the noted Pop artist. Unknown models

Warhol Foundation president Joel Wachs has noted that the aim of the legacy program is to provide greater access to Warhol’s artwork. The new photographs will likely be displayed publicly next year, but in the meantime, they can be examined— like any other object not currently on view—by making an appointment with the museum staff. They also will be accessible through the museum’s online database http:// museums.fivecolleges.edu.

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Janet Fish, Kraft Salad Dressing, oil on canvas, 1973; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Barancik, parents of Jill Barancik ’86

Reflective Objects Highlight Janet Fish Exhibit

Considering Applying to Medical School?

Janet Fish thinks of herself as a “painterly realist,” interested primarily in light, atmosphere, motion, and lush, saturated color. As a careful observer realizes when looking at Kraft Salad Dressing, one of the paintings displayed in the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum’s exhibition Janet Fish: Into the Light, which runs through June 1, motion and energy pervade her remarkable compositions. The exhibition surveys four decades of Fish’s work in oil, watercolor, pastel, and graphic media, beginning with a carefully selected group of early Pop-inspired images of food packages in gleaming plastic and glass.

MHC alumnae who think they may apply to medical school and other health professions programs are strongly urged to contact the Career Development Center for crucial information and assistance with the application process. To optimize the success of your application, you should initiate the process in March of the calendar year before you wish to matriculate. Help us to help you put together the best application possible! E-mail Dr. David Gardner, director for prehealth and science advising, at dgardner@ mtholyoke.edu.

Wa r h o l : C o u r t e s y o f t h e A n d y Wa r h o l F o u n d a t i o n f o r t h e V i s u a l A r t s • F i s h : P h o t o g r a p h b y P e t e r g o r s k y / G i p e

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MHC Class and Club Products Lots of MHC-related products benefiting classes and clubs are for sale. For details and photos, please visit alumnae. mtholyoke.edu/shop/ alumgifts.php or phone the Alumnae Association at 413-538-2300 to request a printed copy of the information.

The SEARCH Program MHC is recruiting students for Summer Explorations and Research Collaborations for High School Girls, a four-week program on campus. We encourage girls who have a sense of curiosity and adventure about mathematics to apply. Students will explore exciting topics outside

the usual high school curriculum. Do you have a daughter or friend who would like to find out what is exciting about mathematics? Please visit www.mtholyoke.edu/proj/ search to learn more or contact the directors, Charlene and James Morrow, at 413-538-2608 or search@mtholyoke.edu. The 2008 program will be held June 29–July 26.

Lyon’s Pride Lyon’s Pride welcomes all lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, intersexed, and other queer members of the MHC community. Register at www.mhlp. org to access e-mail lists, newsletters, and calendar of events, archives, and more.

Atkins Farms “Mountain Day” Care Package The class of 1999 and Atkins Farms Country Market are happy to present personal Mount Holyoke “Mountain Day” care packages. Each is filled with a taste of New England—two fruits, Cabot cheese and crackers, fudge, hot cocoa mix, maple sugar candy, Atkins oatmeal or chocolate chip cookies, and Atkins cider donuts.

Kitchen Sink, Anyone? Free Classified Ads, on Web The Quarterly is no longer able to publish classified ads—due to USPS rules for our type of magazine— but all alumnae are welcome to post free classified ads on our Web site (alumniconnections. com/olc/pub/MHO/ yellowpages.html).

To order, call Atkins (800-594-9537) or order online at www. mhc1999.com. Be sure to tell Atkins that you’re ordering the MHC class of ’99 package. Cost: $22, plus shipping to any U.S. address.

The SummerMath Program Each July fifty to sixty high school women from across the country come to Mount Holyoke College for four weeks to open their minds to mathematics, computer programming, and a college environment. Do you have a daughter or friend of high school age who would like to spend a month with a diverse group of academically motivated students at Mount Holyoke? Please visit www.mtholyoke.edu/proj/summermath to learn more, or contact the directors, Charlene and James Morrow at 413-538-2608 or summermath@mtholyoke.edu. The 2008 program will be held June 29–July 26.

Mou n t Ho lyo k e Al u m na e Qua r t e r ly

Spring 2008

travelopportunities

treasures as we sail from legendary Venice across the Adriatic and along Dalmatia’s rugged, beautiful shoreline. Explore the Roman legacy of Split, walk in the footsteps of Marco Polo in his medieval birthplace of Korcula, and step back into the Renaissance era in Dubrovnik.

