Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly Fall 2012 by Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College

A lu m n a e Q ua rt e r ly

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Mount Holyoke Celebrates 175 Years of Women of Influence 14

ALUM TECHIES •

BETTER LEARNING THROUGH KNITTING •

EVERYDAY ATHLETES

contents

Women in High Tech Alums Cross One of the Last Big Gender Gaps

14 The Way We Were Mount Holyoke Celebrates 175th Anniversary

MOUNT HOLYOKE ALUMNAE QUARTERLY Fall 2012 Volume 96 Number 3 Editorial and Design Team EMILY HARRISON WEIR KRIS HALPIN ALDRICH DESIGN CHRISTINA BARBER-JUST

Everyday Athletes On the run with active alums

22 Strands of Time Unraveling Knitting’s Enduring Appeal at MHC

18 Viewpoints 2 Campus Currents 4 Alumnae Matters 26 Off the Shelf 32 Class Notes 36 Bulletin Board 77 My Voice: Alumna Essay 79 On the Cover: Alumnae featured in the “gallery of influence” marking Mount Holyoke’s 175th anniversary include (left to right, moving top to bottom): Debra Martin Chase ’77, Astrid Merget ’67, Virginia Apgar ’29, Ella Tambussi Grasso ’40, Sonali Gulati ’96, Gloria Johnson-Powell ’58, Merrill Wasserman Sherman ’70, Fidelia Fiske 1842, Sandy Fulton Rosenthal ’79, and Elaine Tuttle Hansen ’69

Quarterly Committee: Susan Bushey Manning ’96 (chair), Cindy L. Carpenter ’83, Shawn Hartley Hancock ’80, Olivia Lammel ’14 (student rep.), Eleanor Townsley (faculty rep.), Shoshana Walter ’07, Hannah Clay Wareham ’09 Alumnae Association Board of Directors President* Cynthia L. Reed ’80 Vice President (Engagement)* Jennifer A. Durst ’95 Treasurer* Lynda Dean Alexander ’80 Clerk* Hilary M. Salmon ’03 Classes and Reunion Director Erin Ennis ’92 Alumnae Trustee Elizabeth Onyemelukwe Garner ’89 Nominating Director Antoria D. Howard-Marrow ’81 Director-at-Large, Human Resources* Joanna MacWilliams Jones ’67 Director-at-Large (Global Initiatives) Emily E. Reynard ’02 Communications Director Sandy Mallalieu ’91 Young Alumnae Representative Tamara J. Dews ’06 Quarterly Director Susan Bushey Manning ’96 Clubs Director Elizabeth (Beth) Redmond VanWinkle ’82 Volunteer Stewardship Director Katie Glockner Seymour ’79 Executive Director* Jane E. Zachary, ex officio without vote *Executive Committee The Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College, Inc., 50 College Street, South Hadley, MA 01075-1486; 413-538-2300; fax: 413-538-2254 www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu

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. 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. General comments concerning the Quarterly should be sent to quarterly@mtholyoke.edu or Alumnae Quarterly, Alumnae Association, 50 College Street, South Hadley, MA 010751486). For class notes matters, contact Kris Halpin (413-538-2300, classnotes@mtholyoke. edu). Contact Alumnae Information Services with contact information updates (same address; 413-538-2303; ais@mtholyoke.edu). Phone 413-538-2300 with general questions regarding the Alumnae Association, or visit www. alumnae.mtholyoke.edu. The Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly (USPS 365-280) is published quarterly in the spring, summer, fall, and winter by the Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College Inc., 50 College St., South Hadley, MA 01075-1486. Fall 2012, volume 96, number 3, was printed in the USA by Lane Press, Burlington VT. Periodicals postage paid at South Hadley, MA, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: ISSN 0027-2493, USPS 365-280 Please send form 3579 to Alumnae Information Services, Mount Holyoke Alumnae Association, 50 College St, South Hadley, MA 01075-1486.

viewpoints Mo-what?

Easing Menopausal Symptoms I appreciated reading Hannah Wallace’s up-to-date article on menopause (summer). Loved the creative image to accompany it! Thank you for running articles such as this that are relevant and informative in our everyday lives. There is one addition I wanted to make to this article. For those of us with estrogen-positive breast cancer, ways of managing menopausal symptoms are rather limited. Since I was diagnosed with breast cancer eight years ago, I have been taking supplements for menopause from the Women to Women clinic in Maine. They have helped ease my menopausal symptoms and provide me with a greater sense of wellbeing as I live with secondary breast cancer. Other interested alums can go to their excellent website: womentowomen.com. Natalie Baxter Strange ’82 Norwich, England Endangered Wardrobe? I am concerned about [MHC’s clothing] collection (“Listening to Clothes,” spring). There was no mention of the environmental preservation of the textiles. It sounds as though they are

Several alumnae asked about the meaning of our summer cover. Many current students and young alumnae refer to themselves as “Mohos” as a play on words for Mount Holyoke, obviously, but also on Northampton’s nickname “Noho” which was, in turn, patterned on New York City’s “Soho” district moniker. So the parade sign means, “We’re home again, with our Moho friends, at reunion.”

Letters Policy in an attic! I am also worried about the use of hangers. Hangers stress the seams. They should be in conservation boxes with acid-free paper. While in graduate school I did a paper on the history of the corset and came home to MHC to use the resources of the Williston Library. In textile preservation, the fabrics should be in an environmentally controlled environment and only handled with discardable 100 percent cotton gloves, not modeled and played with. Helen Wood LaRose ’75 (online comment) Helen, as a museum professional, I absolutely agree with your comments about proper storage of these treasures. They are just as valuable a resource as the paper documents stored in the library’s archives. Gail Nessell Colglazier ’81 (online comment) Author Lynne Barrett ’72 responds: Thank you for

reading the piece and caring. I’m glad that you noticed. They are in a series of walk-in closets under the eaves, not

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an unfinished attic, but not environmentally controlled, as in museum conditions. The problem is, people donate clothes, but I believe they do this without thinking about funds to preserve them. I want to stress that the Theatre Department is aware of this, and is trying hard. The garments are not normally “modeled and played with,” and they are handled with gloves. The most fragile items are in acid-free paper and boxes, and some of the oldest are stored elsewhere, but space is limited. Clearly more should be done. That’s one reason I wanted to see the collection (which I remembered from way back when I was at MHC and took a theatre course) and write the piece, so the reader could picture the reality and perhaps someone would be moved to donate to their care, archiving, and storage. I know things are handled tenderly, but there are limitations because of resources and space.

We welcome comments on the Quarterly’s content and will select for publication letters that reflect the diverse viewpoints of the Mount Holyoke community. Letters should be no more than 300 words, and we reserve the right to edit them for length, accuracy, and clarity. Send kudos or complaints, rants or raves, but please, no personal attacks. Please write us right away when a comment strikes you. We must receive correspondence shortly after one issue arrives to get it into the next issue. Send comments to: quarterly@mtholyoke. edu (or use postal address on page 1).

Well “Liked” Popular posts from our social media and websites

How Many Alumnae per Square Mile? Anja Salmela Miller ’56 wondered whether her small California town (Brisbane) has perhaps the highest “MHC density” of any town on the West Coast. In her town of 4,000, there are four MHC alumnae, who gathered at a local coffee shop this summer and were joined remotely by a current student via Skype from Argentina. When this was posted on Facebook (facebook.com/aamhc), several alums took up the challenge: • Rachel Sauer Sun ’05 wrote that the town of 3,500 in which she grew up (Princeton, MA) included at least six MHC women in the early 2000s.

Ben Barnhart

Packing Only the Essentials? Images of moving-in days brought back memories for many alums when students returned to campus in late August bearing essentials in the form of boxes, bags, and—um—bears.

Touching Trail Tribute Kendra H. Gaines ’68 recently walked the twenty-six-mile Inca Trail into Machu Picchu to honor her late husband, Ken. (They’d once planned to do the trip together, but his cancer was too aggressive.) “So I decided to do it myself, and I carried with me a token of Ken’s, plus a little love note from me, in a Ziploc bag. I buried the bag at the second pass, where the view of the mountains was breathtaking. Ken would have loved it. Afterward, I was accompanied along miles of trail by a beautiful butterfly—and I don’t have to tell you what I was thinking! Reaching the age of sixty-five doesn’t mean that we can’t do uncommon things.”

• Mary Dannenberg Cronin ’85 wrote that Madison, NH (population 2,502) has at least five alumnae. • Nancy Baker Fowler ’86 noted that there are two alums on her street of twenty-eight houses. Can anyone else top these claims?

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campuscurrents

Class of 2016

A Look at MHC’s Newest Students Mount Holyoke’s newest class is yet another record breaker. More young women than ever before—almost 3,900— applied, making the class of 2016 the most selective in the College’s history. “This was an extraordinary year, given the fact that the applicant pool grew by a significant 13 percent,” says Diane Anci, dean of admission and vice president of enrollment. The new class is “splendid,” Anci says. “They are smart and diverse, representing all of America and the world.” Here’s a by-the-numbers look at the College’s impressive new students. New students entering Mount Holyoke this fall

TOP STATES US STUDENTS COME FROM

Massachusetts New York California Connecticut New Jersey Florida Illinois New Hampshire Vermont Texas

78 57 39 31 26 22 11 10 9 9

TOP COUNTRIES INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS COME FROM

China Pakistan South Korea India Vietnam Ghana

37 11 8 8 6 5

506 Applied Accepted Enrolled

3,876 1,631 506

Acceptance rate 42.1% Enrollment rate 31.0% Frances Perkins Scholars Applied 106 Enrolled 25 Transfer students Applied 223 Enrolled 33 International students Applied 1,330 Enrolled 111

26.7%

of first-year students identify as members of a minority group

Compiled by Diane Anci, dean of admission/vice president of enrollment, August 2012

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55% of first-year students graduated in the

top 10%

of their high-school class

ACADEMIC BACKGROUND

Attended public school 57.7% Attended private school 30.2% Attended parochial school 12.1%

60 first-year

students have relatives who are alumnae

Standout Students Among the record-setting number of applications received this time around by the Office of Admission—3,876—were plenty that made the staff stand up and take notice. Here are the names behind a dozen of them. They have a wealth of experience, and represent a cross section of the many talented students newly descended on this special slice of South Hadley. •Samantha Bilton, of Florida, founded Becca’s Closet, which provides prom dresses to underprivileged girls. •Zoe Brown, of Washington State, is an environmental

Ben Barnhart

Brainstorms

The Public Intellectual

activist who has done reforesting work in Guatemala. •Rosa Cartagena, of New York, dances, drums, and sings in Segunda Quimbamba, a Puerto Rican folkloric band.

Christopher Benfey’s Life in Two Worlds

•Lisa De Sousa Dias, of Portugal, developed a program to teach deaf students how to play the cello. •Meher Habib, of Pakistan, a sitar player, won an all-Pakistan music competition. •Yaye Kane, of Maryland, is a national black belt karate champion in Senegal. •Lincy Marino, of California, spent a gap year interning with the president of Palau. •Mia Mazzaferro, of Massachusetts, reads and reviews manuscripts for Bleak House Books, an imprint of Big Earth Publishing. •Varuna Nangia, of Massachusetts, is a nationally ranked rock climber. •Zoe Rand, of Illinois, is a PADI-certified rescue diver. •Michelle Simon, of Hong Kong, raised £8,000 for the Plastic Oceans Foundation by organizing a school fashion show. •Karla Villalta, of Florida, received a grant to start an anti-bullying group in Miami.

Look up “prolific,” and you might just find a photo of Christopher Benfey. The College’s Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English is—deep breath here—an author, most recently of the memoir Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay: Reflections on Art, Family, and Survival (Penguin

Press); an editor; a critic, primarily for the New York Times Book Review, the New York Review of Books, and the New Republic; a poet whose verses have appeared in the New Yorker and the Paris Review, among others; and, not least, the College’s interim dean of faculty. The Quarterly talked with Benfey about some of his preoccupations. Approach to Criticism I like to be a generalist without being a dilettante. I don’t generally write about music, for example. I have made it my business to learn a great deal about the visual arts, so I do feel comfortable writing about the visual arts. I don’t write about film; I’ve never, as far as I can remember, reviewed a movie. I do have expertise in Emily Dickinson and Gilded Age American culture and so on, and I would be sorry to feel that I had somehow let that go and

become a jack-of-all-trades. I’m OK with being a jack-ofa-few-trades. Gilded Age Appeal It feels

like the beginning of the world we live in now. It is the beginning of the financial world we live in now. It feels like the beginning of the kinds of novels and poetry that we care about now. It’s the source of much of the architecture that we live in and are familiar with. And the disciplines that we study and teach in are largely inventions of this period. But also I just love it. Those are the poems, the novels, and the artwork I care about. You’re lucky if your subjects choose you, and I felt that way.

Outside the Academy Mount Holyoke has been unusually supportive of the kind of public writing that I do. [President] Lynn Pasquerella talks about public intellectuals and their role in bringing the ideas of the academic world to a larger public and really demonstrating the humanities in practice, and I like that formulation. No one at Mount Holyoke has ever said to me, ‘Your writing should be more academic.’

‘Your writing should be more in line with the discipline.’ On the contrary, I think this college bends over backward to reward whatever form scholarship and learning and creativity take, and I’ve really benefited from that hugely. Caution: Bridge Out I live in

two worlds, professionally. I live in a very high-powered academic world, and I live in a very high-powered writingand-journalism world, and they really are poles apart. There is much talk of crossover and bridging and so on, but they’re really two different worlds. My academic friends think I write popular books, and my editors in the trade-book world think I write academic books. That’s what I mean when I say these worlds, which I would love to bridge, are really quite far apart. And yet I just keep on doing it. I keep driving down the middle of that highway, as dangerous as it is. —Christina Barber-Just For Benfey’s thoughts on his interim job, new memoir, next book, and more, go to alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ benfey_public.

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Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri made a big splash in the book world when her debut collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2000. Lahiri followed up with her first novel, The Namesake, which was selected as MHC’s 2012 Common Reading. “The Common Reading, a community tradition, roots us in a shared academic experience,” Dean of Students Rene Davis wrote in a letter to incoming students. “The

Lahiri’s books explore the lives of Indian-American im-

adapted into a film of the same name, follows the members of the Ganguli family as they move from India to the United States, settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts. All new MHC students received a copy of the book when they arrived on campus this fall. Alumnae book clubs often echo campus first-years by adopting the Common Reading as one of their book discussion choices.

N E WS A N D N OT E S F RO M A RO U N D T H E CA M P U S

FIREPLACE FIND Imagine facilities staff members Mike Hurley and Jerry Blain’s surprise when a routine repair of a fireplace mantel in Brigham Hall revealed a cache of old papers in the brickwork. “The two gentlemen immediately recognized that these materials may have historical value to the College, and Mr. Blain delivered them to the archives,” says Leslie Fields, head of archives and special collections. “How very lucky for us that they discovered these papers, saved them, and brought them over!” A 100-year-old letter, an undated postcard, two calling cards, and a calendar page were among the papers, which Odds and Quads blogger Matthew Reisz called a “remarkable treasure trove” on the Times Higher Education website. “It remains unclear how the documents ended up behind a fireplace,” Reisz wrote. TOPS FOR TWEETS

Pasquerella greeted withhas a been Professor of Englishwas Corinne Demas ovation. namedstanding to WorldWideLearn.com’ s list of the top fifty creative writing professors on Twitter. “This college English professor is the author of a new novel, The Writing Circle, and a tweeter of moderate frequency,” WorldWideLearn said in its citation. “Her posts are warm, positive, and speak highly of others and volumes about her writing process.” Discussing the list on her Boston.com blog, Creative Type,

The tradition, Davis noted in her letter, began in 2000 and has included such books as Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains and Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran. (Nafisi, notably, was the College’s 2012 commencement speaker.)

migrants and their children.

The Namesake, which was

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Delia Cabe likened following Demas and other creative writing profs on the list to “being part of a literary salon—thoughtful conversation sprinkled with irony and wit. You may find that you’re buying more books as a result.” ASIAN ITINERARY President Lynn Pasquerella ’80 spent two weeks in China and South Korea over the summer, promoting women’s education and leadership. The Women’s Education Worldwide Conference at Ginling College in Nanjing was the centerpiece of her trip, which also included alumnae events in Shanghai, Beijing, and Seoul. “I could not have asked for a more gracious welcome at each of these venues, and I was gratified to have alumnae from seven different decades welcoming our newly accepted and prospective students to the Mount Holyoke community at these events,” Pasquerella wrote in a July 18 letter. Elsewhere, she described her trip as focusing on “challenges to women’s leadership in the academy and the importance of mentors and role models for creating a pipeline toward leadership development.” Pasquerella (right) at the Women’s Education Worldwide Conference with fellow college presidents Beverly Daniel Tatum (Spelman College, Atlanta) and Masako Lino (Tsuda College, Tokyo).

NEW DIRECTOR OF ADMISSION Karen Kirkpatrick Osgood is Mount Holyoke’s new director of admission. Osgood has been working for the College since 2002, when she was hired as an associate dean of admission. She was promoted to senior associate dean of admission in 2008 and interim director of admission in 2010. She has been serving in her new role since May. “Karen brings with her many years of leadership experience,” says Diane Anci, dean of admission and vice president for enrollment. “In her time at Mount Holyoke, she has demonstrated great judgment and decision making. I am always confident that our work is done to the highest standards.”

John Kuchle

Tidbits

Common Reading welcomes new students by providing a taste of the intellectual diversity and critical thinking at the core of a Mount Holyoke education.”

Elena Seibert

Common Reading Aims to Spark New Students’ Intellectual Curiosity

What They Said

Student Edge

Allison Walters ’13 Discovers a Talent for Fashion Marketing, PR

“I’ve never seen so many grown men cry.” —MHC Professor of Astronomy Darby Dyar, telling the Daily Hampshire Gazette how relieved she and her fellow scientists felt when the Curiosity rover successfully landed on Mars

“What people see online doesn’t satisfy the urge to see the object.”

campuscurrents

Now Trending

COMME N TS H E A R D ON , OF F, A N D A B OU T CA MPU S

Gale Zucker

—MHC Art Museum Director John Stomberg on the museum’s $150,000 grant to digitize the 17,000 items in its permanent collection

For Allison Walters ’13, fashion is all in the family. Her mother is a senior vice president of Saks Fifth Avenue; her father, now retired, did stints at Saks, Ermenegildo Zegna, and Bergdorf Goodman. So when it came time for Walters, a complexorganizations major from Darien, Connecticut, to line up college internships, it’s little wonder she too zeroed in on the fashion industry. She started, during the summer of 2011, at Saks. Reporting to the retailer’s corporate headquarters in New York City, Walters focused on marketing and social media. Highlights included sitting in on meetings with Vogue VIPs and identifying fall 2011 fashion trends— animal prints, hair feathers, military jackets—with an eye toward promoting them on the Saks Facebook and Twitter accounts. The experience “definitely made me want to do another internship,” Walters says.

“I don’t ever want summer to end, but I miss @mtholyoke so much it’s insane! Internal conflict— home v. MoHome—going on!” Allison Walters ’13 at the Dior counter at Saks

This time, however, she wanted to be on the vendor end. Unlike a retailer, Walters says, a vendor is “just one company, and you’re all about that brand and that vision.” She chose Christian Dior— specifically, Dior Beauty, the French luxury-goods company’s fragrance, makeup, and skin-care division. As a marketing and publicrelations intern this year, she learned about everything from how the company develops its beauty products to how it chooses its celebrity “ambassadors,” such as model and actor Charlize Theron. “The Dior internship really cemented the fact that I knew I wanted to be in this field,” Walters says. If there was a downside to the experience, it was the very thing that makes the fashion world seem so glamorous—the clothes.

—Kristin Freedman ’14, aka @KristiFree, in a July 30 tweet

“I can’t pay you, I can’t even reimburse you for your travel expenses, but I can offer you the everlasting bond of Mount Holyoke dance camaraderie.” —Nina Joly ’11, paraphrasing the pitch she made to alumnae dancers in an effort to convince them to perform with her in a New York City festival

“My friends are all like, ‘I can’t imagine dressing up like that every day. It must be so intimidating,’” Walters says. “And it really is. A lot of the girls that are interns look so good every day, and I think that’s one of the scariest parts of it. It’s not like at Mount Holyoke—you can go to class in sweatpants. You have to look the part every day. You’re not even allowed to wear pants, really.” Wait—you can’t wear pants? “You’re allowed to,” Walters says, “but you’re only sup-

posed to wear them once in a while, and you absolutely cannot wear jeans.” The intimidation factor aside, she has found her calling. While Walters says her postgraduation plans are still up in the air, Dior is known to hire its former interns, “so if I got a job there, that would be amazing.” Which begs the question: If she worked for Dior, would she wear Dior? “No, I can’t afford it,” she says with a laugh. “I wish.”—Christina Barber-Just

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m o u n t h o ly o k e c e l e b r at e s 1 7 5 t h a n n i v e r s a r y

The Way We Were

One hundred and seventy-five years ago, in 1837, Mary Lyon did what no one else would do—or at least what no one had done before—when she established Mount Holyoke as an institution of higher education for women that took female intellects seriously. This fall, thousands of Mary Lyon’s metaphorical progeny will mark the milestone with two days of on-campus events, related alumnae celebrations around the world, and a profusion of online remembrances. The Quarterly features the 175th in this issue, and will continue to publish segments of the College’s timeline throughout this anniversary year. Catch the excitement—online or in person—and whisper a “Thank you!” to the woman who started it all.

Celebrate Online!

Share your memories of Mount Holyoke on the 175th anniversary website, mtholyoke.edu/175/memories. And watch for 175th posts on our social media sites— everything’s linked from alumnae.mtholyoke.edu. w w w. a l u m n a e . m t h o lyo k e . e d u

MOUNT HOLYOKE TIMELINE : 1 8 8 8 – 1 9 1 8

1888 Charter granted for Seminary and College; title changes from principal to president

M H C A r c h i v e s a n d S p e c i a l C o l l e c t i o n s , Fac i n g Pag e : Ji m G i p e

1889 First bachelor’s degrees awarded; students now select “majors” President-elect Mary A. Brigham killed in train wreck on her way to take office

1890 Elizabeth Storrs Mead becomes first nonalumna president Teachers required to earn a PhD Classes now called freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors

Seminary Building wired for electricity First Shattuck Hall opened to house facilities for chemistry and physics

1893 Full college charter granted; name changed to Mount Holyoke College Toshi Miyagawa of Japan, the first international student from a country other than Canada, graduates Spanish and Italian courses added to curriculum

1895 First master of arts degree awarded First Llamarada (yearbook) published Skating rink built near Lower Lake

1896 Seminary Building destroyed by fire; students and teachers lose possessions, and most live with South Hadley residents for the rest of the academic year

The editorial board of the 1892–93 The Mount Holyoke

1891 First Founder’s Day celebrated to honor Mary Lyon Glee Club established The Mount Holyoke, a monthly magazine written by students, debuts

1892 First alumnae elected to Board of Trustees

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1897 Building frenzy: Brigham, Pearsons, Porter, Safford, and the first Rockefeller Hall dormitories, Mary Lyon Hall, and Mary Lyon Chapel completed First house mothers hired to oversee students in dorms Debating Society founded Professor Anna May Soule requires students to visit and report on conditions in a factory or mill as part of Political Economy course work Class “Basket Ball” teams play one another

1898 Students’ League (predecessor of Student Government Association) established First annual Field Day features athletic contests

1899 Blanchard Hall opens as a gymnasium Talcott Arboretum and gardens completed to support botany curriculum Wilder Hall opens First male faculty members hired