English Garden Treasures: Featuring the Chelsea Garden Show May 10–21, 2008 Accompanied by Eugenia Herbert, professor emeritus of history The walled gardens, splendid estates, and extraordinary plantings of Bath, Exeter, and Cornwall highlight this fabulous journey through a history of garden design. Savor the magnificent Kensington Gardens in London, and finish your horticultural extravaganza with a visit to the Chelsea Flower Show, the world’s supreme floral event.

English Garden Treasures

Danube River and Habsburg Empire May 31–June 10, 2008 Accompanied by Penny Gill, Mary Lyon Professor of Humanities and Professor of Politics Experience a unique river and rail journey through the heart of Central Europe. You will explore the “crown jewels” of this fascinating region, including lively Budapest, imperial Vienna, majestic Prague, and medieval Krakow. Your deluxe travel arrangements mirror the glory years of the Habsburg Empire.

Mayan Kings & Great Pyramids: A Yucatán Voyage December 26, 2008–January 4, 2009

Bath (English Garden Treasures)

Journey Along the Silk Road/China June 22–July 3, 2008 Accompanied by Stephen Jones, professor of Russian studies Parts of the ancient trading route between Rome and China are yours to explore during this fascinating, intercultural journey including Beijing and Xi’an, with its terra cotta warriors and Muslim quarter; Kashgar, with its colorful livestock market; serene Bishkek, Samarkand, full of antique intensity; and the living museum of Bukhara.

The Black Sea August 3–13, 2008 Accompanied by Bettina Bergmann, Helene Phillips Herzig ’49 Professor of Art History Dotted with cities and sites spanning the course of recorded history, this region will first engage us with Istanbul and then take

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us to the seldom-visited northern coast of Turkey, with its Ottoman mosques. The comprehensive voyage also includes Sevastopol, crucible of the Crimean War; Odessa; and Bulgaria’s historic town of Varna. Yale and Smith alumni will travel with us.

Dubrovnik (Village Life Along the Dalmatian Coast)

Village Life Along the Dalmatian Coast October 7–15, 2008 Accompanied by Mark E. Landon, visiting assistant professor of classics Join us on a voyage of cultural and natural

With faculty and staff members from Amherst College and the Metropolitan Museum of Art Ring in the new year under the open Yucatán sky. Following two days in the colonial city of Mérida, embark on the ninetypassenger French motor yacht Le Levant for a seven-night cruise around the Yucatán peninsula. Admire breathtaking scenery and stop to visit spectacular Mayan sites, including Chichén Itzá, Uxmal, and the Temple of the Five Storeys. Visit museums filled with archaeological treasures, enjoy the stunning light and sound show at the historic San Miguel Fort, and view ancient murals, which depict the Mayan gods, in the Templo de los Frescos. Includes optional post-tour to the Mayan city of Tikal, Guatemala. INTERESTED? For more information on Associationsponsored travel, please contact the Alumnae Association at 413-538-2300 or alumnaeassociation@ mtholyoke.edu.

She was a work of art. She wanted you to be one, too.

Help us fill in the blanks.

Send a photo of yourself and a gift of any amount to the Founder’s Fund—the

endowment fund of the independent Alumnae Association—and we’ll give you fifteen minutes of fame as a Pop icon in our fall issue. (Don’t worry, your support will last a lot longer. Alumnae generosity has kept the Founder’s Fund strong for generations, helping fund alumnae postgraduate work, creative projects, and independent research.)

To make a gift to the Founder’s Fund, visit our Web site at www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu, or write a check to the

Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College, Mary E. Woolley Hall, 50 College Street, South Hadley, MA 01075

Photo by Paul Schnaittacher

Pa u l S c h n a i t ta c h e r

Advice to new graduates: “You will probably go through a number of workand family-related phases in your life, probably simultaneously. When I was in my twenties, this fluidity and uncertainty scared me; now I understand that it made my life more interesting and fulfilling. Today, I’m not only open to change, I’m actively seeking it! Follow every one of your dreams, as they come. Embrace change, don’t be afraid to ‘fail,’ and enjoy your life!” —Laurie Soojian Woo '78