1900 Elizabeth Mead retires as president Laurel ceremony begins: seniors place a wreath on Mary Lyon’s grave at commencement Seniors prepare a time capsule for the class of 2000 to open just before graduating First known May Day celebration

1901 Mead Hall dormitory opens Mary E. Woolley inaugurated as president

1902 Dwight Memorial Art Building opens Students often gather on the steps of Williston Hall to sing College songs On May Day, seniors wearing caps and gowns jump rope while juniors spin tops Each class chooses its own cheer, color, and flower

1903 First Faculty Show Students can’t leave campus on Sundays without a chaperone or be off campus after 6 p.m. or overnight

1904 Existing library building torn down; bricks used to build Gaylord Memorial Library across the street

Students must extinguish lights in dorms at 10 p.m. Students need permission to attend the theatre or opera Chaperones are required for any event at a men’s college and while with men at entertainments, driving, or in dorm public rooms

1905 New Williston Library opens College chapter of Phi Beta Kappa established Mary Lyon is the first woman elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans

Class of 1902 President Frances Perkins (left) leads seniors in Ivy Day ceremony

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May Day 1903

1906 First time students are allowed to dance with men at the Junior Prom Each student must purchase bloomers, a blouse, and flat-soled shoes for physical education classes

1908 Mary Woolley moves from a Brigham Hall suite into the new house built for MHC presidents Other students are expected to allow seniors to pass through doors first

1909 Pratt Music Building opens Current class animals and colors adopted

1910 Geology Professor Mignon Talbot discovers fossil of a new dinosaur in South Hadley; names it Podokesaurus Holyokensis Trustees abolish campus secret societies (sororities)

1912

1914

Celebration of Mount Holyoke’s seventy-fifth anniversary includes dedication of Field Memorial Gate and a festival pageant with costumed students representing the history of liberal arts and sciences Chapter of National College Equal Suffrage League established Students may not receive “gentlemen callers” on Sundays

Student domestic work system replaced by paid jobs for students with financial need Big Sister/Little Sister tradition begins

1913

Alma Mater first published in College songbook (words by Gertrude Brady and lyrics by Gladys F. Pratt, both class of 1914) Escorts await their hostesses, 1915

1915 “Suffrage Day” rally held on campus

1916 Opening of College delayed because of polio epidemic Student Alumnae Hall (now Mary Woolley Hall) opens as a social center

1917 Students support WWI effort by working on twenty-eightacre College farm and helping

local farmers plan, harvest, and market produce Mount Holyoke News and the Alumnae Quarterly begin publication Williston Hall (natural sciences building) destroyed by fire

1918 Students march in Holyoke parade celebrating the end of World War I Many students ill with “Spanish flu” “Bats”—picnics by a group of students who usually cook hot dogs over an open fire—are popular Snowshoeing, skiing, riding, driving, canoeing, skating, picnics, and “long tramps” banned on Sundays Volleyball is a new campus sport Students have a “competitive sing” of College songs

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What Would Mary Lyon Say? Many and varied voices have claimed to speak for Mount Holyoke’s founder.

By Mary A. Renda, associate professor of history “Good morning, young ladies!” At the sound of those words “in a tone so like Miss Lyon’s,” the assembled daughters of Mount Holyoke rose in unison “with great enthusiasm.” It was 1887 and the alumnae of Mount Holyoke Female Seminary were gathered to celebrate the semicentennial of their alma mater’s founding. Eunice Caldwell Cowles, the Seminary’s first associate principal, had begged her audience’s indulgence before delivering the greeting: “Will you allow me,” she asked, referring to the dear companion of her youth, to serve “as her mouthpiece?” Cowles went on to speak for Mary Lyon on matters of religion, women’s leadership, and the importance of not deferring to the rich: welcome them and treat them well, but “don’t act as if you felt below them or above them.” What would Mary Lyon say to the idea of raising a fund to keep costs down? By all means, do it! Would Mary Lyon object to changing a part of the school’s name from Female Seminary to College? She would not, but if you do, then “be sure and have it a college.” Before and since, others have taken the liberty to serve as Mary Lyon’s mouthpiece. In 1862, at the Seminary’s twenty-fifth anniversary, male ministers spoke for her. They lauded and even envied the late educator’s skill as a preacher and considered that in her case, at least, there need be no controversy over a woman in the pulpit, for “Here was a pastor, on a salary of two hundred dollars… preaching five sermons a week, bringing…the Word of God, directly to affect every mind and heart.” High praise, indeed, but then, she was dead, and dead, selfdenying Christian women had a special kind of power in the mouths of nineteenth-century American ministers. The seminary became a college shortly after Eunice Cowles’s loving impersonation; within a decade the College burned to the ground; and in 1891 President Mead instituted Founder’s Day. All provided occasions for the representatives of Mary Lyon’s legacy to speak in her name. From the range of such voices over the years, there emerges a veritable parade of Mary Lyons:

Celebrate in person!

175th anniversary events are being planned all over, all year; check for one near you on the “events” tab at mtholyoke.edu/175.

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the pious Christian, the frugal domestic head, the science educator, the progressive, the defender of universal human values, the volunteer for social justice, the conservative revolutionary, the feminist. To President Mary Woolley, in 1905, she was a “radical democrat”; to Woolley’s peace-movement friends in 1937, the year it was decided to put a man at Mount Holyoke’s helm upon Woolley’s retirement, Mary Lyon was

Ben Barnhart

an exemplar of women’s leadership, whose strength was captured in her comment on the College’s biblical motto (“That our daughters may be as cornerstones polished after the similitude of a palace”): “You cannot polish a piece of sponge, but you can polish a piece of steel.” A mere five years later, the pacifist’s choice metaphor materialized ironically in the christening of a liberty ship, the U.S.S. Mary Lyon. By 1997, a liberated Miss Lyon, with imaginary bloomers showing beneath the raised hem of her skirt, ran a “Marython” to support public education. There were words Mount Holyoke’s founder spoke that have less often, if ever, found their way into the mouths of latterday Mary Lyons and champions of her legacy. Among these: her derogatory views of Irish immigrant servant girls whom the Seminary was able to exclude from its “household” thanks to a plan for students and teachers to cooperate in carrying out their own domestic labor; words to encourage full assimilation to Anglo-Saxon New England norms, spoken to a student body that included two Cherokee sisters who attended Mount Holyoke in the 1840s;

From the range of such voices over the years, there emerges a veritable parade of Mary Lyons: the pious Christian, the frugal domestic head, the science educator, the progressive, the defender of universal human values, the volunteer for social justice, the conservative revolutionary, the feminist.

words of remonstrance heard by the young abolitionist Lucy Stone, then a Seminary student, who placed unauthorized anti-slavery literature in the reading room; and Mary Lyon’s response, now lost to us, it seems, to another abolitionist plea to foster benevolence not only for those in distant lands, but also for those women suffering at the hands of American slave masters. These unrepeated words mark the limits of the program Mary Lyon was ready to fashion for Mount Holyoke. More able to imagine sending New England daughters to distant lands than to contemplate working on behalf of poor, immigrant, or African American women nearer by, she could not yet imagine the wider range of experiences, perspectives, and cultures that would come to animate the College and shape the work of its alumnae in struggles for justice in her own country as well as in the far corners of the continent and the world. What would Mary Lyon say? “Improve!” She could not have predicted the ways her beloved household would take that admonition to heart. And we are, by necessity, still at it.

Mary Lyon Before Mount Holyoke Born in Buckland, Massachusetts, Mary Lyon was five years old when her father died and thirteen when her mother remarried and moved from the family home, taking some of her siblings, but leaving Mary to serve as housekeeper to her older brother, Aaron. With a small inheritance, a weekly wage paid by Aaron, and additional sums earned by teaching, sewing, and weaving, at twenty-one Mary Lyon made her way to Byfield, Massachusetts, to study under Joseph Emerson, an advocate for

women’s education. There she met Zilpah Grant, with whom she subsequently taught in nearby Derry and Ipswich, and who became her beloved confidante and lifelong friend. While teaching at Grant’s Ipswich Female Seminary, she conceived a plan to found a new kind of school. Many women opened schools for young ladies, but they tended to exist only as long as that particular teacher taught. Mary Lyon envisioned a permanent institution with the highest educational standards, comparable to a college for

men, available to the daughters of families of modest means. Lyon enlisted the support of ministers and other influential men, but she turned, too, to women to contribute what they could and thus to stand behind the enterprise. She drew public censure for going house to house, talking with men and women to raise funds for the school, but she understood her endeavor to be ordained by God. “I am doing great work,” she said, “I can not come down.”

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A l u m s C r o s s O n e o f t h e La s t B i g G e n d e r Ga p s

Women in

ne manages a group of engineers who make terminals that scan bar codes. Another pulls together news of arts festivals from all over the world. A third can turn paper maps into digital ones. A fourth tests Xbox games before they go to market. They are all women in high tech—and their stories tell us as much about the evolution of our culture as they do about an industry that has changed the way we live. With the tap of a finger, we can now shop and compare prices, track our friends and play games with one another, do our banking, and read the news—anywhere, anytime. Some alums saw these changes coming and, early on, became part of the nascent industry that would create products and services the rest of us didn’t yet realize we wanted. Others joined later, bringing knowledge and skills from other fields. Here’s what we learned from talking to them. A Foot in th e D o o r

Some MHC alumnae are “technical women” who understand what’s under the hood. They are (or work with)

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engineers who write the code that makes digital products run. How a woman acquired IT skills depends, in part, on when she graduated. “There was no computer science major when I was at Mount Holyoke,” says seventy-yearold Carol Ochs Sigda ’63, software configuration manager in the enterprise mobile computing division of Motorola Solutions. “I was a math major. Computer programming was a new field when I graduated, and seemed like a challenging option.” Her first employer, Shell Oil, sent her to IBM school in 1963. “When I started my job at Motorola in 1997, I was still the only woman working with sixty-five male software engineers,” she says. Jerri Barrett ’83, a biology major, taught herself programming when she worked at Rochester Telephone. “In the late eighties, telephone companies were instrumental in a lot of things that made high tech possible.” Assigned to make sense of a new voicemail system, she recalls, “I sat down with three enormous technical binders and figured out how to set it up.” In contrast, when Ying Wang ’96 was at MHC, there was a computer center on campus. Not only was it possible to major in computer science, but companies were actively recruiting interns from MHC. “Microsoft, a rising

“I took several programming classes in high school...and there were plenty of girls in math and science but not in computer science.” Alyssa M. Bennett ’07 works for Microsoft, testing Xbox games and Windows phone apps before they’re released to the public.

Kanita R auniyar

High Tech star twenty years ago, had special women’s scholarships,” explains Wang, who has worked her way up to a senior position at the company, where she currently “makes all the product decisions for [search engine] Bing in China.” For all the progress technical women have made, however, it’s still not a level playing field. “I took several programming classes in high school,” says Alyssa Bennett ’07, “and there were plenty of girls in math and science but not in computer science.” Of students who took the advanced placement computer science test in 2011, 80 percent were boys. And while women account for 56 percent of all professional workers in the United States, they hold only a quarter of the IT jobs and 17 percent of technical jobs at start-ups. Only 7 percent are engineers. (By comparison, a mere 7 percent of lawyers were women in 1972, when Title IX was passed. Today, 47 percent are.) Ch anging Co u r s e

One doesn’t have to be a “technical woman” to be a woman in tech. Putting out an online product or service, explains Beth Mulligan Dunn ’93, also requires writers, graphic designers, sales people, and marketing mavens who

have the insight to understand end-users’ needs and the ability to make the technology accessible. “I’m in charge of making sure that every word you see on the computer screen when you use our software is clear, helpful, and to the point, as well as grammatically correct,” says Dunn, a UX (user experience) writer at HubSpot, which sells online marketing tools to businesses. She initially worked in the nonprofit sector, doing PR for a regional theatre. She experimented with social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter to develop relationships with theatre patrons, and, through her blog—bethdunn.com—began to connect with others who understood the online marketplace. Granted, Dunn was an early adopter. However, she and several other alums stress that the confidence, assertiveness, flexibility, and “fearlessness about any realm of inquiry” that come from having a liberal-arts education are invaluable in the tech field. “You can teach people how to code, [but that] becomes obsolete. If you teach someone to learn, they then are able to adapt to the fast world of the internet society.” The word “serendipity” crops up often in conversation about switching to tech careers. Ana Maria Harkins ’90 spent five years at the internet start-up Geekcorps, which Mou n t Ho lyo k e Al u m na e Qua r t e r ly

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matched volunteers with companies that wanted to develop websites or specific kinds of software. “One day, I was providing a reference for someone, and the voice on the other end asked, ‘Are you looking for a job?’ He wanted a good manager who had been involved in a start-up and had lived and traveled in other countries.” Harkins, currently chief operating officer of KadmusArts, which tracks and aggregates news of performing arts festivals all over the world, was a perfect fit. Harkins explains that, although she’s in management, at small start-ups “everyone contributes to the website. I create and produce podcasts and manage our social networking presence.” Heather Harde ’91, whom Fast Company in 2011 named one of “the most influential women in tech,” describes herself “as a generalist and strategist” who “grew into tech.” After Harvard Business School, she joined News Corp. “At the time, new tech was disrupting the old media. They’d pull me in to figure out new business strategies—should we be partnering? launching a new product line?” To keep informed, she began to read TechCrunch, the go-to blog for information about the industry. She eventually crossed paths with its founder Michael Arrington, who hired her to turn “the brand” into a profitable enterprise. “We worked out of his home with a few freelancers at first,” she recalls. Five years and fifty employees later, AOL purchased TechCrunch for a reported $40-50 million. Harde, forty-two, is now on a well-deserved “work sabbatical.”

Beth Mulligan Dunn ’93, a user experience writer for HubSpot in Cambridge, Massachusetts, frequently telecommutes from this coffee shop near her home on Cape Cod.

Cecily Herzig ’96 (right) and Leslie Barbour ’86, both seasoned tech industry employees, now work together in Vermont at Maponics, a company that sells geographic data.

COMING BAC K

Taking a break from work can be challenging in the fast-moving tech world. Alyssa Bennett, who set her sights on tech in high school, delayed her entry into the field to take a “gap year” and then help her family, taking office temp jobs in the interim. Three years later, it was difficult to find work. “Many IT jobs required years

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of programming, and my skills were out of date at that point,” she says. She found online want ads for entrylevel testers who make sure that programs function properly. “I thought, I could do that. However, all the staffing agencies pretty much said, ‘Your bachelor’s degree in computer science doesn’t mean anything. A person who took one software testing class at community college is better qualified.’” She was eventually offered a test associate contract. She says, “It paid very little, but I hoped it would help launch my career, and it did.” Cecily Herzig ’96, a geographic information systems (GIS) programmer, has worked in the tech industry since graduation. She’s successful in her current role as manager of data and resources at Maponics, a company that sells geographic data, and feels lucky to have been able to take seven years off after the birth of her son before reentering her chosen field. During the interim, she kept “a finger on the pulse” by learning software and designing websites, which made her reentry relatively smooth, as did her academic training. “Mount Holyoke taught me that I could figure out anything I needed to know,” she says. “My ability to learn and

Th i s pag e : M e l i s s a Av e r i n o s ; Fac i n g pag e , l e f t : A m y D o n o h u e

One doesn’t have to be a “technical woman” to be a woman in tech.

Above: Ana Maria Harkins ’90 is chief operating officer of KadmusArts, which tracks and aggregates news of performing arts festivals all over the world.

grow never went away. I also live in an area [Vermont] that’s GIS-heavy. Although the programs had changed, I had had a little experience with a lot of different technologies. My advice is to learn as much as you can about all kinds of software, so that you can move between various computer operating systems and various data environments.” Moving Up—and Forward

A technical woman in Silicon Valley can make close to $80,000 to start, and some with advanced degrees make six figures, according to Jerri Barrett ’83, vice president of marketing for the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, a nonprofit that focuses on the recruitment, retention, and advancement of technical women. Granted, the field is “ridiculously male-dominated,” as Beth Dunn puts it. Also, the “hero culture” in which employees are expected to work nights and weekends—around the clock, if necessary—causes some women to “defect” in their childbearing years, observes Barrett. Women also don’t advance as quickly as men. They account for only 18 per-

cent of mid-level jobs and 3 percent of senior positions. That said, big companies and start-ups are trying to make the workplace more hospitable and to promote women to higher ranks. Moreover, how sexism plays into a given woman’s story may also depend on her age—younger women are less apt to feel they are treated differently or unfairly—and, even more so, on her confidence level, flexibility, and willingness to speak out. “I was often the only woman in the room,” says Heather Harde, “but it’s not something I focused on because I didn’t think it was all that productive.” Looking back at her twenty-six years in the industry, Leslie Barbour ’86, currently director of production operations at Maponics, admits that “the only real difficulty has been in my head.” To stave off feelings of intimidation, she had to “remind myself that I was well-prepared, knew my stuff, and at times—for instance, at a training session—already knew more than the men in the room.” Taking initiative also helps a woman get noticed. “Volunteer for everything,” says Alyssa Bennett. “In one year, I went from recruiters telling me I wasn’t eligible for a $10-an-

hour testing job to being considered one of the best testers here.” To better organize her work flow, she wrote up detailed instructions and shared them with her coworkers. “My manager read the document and said, ‘This thing is amazing! Can you write more?’” Bennett also offered to help another team because it was “higherlevel work than I was doing.” After the mandatory 100-day break—a Microsoft policy for all “contractors”— she was one of only two invited to rejoin the department. “Many of the companies are run as meritocracies—it’s all about results,” maintains Harde. “Your career can flow very quickly.” The field itself is also wide open for would-be entrepreneurs. At this point in its evolution, she points out, “the barriers to participation keep dropping.” A range of do-it-yourself applications and services enables low-tech consumers to build their own high-tech products. “You can create an app in an afternoon.” Our high-tech alums share advice for other women in the tech world at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ hightechalums.

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Unraveling Knitting’s Enduring Appeal at MHC

Str ands of Time

ften I’ve slipped back in memory to an anthropology class, Marriage and the Family, in the fall of my junior year. I sit at the end of the second row, knitting maroon wool into a sweater for my boyfriend, while up front Mr. Lobb explains how anthropologists compare cultures. In this course and many others, we are allowed, even encouraged, to knit. Learning, the theory goes, involves listening and thinking. Class discussion will illuminate material we’ve already read, while we consider concepts and, occasionally, when an idea clicks, jot something down. Today we’re covering where couples live after marriage. Matrilocal—I try to imagine newlyweds fitting in my mother’s house. Or—patrilocal—joining my future husband’s father’s family. I deliberately don’t picture my boyfriend, known to all as Turtle. I’m happy we’ve lasted six months, but don’t want pressure. And must I really get married to live with someone neolocally, in a new place? In 1970, many of us question the roles and rules of marriage and family, though we have no idea how contested they will be, for how long. I twist in my seat and scan the room. Many knit, some crochet. One girl is knotting a macramé project fastened to the far wall, while in the back another has set up a smallish loom. Someone could study us, I think, as a matriarchal tribe whose founder’s grave is in the center of our village. I make a note. Did that thought fix the moment in my mind forever? My grandmother taught me to knit. When I got to South Hadley, I visited The Yarn Shop (“The most beautiful yarns from all over the world,” proclaimed their ad in my freshman handbook), where I bought a skein from which I whipped up the first of many watch caps for my relatives. Was it desire to make a Christmas gift for Turtle or knitterly By Lynne Barrett ’72

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MHC Archives; Lynne Barrett

left: Knitting was all the rage at MHC in the 1940s (shown, students in MHC French House) below, left: Meredith Mudgett Hunter ’67 knits in Buckland Hall’s kitchen in the 1960s.

ambition that led me to attempt my first sweater? Wanting to try working with two colors, I adapted a men’s ski pullover with snowflakes up the sleeves. Only if you looked closely could you tell (maybe) that my white “snowflakes” were turtles. Turtle and I broke up in our senior year. The sweater had nothing to do with it. Only much later did I hear of the “boyfriend sweater curse,” the notion that making a sweater might mean doom. Or could it just be that a certain percentage of sweater-level relationships won’t survive? Before the break-up, I’d begun an afghan for my mother. Its lace pattern was complicated, and the color she chose, “antique gold,” seemed to me dull mustard. Before finishing it, I was in graduate school where no one knitted in class, ever. I discovered I’d been in a bubble at Mount Holyoke. Elsewhere, an un-grandmotherly woman who knitted in public was the object of suspicion. Men mentioned Madame Defarge. Interest in knitting had declined and crochetAuthor Lynne Barrett ’72 ing pretty much disappeared. In private, over knitted this for her nowtime, I made myself a cotton shell, a mohair husband when she was at shawl, a Perry Ellis sweater with pleated ’80s MHC, evading the dreaded shoulders. On trips, I’d search out a city’s only yarn shop, and find other women buying bags- “boyfriend sweater curse.”

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“I’d Rather be Knitting” Spurs Purl Soho Success Imagine an old-fashioned dry goods store with yarn, fabric, and notions visible through large, glass windows. If you update that image with pops of bright color, a hip sensibility, and lively online presence, you’ll have Purl Soho, a modern craft emporium opened in 2002 by Joelle Hoverson ’89. A politics major, Hoverson was also passionate about photography and painting. She earned two fine arts degrees and maintained a studio even while working as a senior style editor for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Yet when Hoverson left her job to paint full-time, she found herself pulled in a surprising new direction. “I would be in my studio and realize that I would rather be knitting,” says Hoverson. “Instead of angst, I decided to give myself over to women’s work.”

Joelle Hoverson ’89 in her modern craft emporium in NYC, Purl Soho

For crafty inspiration, visit purlsoho.com.

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Hoverson admits she would have been happy knitting rectangles for the rest of her life. Then Chicago-based photo stylist Kelly McKaig, with whom she worked on a freelance project, “pushed” Hoverson to learn more about knitting technique. McKaig, who later collaborated on Hoverson’s highly regarded craft books, proved to be a catalyst. “As a stylist, I was constantly shopping. It was my job to be familiar with retail, to know where the cool boutiques were,” Hoverson says. “There were a couple of neighborhood knitting shops and when I got burned out on being a stylist, I thought, ‘Why don’t I open a shop that features beautiful, amazing materials?’” Purl opened in a tiny storefront in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood. It took Hoverson eight months to plan, but it took customers only a nanosecond to empty the shelves. “Purl could not have opened at a more

perfect time for knitting,” she says. “My goal was to create a destination store, and everyone who was a knitter came out of the woodwork. I ran out of everything. Even the manufacturers were unprepared.” Purl has grown in a decade. The successful online business is managed by Jennifer Hoverson Jahnke, her sister. Purl Patchwork, a fabric shop that grew out of Hoverson’s love of quilting, opened in 2006. Today, knitting and sewing supplies happily coexist in a larger space; the sisters have a third partner, Page Marchese Norman. And the creative team behind the craft blog The Purl Bee has made it a go-to destination for inspiration. “The overarching change is that people take craft seriously now,” says Hoverson. “Craft, something you can actually teach someone how to do, is now viewed as legitimate.” —By Avice Meehan ’77

Court esy of O pen R oad In t egr at ed Medi a , Inc.

Literature professors Marianne Brock, Alan McGee, and Joseph Bottkol seem unfazed by the presence of student knitters in this 1949 classroom scene. ful, like the last addicts of an out-of-fashion drug. Other Mount Holyoke graduates tell me knitting was out of the question in science classes. Some mention the embarrassing clang of a dropped metal needle or being offended by people who called knitting sublimated sex, but many describe happily finishing first scarves and learning stitches from friends. Laurie Stein-Stapleford ’74 began knitting because a teacher came close to requiring it, saying, “You can’t listen if you’re busy writing.” Jan Baldini Bohn ’72 remembers a senior sociology seminar in which the professor knitted, expertly. There’s evidence this acceptance has a history. In a photo of 1949 English department lecture, students laugh and knit. The 1944 yearbook describes the afternoon hour when volunteers knitted for the military in the Mary Lyon Room, then adds, “But we are always doing knitting outside of hours, dropping our ball of yarn in classes, sacrificing the efficiency of both by trying to read and knit at the same time...” Llamarada 1942 says, “At the movies there was nothing like stretching your feet over the railing, knitting your sweater (providing it wasn’t cable-stitched) and watching Donald Duck or Charles Boyer.” Enthusiasm still bubbles in a 1917 New York Times article about war efforts at Mount Holyoke: “The girls are taking up courses in nursing and stenography and typewriting as a preparation for war work, and they knit all the time. It has now been forbidden at meal times.” Sixteen years after it left, the turtle sweater returned, along with its owner. Yes, Reader, I married him. But let me stick to the story of the sweater. It looked fine, not worn much, perhaps, but not discarded. When I first met my mother-in-law, she

said she’d always thought a lot of love went into that pullover. Those patient turtles do testify to devotion, but they also remind me how I liked the process of listening and thinking while creating something with my hands. For knitting, too, what seemed an end was only hibernation. Needlecrafts came back in the ’90s, along with appreciation of almost-forgotten craftswomen’s mastery of geometry, color theory, and sculptural forms. Rebellion against manufactured sameness sparked a boom in crafting expressive garments, retro or avant-garde. Most fascinating to me has been the revolution in communal knitting, from “stitch-n-bitch” sessions in bars to guerrilla knitters’ projects that appear overnight in public spaces as protests or salutes. Knitting has been reconnected to education, including a new focus on teaching boys. Proponents of knitting programs in inner-city schools and prisons argue that use of fine motor skills helps with hyperactive restlessness, calms the mind, builds self-confidence, and leads to mastering other learning. Which isn’t so far, it seems, from where I started. After my mother’s death, as we sadly sorted through her things, my younger sister said of course I must take what I had made. Today, in our (neolocal) home, the afghan, well-worn, is a patch of amber. I had no idea what would last, no idea how much I was stitching into memory. For more glimpses into MHC knitting past and present, visit alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/knitting.

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Y A D Y R E V E

S E T E L H T A by Eric Goldscheider

Friends Leah Riley Thompkins (right) and Katharine Sjoberg (both â&#x20AC;&#x2122;03) train together in Seattle.

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on the run with active alums

John Small

eah Riley Thompkins ’03 always wanted to do a marathon. But she had never run more than three consecutive miles and didn’t want to be pounding the pavement alone. So the Seattle electrochemist called her friend Katharine Sjoberg ’03 to see if they could run a marathon together. Sjoberg, also not a runner, thought she had an “out” when she agreed only on the condition that they win. Undaunted, Thompkins came back with the solution. If they did it as a three-legged race, they might be the only ones in their category. In that case, simply finishing would equal winning in the most basic sense of the word. Two weeks later, the pair fastened their ankles together with a length of red cotton cloth, took about five practice steps, and showed up the next morning at the starting line of the Los Angeles Marathon on a ninety-five-degree day in March. Seven hours and forty-three minutes later, they mustered a final jog to the finish, where they were carried to the medical tent to rest for about three hours. That’s one way of staying active, though not the recommended path to developing a fitness regimen. Other Mount Holyoke women—from recent graduates to octogenarians—have taken up diverse activities including golf, boxing, swimming, ice hockey, sailing, water aerobics, yoga, bicycling, and, yes, running, to get into or stay in shape. Some were almost militantly anti-sports when they were in college and only later in life encountered the thrill a little competition can inject into the task of filling their lungs with air. Others rekindled habits learned in their youth, often influenced in ways they only later learned to fully appreciate, by Mount Holyoke’s physical education requirement. Many realized that they feel better physically and mentally when they incorporate movement into their daily routines. Still others were prodded by a health scare into paying closer attention to their bodies. “I used to drag myself to the gym occasionally,” says Jenna Steigerwalt ’01. That was until last January, when she discovered ice hockey. It took her nearly three months to even tell her family, fearing they would laugh at her. Living in Phoenix while pursuing a PhD in English, she developed her obsession by watching the Coyotes, the hometown NHL team, practice. Now she plays right wing on a

coed team. “It’s a hell of a workout, but I enjoy it so much more than going to the gym. And it’s the most team sport there is because nobody can out-skate the puck.” Now, if she misses a workout, she must answer to herself and her teammates. The key to staying in shape, she has found, is to “find something you really love doing.” KC Maurer ’84 had three heart attacks in 2003 and 2004 when she was in her early forties. It took years to identify the culprit, but in the meantime she set about improving her overall health. Three hundred and thirty pounds at the time, “it became apparent that I was going to need to do something other than just be on medication for the rest of my life,” she says. Finishing a marathon seemed a worthy goal and so, slowly at first, she started training. She was yanked by race organizers from her first marathon in New Jersey at the thirteen-mile mark because she wasn’t keeping pace to finish before the event was to end. She signed up for the New York Marathon in 2006 and in a little over five months did more than 400 miles in roadwork and practiced yoga; she eventually lost 110 pounds. Health issues prompted KC The motivation Maurer ’84 to start running. didn’t all come from within. Sue Fitzgerald ’84 undertook a similar goal, but in Ohio. She and Maurer often ran and walked up to twenty miles “together,” connected by hands-free cell phones. “That got me off the couch,” says Maurer. Her

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Get Off That Couch The most common tip the recreational athletes interviewed for this article gave was simply: get started. Your first gestures may be as small as parking a little farther from the store, or slightly accelerating your pace on a flight of stairs, says Peggy Daus Schwartz ’62, who did four years of water ballet at Mount Holyoke and is still active. She also speaks of the need to block out time for exercise. “I’ll tell people, ‘sorry, I have an appointment,’ rather than say I have to go to the gym.” Joyce Stavro Vyriotes ’96 played club rugby in college but only got into running later, when she had a job setting up half-marathon training programs to promote health while raising money for a cancer organization. If she was going to talk the talk she needed to walk the walk— literally. It became a revelation that running does not preclude walking. “I didn’t know you could combine running and walking; that really helped me,” she says. “Instead of just running as far as you can, which isn’t very far, and then feeling discouraged, just run a little more and walk a little less each day and pretty soon you’ll be running some good distances.” Even though she still sometimes has to overcome inertia, Vyriotes can’t imagine not running, and says, “I’ve never finished a run and wished I hadn’t done it.”

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marathon time ended up being 7:30:20, just under the eight-hour limit and a pace of about 3.5 miles an hour. “Slow and steady was my mantra,” she recalls. “In fact, one Mount Holyoke friend held a sign: KC: Our Favorite Turtle, Slow & Steady.” Ann Neuberger Aceves ’56 of Santa Fe, and Ruth Anne Pesce Bortz ’52 of Palo Alto, on the other hand, are straddling eighty and still take their speed seriously. Aceves swam in eleven consecutive national Senior Olympics swimming championships and qualified for her twelfth. In July she returned from the New Mexico Senior Olympics with four gold medals and two silvers, and having broken two of her six state records. Bortz was the first runner up in her age group in the 2011 Boston Marathon. She bested her age group in that race at the start of her previous two decades. Her husband, Dr. Walter Bortz, writes books on living to be 100, so Ruth Anne jokingly intimates that she’s obligated to keep up the pace for almost two more decades. Bortz competes in a marathon every year (usually finishing in about three and a half hours), but 100-mile foot races are her best events. Stories like these warm Laurie Priest’s heart. MHC’s director of athletics for the last twenty-three years sees herself as the temporary custodian of the part of Mary Lyon’s legacy that prompted Lyon’s directive that early Mount Holyoke women walk two miles (or thirty minutes in case of snow) every day. “Part of a liberal arts education is to recognize that health and fitness are important to an overall ability to be effective in the world at large,” says Priest. More than half of current students

This summer, Ann Neuberger Aceves ’56 won four gold medals and two silvers at her state Senior Olympics and qualified for her twelfth national competition.

go above and beyond the threesemester PE requirement. In addition to the typical intercollegiate and club sports they have options—forty in all—such as yoga, dance, fencing, Pilates, tai chi, and a course Priest teaches each fall on hiking in the Pioneer Valley. “Our approach is really to try to connect those women in a positive way to a physical activity that helps them mentally, physically, and emotionally to feel better about themselves,” says Priest, “We really want Mount Holyoke women to continue to be active all their lives.” Ashley Brown ’05 is pursuing a doctorate in American studies in

B a r b a r a C o h e n , Fac i n g Pag e : L i s e M e t z g e r

Start Small:

Washington, DC. She began thinking about running five years ago and decided to start small, on a treadmill. With added strength she discovered the thrill of running cross-country to the point where she now thinks of her runs as “sixty- to ninety-minute vacations” from her computer screen that she takes three or four times a week. “There is something they call the runner’s high,” says Brown. One day “after running four to six miles and cooling down I just had a Zen feeling. It was this wonderful release of energy and tension. Sometimes I really did feel as if I was walking on air.”

To see more photos of “everyday athletes” and check out student athletics news, visit alumnae. mtholyoke.edu/everyday.

Thompkins and Sjoberg may not have experienced that in their three-legged marathon. “We both lost multiple toenails,” remembers Thompkins. “I couldn’t walk up stairs for weeks without dragging myself by my arms, which was unfortunate because I had a second-floor apartment.” Later that year she trained for the

AIDS LifeCycle from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and completed it with ease. Clearly there’s no stopping a determined MHC woman—Deb Dimes Cameron ’73 ran a 10K race two weeks before giving birth to Susan Cameron ’07! “And I didn’t come in last,” says the elder Cameron. For her, exercising has always been a way of life, and it doesn’t always involve a gym or a track. She volunteers at a food pantry. “Lifting canned goods and stocking shelves, even that’s a workout,” she says. “I just feel better when I’m active.”

Ashley Brown ’05 has been running for about five years, and discovered a passion for golf even more recently.

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alumnaematters MHC’s Women of Influence Gallery: A Showcase of Remarkable Alumnae You already know that MHC alumnae are uncommon women. And you may know all about Frances Perkins, Suzan-Lori Parks, Ella Grasso, Emily Dickinson, and other celebrated alumnae. Impressive though they certainly are, they’re just the tip of the iceberg. To showcase more of the College’s “uncommon women” in this major anniversary year, a multimedia gallery, “175 Years of Women of Influence,” awaits your attention at mtholyoke.edu/175.

MHC Archives/C. Maud Lyles

There you’ll find business execs and college presidents, politicians and poets, scientists and suffragists, activists and artists, physicians and philanthropists, plus many more women who changed the course of lives. Share your stories about MHC women who influenced you using the site’s “Memories” tab. Here’s a look at some of those whose lives are honored in the gallery.

Ruth Muskrat Bronson ’25 Bronson was born in 1897 to a Cherokee father and Irish mother. In 1950, she was appointed executive secretary of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, where she spent twelve years working for Native American rights in nine states. When she retired in 1962, she received the highest award given to women by the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Bronson devoted her life to protecting the rights of and expanding educational opportunities for Ruth Muskrat Bronson Native Americans, while also Jade encouraging Indians to preserve McCarthy traditional cultural practices in the midst of a mainstream culture where they were seldom welcomed.

McCarthy made news as the first female sports reporter in the history of Philadelphia’s major TV networks when she joined the sports team at NBC-10 in 2005. She was already a seasoned broadcast journalist, having worked at other television stations as a news reporter, weekend anchor, and sports reporter even before graduating from college. At Philadelphia’s NBC-10 station WCAU, she hit her stride as a sportscaster, winning numerous sports Emmy awards for her work. She became an anchor and reporter for the New England Sports Network in 2010, but left NESN the following year to return to Philadelphia.

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Courtesy of NBC

Jade McCarthy ’02

Florence Schorske Wald ’38 Troubled by the way American doctors treated dying patients, Wald resigned as dean of the Yale School of Nursing in the 1960s to research palliative-care alternatives. She subsequently became one of the founders of Hospice Inc., which began home care in 1974 and opened an inpatient hospice in 1980. Today there are approximately 4,000 hospices nationwide. Called the mother of the American hospice movement, Wald was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1998. She is a primary reason the nation’s terminally ill can opt for peace, comfort, and dignity during their final days.

Fred LeBlanc

Florence Schorske Wald

As one of the few women editors at Time magazine, Painton made magazine history in 2006 when she accepted the position of deputy managing editor. She stunned the publishing world when she quit that position to become the Priscilla executive editor of nonfiction for Simon & Painton Schuster in 2008. Besides acquiring and editing books such as the bestselling biographies of Michelle Obama and Edward Kennedy, Painton also oversees a team of nine editors at Simon & Schuster, which has become a leader in ebook publishing while continuing to publish in hard cover and paperback.

Who’s Who? Can you match each alumna with her accomplishment? 1. Former CEO of UK airline; helped bring 2012 Olympics to London

a. Elizabeth Holloway Marston 1915

2. Real-life inspiration for comic-book heroine Wonder Woman

b. Gabbi Gregg ’08

3. Olympic gold medalist; started a nonprofit to inspire female rowers

c. Barbara Cassani ’82

4. Major player in investment banking and nonprofit boards

d. Sarah Ann Dickey 1869

5. Established an MHC-like school for formerly enslaved African American women

e. Holly Metcalf ’81

6. Climate-change researcher; National Geographic “emerging explorer” 7. Young, Fat, and Fabulous blogger; MTV’s first Twitter jockey 8. Wrote the first novel by a Vietnamese American about the Vietnam War and its aftermath 9. Hollywood producer of The Princess Diaries, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Sparkle, and more 10. Credited with commercializing Valentine’s Day cards

f. Katey Walter Anthony ’98 g. Lan Cao ’83 h. Esther Howland 1847 i. Robin Chemers Neustein ’75 j. Debra Martin Chase ’77 Answers: 1-c. 2-a, 3-e, 4-i, 5-d, 6-f, 7-b, 8-g, 9-j, 10-h

MHC Archives

Priscilla Painton ’80

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Miriam Aschkenasy

Miriam Aschkenasy ’94 Gloria Johnson-Powell

Gloria Johnson-Powell ’58 In the 1960s, Johnson-Powell considered leaving medical school to recruit the civil-rights activists known as Freedom Riders. Martin Luther King, Jr., himself changed her mind, saying, “You will stay in school, because one of these days we’re going to need you.” Johnson-Powell became a pediatrician and child psychologist and one of the first African American women professors tenured at Harvard. Her work on cultural diversity in healthcare led to national legislation that created a new center within the National Institutes of Health focused on studying minority health and eliminating health disparities between races. It was lauded as the first civil-rights legislation of the twenty-first century.

Linda Yu Bien ’75 As CEO of North East Medical Services in San Francisco, Bien played a central role in the nonprofit’s expansion, extending its services and opening new clinics. North East is the nation’s largest community health center serving a predominantly Asian Linda Yu Bien population, and its clients include many poor and uninsured Chinese immigrants. The organization’s practice of opening its doors to all who need medical care matched Bien’s conviction that society has a

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Aschkenasy is a public-health specialist with Oxfam who also works emergency-room shifts at Cambridge Hospital in Boston. She oversees programs in public health and hygiene education, and attempts to treat or prevent debilitating diseases such as diarrhea and malaria in countries like Ethiopia and Zimbabwe. Aschkenasy trained as an international emergency-medicine physician. But during a residency in Nepal, she realized public health is the only way to help those who can’t reach the healthcare system on their own. So she earned a master’s in public health at Harvard and has been helping people around the world ever since.

Beryl Robichaud Collins ’40 Fresh out of college, Collins ventured into a field where few women had ever gone: computers. At a time when a single computer took up an entire room, Collins went to work for IBM. She completed its newly designed Beryl Collins management-training program for women before becoming its secretary of education. She later landed at publisher McGraw-Hill, becoming the company’s first female officer when she was promoted to senior vice president for corporate management information services. She also wrote two books on business data processing. Recognizing her significance, Business Week named Collins one of its “top corporate women” in a 1976 issue.

To p L e f t : B r e n t Ni c a s t r o ; B ot t o m L e f t : M H C A r c h i v e s ; B ot t o m R i g h t : M H C A r c h i v e s

responsibility to help people, especially newcomers. When she died unexpectedly at age fifty-four, the San Francisco Chronicle hailed Bien as a “health-care champion for Asian immigrants.”

Like-Minded

Mimi Frank’s wall installation is eight feet high by twenty feet wide. Each piece is welded steel mounted directly to the wall. Each chair is approximately three by three by three inches.

Indelible Images:

Visual Art by Alumnae Artists Cassiopeia Dreams of Better Days After teaching for fifteen years at the Catholic University of America, sculptor Mary Annella “Mimi” Frank ’76 now works full-time on her art. She has exhibited widely across the country. Currently at work on a commission for the Dartmouth (Massachusetts) Natural Resources Trust, Frank also has a show of her work scheduled for late 2013 at the Howard County Center for the Arts in Maryland. A survey of her work is at maryannellafrank.com. In Cassiopeia Dreams of Better Days, Frank relates how, in Greek mythology, the beautiful Cassiopeia was punished for her vanity and tied to a chair that rotates in the night sky. “The chair represents so many things to us,” Frank says. “These chairs tell us a little about Cassiopeia and her regrets, but they are really about our relationships with each other.” To have your work considered for our Indelible Images series, email one image to quarterly@mtholyoke.edu.

Mari Ellen Reynolds Loijens ’91 met Lizabeth Goggin Sears ’85 when Sears moved to the Bay Area from Australia. Loijens is the chief business, development, and brand officer of the nonprofit Silicon Valley Community Foundation; Sears had volunteered for nonprofits but had never worked at one. Loijens realized Sears’s background would make her an “excellent” grant writer and fund-raiser, she says. She introduced Sears to a nonprofit, Raising a Reader, where she now she has a job. “They love her, and she is very happy,” Loijens says. “That’s one personal experience, but it’s my hope other connections are being made similar to that one.” You can bet they are. Loijens and Sears connected through MHC NPO Alumnae, a LinkedIn-based specialinterest group, or SIG, for MHC alumnae in the nonprofit organization world. Loijens moderates the group, which has more than 700 members. “It is a resource for jobs, ideas, networking, information on potential vendors, and more,” she says. “We have members from all over the world, and periodically people meet in person or further conversations offline.” MHC NPO Alumnae is one of a growing number of SIGs that are fostering new connections among alumnae on Facebook and LinkedIn. “Engagement of alumnae traditionally has been through classes and reunions and clubs or geographical areas,” says Jennifer Durst ’95, vice president of the board of directors of the Alumnae Association. “But as you can well imagine, alumnae and people in general are connecting in so many other ways through their specific interests, and that transcends geographical areas as well as age.”

Facebook SIGs serve a social purpose for alumnae with shared interests in, say, sports or the arts. Two or three new groups are starting up each year, and all are alumnae driven. “We don’t take a top-down approach in forming these groups,” Durst says of the Alumnae Association. “We want this to be very grassroots and organic.”

alumnaematters

Courtesy Mimi Frank

Alums Connect in Online Special-Interest Groups

Pamela Parker ’81 gets credit for initiating Mount Holyoke Wordwrights, another SIG based on LinkedIn. Having attended several writers’ conferences and realized, as she says, “how many writers really struggle for some support from other writers,” Parker worked with Durst to get Wordwrights up and running last year. Already, the group has more than 300 members. With freelancers, editors, corporate-communications officers, entrepreneurs, published authors, and hoping-to-be-published authors, they represent a broad spectrum of working writers. “New grads are always welcome,” Parker says, “and we’re glad to offer whatever tips we can.” MHC’s only “affiliate group”—a sort of super-SIG that has jumped through the hoops necessary to obtain 501(c)(3) status—is Lyon’s Pride. The group was formed in the mid-1980s as the Mount Holyoke College Lesbian Alumnae Network

photography

film

sculpture

art

prints

art

painting

For example, there’s a group for Frances Perkins alumnae. An alumnaeentrepreneurs network. An alumnaeeducators network. And a brand-new group for alums with MBAs. The LinkedIn SIGs offer networking opportunities for professionals; the

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For a listing of special-interest groups, with links, go to alumnae. mtholyoke.edu/connect/index.php. To become a member of a SIG, click on the “Join Group” button on its Facebook or LinkedIn page.

but changed its name upon becoming a tax-exempt nonprofit organization more than a decade ago. Today it has roughly 700 members, including about 100 students and a handful of faculty and staff. It boasts its own website, mhlp.org, which founder and current president Donna Albino ’83 says is its major tool for communicating with its members. “Our website offers news, member profiles, event listings, and our history,” Albino says. “We would be lost without it.”

A busy and active group, Lyon’s Pride invites alumnae to campus to do book readings, comedy sketches, history discussions, and other events; has online chats with people such as President Lynn Pasquerella ’80; welcomes new student members with Lyon’s Pride mugs filled with chocolate; and lots more. Then there’s the group’s Jolene Fund, which provides loans to students whose families have financially disowned them because of their sexual orientation. “We have been

Connect with Your MHC Sisters

Class and Club Info Is Just Keystrokes Away Your class and club contacts are all available online. For classes, go to alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/classes. Get in touch with your club atalumnae.mtholyoke.edu/clubs.

able to help three students so far,” Albino says, “and the fund will be used again this coming year to help a senior graduate with her class.”

email. “We are excited and delighted to collaborate with the College to reestablish and honor our presence as black women on campus.”

With more than 300 Facebook members, the Mount Holyoke College Black Alumnae Group aims to “contact, connect, and inform” MHC alumnae from the African diaspora. The group’s signature event is the triennial Black Alumnae Conference, which dates back to 1973. The theme of this year’s conference (Nov. 9–11) was Claiming Our Legacy, Making Our Mark. “The theme is designed to invoke pride in our contributions to the College,” conference co-chairs Maxine Roberts ’95 and Kimberly Hebert Gregory ’94 wrote in an

Karen Hendricks ’76, for one, always looks forward to the event. “That’s some of the value added—that opportunity to interact with folks who share some very similar experiences,” says Hendricks, a past president of the Alumnae Association. Which, really, is why she’s been a part of the black-alumnae group since its early days. “It’s a network predicated on folks who have a shared sense of community,” she says. “It’s reaching out to your sistas and keeping that connection.” —Christina Barber-Just

A woman kills one of her own children every three days in America, research shows. While we would like to believe that these mothers have nothing in common with “good mothers,” it turns out that this is not really the case, says Sarah LaChance Adams ’99. Maternal ambivalence and mothers’ simultaneous desires to nurture and reject their children are fairly common and the result of valid conflicts between mothers’ and children’s needs, she says. LaChance Adams is at work on a book examining the issues of maternal ambivalence and filicide. She has been awarded the 2012 Mary E. Woolley Fellowship to complete final revisions on the manuscript, which is under review with Columbia University Press. She is currently assistant professor of philosophy in the Department of Social Inquiry at the University of Wisconsin–Superior. The complexity of mothers’ responses to their children is instructive for ethical theory, LaChance Adams notes, because it brings both human interdependence and separable interests into relief. “I claim that ethical ambivalence is morally productive insofar as it helps one to recognize the divergence between oneself and others,” says LaChance Adams,

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who holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Oregon. Maternal filicide is a social problem that requires a collective solution, she adds. The social and material circumstances of the mother are key in differentiating mothers who kill from those Sarah LaChance Adams ’99 is the 2012 Mary who do not. “An E. Woolley Fellowship winner. She is pictured here with her daughter, Geneva. ethical model that favors individual moral responsibility is counterproductive.” According to LaChance Adams, no other book discusses these issues in philosophical terms, but interest in the topic is significant. Her publisher says the book will appeal to social workers and women’s-studies scholars and is written in a lucid enough manner to attract the nonphilosopher, too. The fellowship, sponsored by the Alumnae Association, carries an award of $7,500. —Mieke H. Bomann

Robert DeWitt Adams

Maternal Ambivalence the Topic of Woolley Fellow’s Book

Giving never goes out of style.

photo: mhc archives

Support the Founder's Fund today.

Mary Lyon traveled thousands of miles to collect funds in her green velvet bag for what would become Mount Holyoke College. Your gift to the Founder’s Fund—the Alumnae Association’s endowment—helps us support the activities of alumnae around the world. Visit alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ff or send a check, payable to Alumnae Association Founder’s Fund, to Mount Holyoke College, 50 College St., South Hadley, MA 01075-1486.

offtheshelf

Words Worth a Second Look

Fiction Shadow of Night BY DEBORAH HARKNESS

(Viking) When A Discovery of Witches, the first novel in Harkness’s All Souls Trilogy, debuted at number two on the New York Times best-seller list, it set the stage for Shadow of Night, which bested its predecessor by debuting at number one. The second installment in the trilogy finds witch historian Diana Bishop and vampire/ geneticist Matthew Clairmont time-traveling to Elizabethan England in search of a magical alchemical manuscript. The Hollywood Reporter calls Shadow of Night “Twilight for grownups—only better.” Entertainment Weekly says, “The joy that Harkness, herself a historian, takes in visiting the past is evident on every page.” Deborah Harkness ’86 is a professor of history at the University of Southern California. Her most recent scholarly book is The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution. A Discovery of Witches was her fiction debut.

We Sinners BY HANNA PYLVÄINEN

(Henry Holt) Pylväinen’s critically acclaimed debut novel explores the consequences of leaving one’s religious community. The book follows each member of a large fundamentalist family after two of the children reject the church. Kirkus Reviews calls We Sinners a “lovely, lyrical debut novel of a family in slowly unfolding crisis.” Melanie DeNardo, Henry Holt’s associate director of publicity, tells the Quarterly, “We are absolutely thrilled to publish Hanna’s book; it is truly one of the best works of

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fiction I’ve had the pleasure of reading in years.” Hanna Pylväinen ’07 holds a master of fine arts from the University of Michigan. She left the Finnish fundamentalist faith of her youth; We Sinners is drawn from her own life experience. The Stars Shine Bright BY SIBELLA GIORELLO

(Thomas Nelson) Two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee Giorello returns with the fifth installment in her Raleigh Harmon mystery series. For her newest assignment, Harmon, an FBI special agent and forensic geologist, goes

undercover to find out who’s fixing the races—and killing the horses—at a thoroughbred track called Emerald Meadows. “My protagonist always mentions Mount Holyoke in every book,” Giorello tells the Quarterly. The Seattle Times has noted that while the Harmon series explores Christian themes, it does so “lightly, in a way that will appeal to crimefiction fans along the religious/ spiritual continuum.” Sibella Connor Giorello ’85 is a former features writer for the Richmond (Virginia) Times-Dispatch. The Stones Cry Out, the first Raleigh Harmon book, won a Christy Award for Christian fiction in 2008.

Nonfiction Independent for Life: Homes and Neighborhoods for an Aging America EDITED BY HENRY CISNEROS, MARGARET DYER-CHAMBERLAIN, AND JANE HICKIE

(University of Texas Press) Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Cisneros, Smith College alumna Dyer-Chamberlain, Hickie, and other experts on aging, architecture, construction, health, finance, and politics offer what’s being billed as the first comprehensive overview of the possibilities and challenges in helping seniors live independently to a very old age. V. Jane Hickie ’70 is senior research scholar and director of the Politics, Scholars, and the Public Program at the Stanford Center on Longevity. Adelaide Herrmann, Queen of Magic: Memoirs, Published Writings, Collected Ephemera EDITED BY MARGARET STEELE (Bramble Books)

Herrmann (1853–1932) is recognized as the world’s first great female magician. Her memoir disappeared after her death and resurfaced in 2010. Steele’s tribute includes the first publication of Herrmann’s memoir as well as 145 rare photos and ephemera gathered from

major magic-history collections. “A must-own for fans of magic,” Kirkus Reviews says. Margaret Bungay Steele ’75 is a professional magician, magic historian, and writer specializing in the lives and careers of early female magicians. Things I Wish I’d Known: Cancer Caregivers Speak Out BY DEBORAH CORNWALL

(Bardolf) Created on the premise that family caregivers are silent and often hidden protagonists in the war on cancer, this book is based on confidential interviews with a broad sample of cancer caregivers from across the country. Cornwall shares the practical things new caregivers need to know as well as the emotional stories that led to their knowledge. A breast-cancer survivor, Deborah Handloff Cornwall ’68 has been a volunteer leader for the American Cancer Society and its Cancer Action Network for nearly two decades. Things I Wish I’d Known is her first book.

exercises, and charts to help those at any stage of life, and covers major areas including family, friends, work, play, service, and learning. Kathryn Lacy Marshall ’81 and her husband, David, have written six other journals. Their eighth book, What I Love About You, Mom, comes out next year. The Smart Guide to Understanding Your Cat BY CAROLYN JANIK

(Smart Guide Publications) This comprehensive handbook aims to offer new insights into the feline in your life, addressing everything from interpreting a cat’s body language to caring for an older cat. The Smart Guide to Understanding Your Cat is the twenty-third book of nonfiction by Carolyn Lech Janik ’62. Of her many pets, Janik’s

favorite was a feline named Emily Dickinson Kat. Ella Grasso: Connecticut’s Pioneering Governor BY JON E. PURMONT

(Wesleyan University Press) Purmont, an emeritus professor of history at Southern Connecticut State University, served as Grasso’s executive assistant when she was governor of Connecticut, from 1975 to 1980. This biography draws on Purmont’s diary, research in Grasso’s archives, and interviews with Grasso’s family and friends. Ella Tambussi Grasso ’40 was the first woman in the United States to be elected governor in her own right.

My Life Map: A Journal to Help You Shape Your Future BY KATE AND DAVID MARSHALL (Gotham)

This self-help journal explains why and how to create a visual road map of your past and future. It offers writing prompts,

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Exploring the Decolonial Imaginary: Four Transnational Lives BY PATRICIA SCHECHTER

(Palgrave Macmillan) This book focuses on race and racialization in the lives of four women whose careers crossed national borders between 1880 and 1965: Liberian missionary Amanda Berry Smith, author Gertrude Stein, feminist arts impresario and publisher Josefina Silva de Cintron, and labor activist Maida Springer. Patricia Schechter ’86 is a history professor at Portland (Oregon) State University. Her book Remembering the Power of Words: The Life of an Oregon Activist, Legislator, and Community Leader was published last year. Peril in the Ponds: Deformed Frogs, Politics, and a Biologist’s Quest BY JUDY HELGEN

(University of Massachusetts Press) During the 1990s, thousands of deformed frogs suddenly and mysteriously appeared across the country. Many had

missing or extra limbs, missing eyes, or misshapen jaws. As a government biologist, Helgen led her state agency’s investigation into the widespread deformities and developed a biological rating system for evaluating pollution in wetlands. Research scientist Judy Cairncross Helgen ’60 is retired from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. The Sexual Life of English: Languages of Caste and Desire in Colonial India BY SHEFALI CHANDRA (Duke University Press) This book examines how English became an Indian language. By drawing attention to sexuality and power, Chandra argues that Indian English was shaped by conflicts over caste, religion, and class. Shefali Chandra ’94 is an assistant professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis. Terror and Reconciliation: Sri Lankan Anglophone Literature, 1983–2009 BY MARYSE JAYASURIYA

(Lexington Books)

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Jayasuriya’s first book explores the English-language literature that emerged from Sri Lanka’s recent ethnic conflict between government forces and Tamil separatist guerrillas. It looks at the various ways in which writers of poetry, short fiction, and novels have represented the violence and terror of the fighting and offered solutions for reconciliation. Maryse Jayasuriya ’97 is an assistant professor of English at the University of Texas at El Paso. She holds a doctorate in postcolonial literature and theory. The Orang Asli and the UNDRIP: From Rhetoric to Recognition BY COLIN NICHOLAS, JENITA ENGI, AND YEN PING TEH (Center for Orang Asli Concerns) This book looks at gaps in the application of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on Malaysia’s indigenous Orang Asli people. It traces the fate of the Orang Asli in

history and explains how they came to be in their present circumstances. Yen Ping Teh ’12 interned at the Center for Orang Asli Concerns in summer 2010, during which time she coauthored The Orang Asli and the UNDRIP with the center’s founder and coordinator. Issues of Ageing and Disability: International Perspectives EDITED BY MARY MAYER AND FLORENCE DENMARK

(NGO Committee on Ageing) Developed under the auspices of the Non-Governmental Organization Committee on Ageing at the United Nations, this publication comprises ten articles chosen from submissions by scholars from around the world. It was supported by the UN Focal Point on Ageing and the Secretariat for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Mary Levy Mayer ’45 represents the International Federation on Ageing at the United Nations.

More Books

For descriptions of these books, go to alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/f12books. Destined: A Novel of the Tarot BY GAIL SMITH CLEARE ’72 (CreateSpace) Most Likely to Murder BY CAROLE bernstein SHMURAK ’65 (CreateSpace)

Healing, Romance, and Revolution: Letters from an American Nurse in 1926 China COMPILED BY CAROLYN AND DENNIS BUCKMASTER

(Book Publishers Network)

Acting Means Doing!! BY JIM CAVANAUGH (CreateSpace)

A Closer Look

offtheshelf

The Iconic Iconographer New Book Showcases Best-Known Work of Susan Kare ’75

usan Kare ’75 has created Mac’ greeted a generation at the countless computer icons threshold of a new world.” during her three-decade Susan Kare ICONS is an art career as a graphic designer book, but not a Taschen-type behefor a who’s who of Silicon Valley moth that sits like so many bricks tech corporations. Many of her on your coffee table. This softcover icons, including Apple’s Happy book is diminutive—just seven Macintosh, the Windows 3.0 inches by seven inches. Each copy is solitaire deck, and Facebook’s Kiss signed by Kare. Mark, are instantly recognizable. The eighty icons in the book are In 2004 HOW magazine asked shown two ways: actual size—as Kare to comment on the influence they would appear on a screen— her early work for the Macintosh’s and magnified. The “zoomed-in original operating system has view,” Kare says, “allows the reader had on the personal-computer to see how many icons are crafted industry. pixel by pixel”—or, at least, how “It’s not something I think many were crafted pixel by pixel, about,” she replied. “It’s not my place to assess.” before graphic-design software like Adobe Illustrator came She appears to have changed her mind since then. along. In 2010 she launched a website, kareprints.com, sellThe book favors pictures over words, which is to be ing limited-edition prints of her selected icons on colorful expected, but Kare’s commentary accompanies selected backgrounds, and last year she published Susan Kare ICONS images, adding a welcome, if too infrequent, measure of (Watermark Press), featuring her favorite images created insight and humor. between 1983 and 2011. For example, Kare writes that Bomb, one of her icons for This iconographer, it seems, has achieved iconic status. the original Macintosh, “was designed to resemble a cartoon Susan Kare ICONS kicks off with an introductory essay by explosive and represent a system failure—the programWired magazine contributing editor Steve Silberman, who mers explained that no one would ever be likely to see it. calls it a “charmingly modest and long overdue book.” Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. Once, a phone call was Silberman’s essay, “Signposts in New Space,” situates Kare’s transferred to the Mac software group because a user had career within the relatively recent history of home computseen the icon on her screen and was extremely concerned ing, from 1983, when she became “one of that her computer might explode!” the [Macintosh] team’s most auspicious Fast-forward to Kare’s Facebook Kare holds a doctorate in early hires,” to 2007, when she began creatdays (2007–2010), when she created fine arts from New York ing virtual gifts for Facebook. Penguin, among many other virtual University. She founded “For years,” Silberman writes, “thousands gifts. She writes, “This image repreSusan Kare Design in San of Facebook users a day swapped Karesents two lessons learned creating five Francisco in 1989 and won a designed birthday cakes, disco balls, roses, penguin Facebook gifts: 1) Cute often prestigious Chrysler Design and engagement rings as virtual gifts, never Award in 2001. To learn trumps edgy or minimal. 2) People remore, visit kare.com and knowing they were designed by the same ally, really like penguins.”—Christina kareprints.com. artist whose smiling image of the ‘Happy Barber-Just

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MHC Art Museum/L aura Shea

bulletinboard Kara Walker Exhibit Kicks Off MHC Art Museum’s Fall Season At any given time, only a fraction of the 17,000 objects in the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum’s permanent collection is on display. So this fall, instead of mounting one or more special exhibitions of works on loan from other institutions, the museum is trying another tack and devoting its gallery space to four shows featuring works from its own collection that are either newly acquired or rarely—if ever—on view. Leading the pack is Kara Walker: Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), an exhibition of fifteen just-purchased prints by Walker, an African-American artist and one of the youngest MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipients ever. These large-scale prints, such as the piece shown here, Exodus of Confederates from Atlanta, explore race by juxtaposing Civil War illustrations originally published in Harper’s magazine with Walker’s own images, including the cut-paper silhouettes for which she is best known. Functioning as a sort of companion show to the Walker exhibit is African-American Artists and the Experimental Printmaking Institute: The Janet Hickey Tague ’66 Collection. Against the Wall: Contemporary Art from the Collection, and Encounter: Faces of the Ancient Americas, round out the museum’s fall offerings. All are on view through late December, with the latter two shows ongoing. —Christina Barber-Just

Ta l i e s i n N ya l a

Save the Date: Vespers 2012 Ah, December in New York: the Fifth Avenue holiday window displays, the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, the Rockefeller Center holiday tree—and, this year, Vespers! The College’s traditional holiday concert takes place Friday, December 7, at 8 p.m. at St. Bartholomew’s Church on Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. As one class noted in a recent newsletter, “It promises to be a warm and spiritual gathering of friends and beautiful music.” Tickets are $60 at the door, or as little as $5 in advance. Proceeds benefit the New York Alumnae Scholar Fund, which provides scholarships to MHC students from New York City. To reserve your seat, visit mountholyokeclubofnewyork.com/vespers or call 413-538-2201.

Learn more at mtholyoke.edu/artmuseum.

travelopportunities January 11–19, 2013 Voyage of Discovery: Wonders of the Galápagos Islands

This incredible nine-day journey features a four-night cruise in the Galápagos Islands, a nature lover’s dream destination and UNESCO World Heritage site, aboard the first-class small ship MV Santa Cruz. This exploration vessel is fully equipped for the complete Galápagos experience, from a glassbottom boat to a team of certified naturalists and complimentary snorkeling gear. There is a stargazing program at night. Visit seven islands and see

the exotic birds, animals, and plants that inspired Charles Darwin, including species unknown elsewhere in the world. On mainland Ecuador, enjoy deluxe hotel accommodations in Quito and Guayaquil. The sixnight postprogram option features Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley, and historic Lima, Peru. The ship’s staff provides attentive service that is recognized in the travel industry as the finest in the Galápagos Islands. Alumnae Association Executive Director Jane E. Zachary will join alumnae on this trip.

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Galápagos trip

Prices start at $3,795, plus air. For more information, or to make reservations, call Gohagan & Company at 800-922-3088. June 20–28, 2013 Coastal Life Cruising Along the Dalmatian Coast

Explore the Adriatic Sea’s stunning, island-dappled Dalmatian Coast on this seven-night cruise aboard the exclusively chartered, deluxe small ship MS L’Austral. Visit four countries and seven UNESCO World Heritage sites with this comprehensive itinerary, including Diocletian’s Palace in Split, Croatia; the medieval fortifications of Kotor in Montenegro; Dubrovnik’s perfectly restored Gothic and Romanesque quarters; and the Stari Most bridge in Mostar. To further enhance your cruise, enjoy an exclusive village forum with local residents, a folk-music performance on board, and a specially arranged lecture on the restoration of Dubrovnik. Experience the art and romance of Venice on the two-night, precruise option. Prices start at $3,795, plus air. For more

information, or to make reservations, call Gohagan & Company at 800-922-3088.

September 24– October 2, 2013 Island Life in Ancient Greece and Turkey

June 25–July 3, 2013 Cultural Treasures of the Black Sea and the Crimea

Join us for this exclusive nine-day odyssey to Greece’s ancient islands and Turkey’s fabled coast. Cruise from Athens to Istanbul aboard the exclusively chartered, deluxe small ship MS L’Austral. Meet local residents during a specially arranged village forum for a personal perspective on the true character of the Aegean Sea’s maritime culture. Carefully designed, expertled excursions are highlighted by the UNESCO World Heritage sites of the classical ruins of Delos, the old town of Rhodes, the Monastery of St. John on Pátmos, and legendary Troy. Extend your voyage with the Athens precruise option and the Istanbul or Cappadocia postcruise option. Ninety-five percent of the deluxe and air-conditioned outside staterooms and suites feature private balconies. The ship company has been noted for its commitment to energy efficiency and environmental protection of marine ecosystems. Prices start at $3,595, plus air. For more information, or to make reservations, call Gohagan & Company at 800-922-3088.

This exclusive, nine-day cruise aboard the all-suite, 540-passenger ship MV Silver Spirit showcases the Black Sea’s most intriguing destinations: Istanbul, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and the Crimean Peninsula. Unpack only once and explore Istanbul, Odessa, Nessebur (a UNESCO World Heritage site), and the historic Crimean Peninsula, featuring Sevastopol, Khan’s Palace, and Livadia Palace, site of the famous 1945 Yalta Conference. Savor delights created by international chefs in partnership with the prestigious Grand Chefs Relais & Châteaux in six dining venues throughout the ship. Refresh your mind and spirit at the spa and fitness center. Istanbul precruise option and Cappadocia postcruise option are offered. Cruise and air prices start at $4,999. For more information, or to make reservations, call Gohagan & Company at 800-922-3088.

Interested? To request a brochure for any of these trips, call the Alumnae Association at 413-538-2300 or visit http://alumnae. mtholyoke.edu/programs/lifelong/travel.php. For additional information, call the travel company sponsoring the trip.

Black Sea/Crimea trip

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Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation This information published as required by USPS • Publication title: Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly; ISSN publication number 00272493; USPS 365-280; published quarterly; subscriptions are free. • Office of Publication: Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College, 50 College St., S. Hadley, MA 01075-1486; contact person: Emily Weir, 413-538-2301; Publisher and owner: Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College; editor: Emily Weir • Circulation (based on summer ’12 issue): Net press run: 33,340; requested subscriptions: 32,340 + nonrequested (campus) distribution: 1,000

Island Life trip

Editor’s note :

With this essay, we inaugurate a new section of the magazine, “My Voice.” In it, we will print essays on women-centered issues about which alumnae feel strongly. The positions taken are those of the authors, and the Alumnae Association takes no stand on the views expressed.

My Vo i c e

Half a Century After The Feminine Mystique, Have Women’s Choices Changed?

I first read Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in college. It was the early ’80s, and when I came home for winter break, I mentioned to my mother that I had found the book interesting. Her response: “That book changed my life.” I found out later that it had probably changed my life as well. I was two when Friedan’s book was published in 1963. My mom—Mary Lou Judd Carpenter ’55—was at home with her small children while my father, an attorney, worked. I grew up in the world Friedan described: well-educated, competent women who married well-educated, professional men and found themselves at home with their children. I didn’t experience my mother as unfulfilled, but I do know the message my sister and I received was very clear: You are to have a career. You are to go the places I did not. You are to look at traditionally male endeavors as opportunities open to you.

By Cindy Carpenter ’83

The life choices available to Meredith Casey (left) are quite different from those open to her mom (Cindy Carpenter ’83, center) and grandmother (Mary Lou Judd Carpenter ’55)…or are they?

My mom contends that she just wanted us to be aware that we had choices, but neither my sister nor I heard it that way. We heard that getting married and having children were part of life, but careers were most important. We were not to be dependent on a man, live for our children, or be the default keepers of home and hearth. We were to have careers, financial wherewithal, and independence. This didn’t seem inconsistent to us—we were growing up right along with the women’s movement—and both

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Mary Lou Judd Carpenter ’55 serves birthday cake to two-year-old Cindy in 1963.

parents expected us to develop our intellectual and vocational potential. My father spoke admiringly of new women associates; my mother shared examples of young women pursuing graduate work or making it as young executives. My peers and I assumed we would have some sort of career, and many of my classmates had very clear professional aspirations. I marched out into the world with paisley bow-tie and sensible pumps, naively assuming that I would add the family piece along the way. My reality included all the well-documented challenges faced by working women raising children and managing families. My friends and I lamented how we enjoyed feeling capable at work, but hated feeling short-changed at home. Many of us had been raised by stay-at-home moms, and we aspired to create family lives based on a labor model we didn’t have. Our employers, colleagues, partners, and we ourselves ad-libbed a variety of solutions. Part-time, flex-time, freelance, contract, job-share, even the “mommy track”—all offered only partial solutions and all came with trade-offs. This “You have choices” deal didn’t feel like a deal at all. As I juggled work and family, my mother’s life sure looked OK to me: she ran a household, volunteered for causes she believed in, and spent a lot of time with interesting, competent women. She made significant contributions without ever stressing about a paycheck, a promotion, or a performance review. Mom’s carpools ran with precision; her dinners were nutritious and on time; sick children were simply brought along to committee meetings. I know being home with children is uniquely challenging, so I am not minimizing the stress, but I’d wonder whether my mother’s route might have actually gotten me closer to what I wanted: time with family, work I believed in, and the ability to make a meaningful contribution to the world. This has really come home to me as I raise my daughter, Meredith. She has watched me do the working mother twostep, and once told a teacher that she wanted to be a “client”

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History repeats itself as Cindy Carpenter ’83, now the mom, celebrates daughter Meredith’s birthday.

when she grew up—after all, that’s what Mommy talked about, so it must be important. At age seventeen, she has seen great variety in how families manage work and childcare, and she doesn’t have strong opinions about one way being preferable to another. But what my mother thought were opportunities for me look like purgatory to my daughter. She doesn’t see my career in corporate communications as something to aspire to, although she accepts that it’s important to me and necessary for our family. But what she values from her childhood are the rituals, events, and gatherings that were the first items cut from my to-do list when I ran out of time or energy. I know she would have liked to have a family life more like what I had growing up. Yet, as she prepares for her own future, she is eager to pursue her own passions, and doesn’t view the “home front” as gender-specific territory. She may be no better equipped than I was to understand what the trade-offs really feel like. What am I to tell her about “choices”? Friedan’s book remains very important, and I don’t want to diminish the problems it portrayed and the challenges that still exist today. I am grateful for the choices available to me and the support I had from my mother and others. I know my daughter has many more options and opportunities because of the women who came before her. But the message I want to impart to her about the choices we have is more qualified and nuanced. I don’t feel the confident conviction that I heard from my own mother: pursue a career you love and the family life you want. My daughter’s world is very different than mine or my mother’s, but I wonder whether the ambivalence I sometimes feel will diminish with successive generations. We’ll have to wait another fifty years to know. To submit your own essay for consideration, please email an essay of 500 words or fewer to quarterly@mtholyoke.edu.

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