Mount Holyoke wi n t er 2019
Alumnae Quarterly
Promise of the Infinite A current exhibition at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum creates space for the work of renowned artist Joan Jonas ’58
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I N T H I S I SSU E “WILDFIRE: ON THE FRONT LINES WITH STATION 8” CREATING THE PERFECT CHEESE BOARD JOSEPH A. SKINNER’S BOOKS
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President’s Pen
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by cultivating productive interdependence among art, ideas and technology; nurturing design thinking and interdisciplinary project-based learning across the curriculum; and leveraging the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, Library and Information Technology Services and the Fimbel Maker & Innovation Lab to support digital arts initiatives. As with other educational opportunities at Mount Holyoke, the goal of the MEDIAL Project is to empower our students as “makers” through access to state-of-the-art resources and facilities, mentoring and modeling principles of inquiry, innovation, collaboration and experimentation, while also encouraging digital literacy and creative self-expression. The idea behind this initiative, true to a Mount Holyoke liberal arts education, is to encourage new forms of creativity and knowledge production, to develop awareness of the complex and fluid process through which ideas are realized (inside and beyond the classroom) and to create a sustained and meaningful connection between the arts and sciences through the shared use of technology in areas such as art conservation and restoration, ecological and sustainable design, ecomusic and acoustic ecology, to name but a few. In this world of fast-paced change, the goal is also to develop in students an appreciation for the limits of technology and technological solutions, as well as the abiding importance of humanistic understanding.
What is a liberal education if it does not activate both the mind and the imagination, and a quest for both meaning and beauty? While Mount Holyoke continues to innovate and to evolve its understanding and teaching of the liberal arts, it also continues to offer a
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What is a liberal education if it does not activate both the mind and the imagination, and a quest for both meaning and beauty? — S O N YA S T E P H E N S
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global education focused on timeless principles of inquiry and sense-making, an education that challenges assumptions in relation both to past traditions and to contemporary challenges. This is a learning environment where risk-taking builds confidence and where endeavors across the curriculum — and cross-curricular exploration — invite students to take on the unknown and, with integrity and empathy, in context, collaboration and conversation, to pursue truth in all of its manifestations.
Joan Jonas ’58 (left) and President Sonya Stephens during Jonas’ visit to campus in the fall
Laura Shea/Mount Holyoke College Art Museum
T HE C U RRE N T E X HIB ITIO N at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum “The Promise of the Infinite: Joan Jonas and the Mirror” is a microcosmic reflection of the extraordinary, groundbreaking work of Joan Jonas ’58 and also reminds us of the power of the arts, and indeed of the liberal arts. Jonas’ originality derives from her unusual forms and the connections she makes between performance (sets, costumes, props, scripts, choreography, music and sound), installation and drawing, which, in combination with video, present to the spectator complex perspectives on art, life and what it means to be human. Jonas says, “My work is about layering, because that’s the way our brains function. We think of several things at the same time. We see things and think another, we see one picture and there’s another picture on top of it. I think in a way my work represents that way of seeing the world — putting things together in order to say something.” Jonas often refers back to earlier works, incorporating fragments, in ways that set up what has been called “this principle of echoing and mirroring” that is such a feature of the Mount Holyoke exhibition, and of the way in which we experience life and reflect that experience. In her fall lecture on campus she shared her journey — including her international travels, which are an inspiration for her work — and her most recent multimedia installations for the 2015 Venice Biennale and for Tate Modern’s debut of her awe-inspiring “Moving Off the Land: Ocean—Sketches and Notes,” (2018) both of which “[mirror] human interference with nature’s ecosystems.” Throughout her career, Jonas has developed an intermedial and interdisciplinary creative language to speak her truth, to challenge us to interrogate her work and the world and to meet that search for meaning with our own commitment to veracity. Jonas’ spirit of innovation and humanistic inquiry, her creative interdisciplinarity and purposeful making of connections stand as a mirror, too, for other endeavors in the liberal arts at Mount Holyoke. One of these, the MEDIAL Project, is directly related to the visual and performing arts, with the purpose of transforming teaching and learning
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Contents W I N T E R 2 01 9
VOLU M E 10 3
N U M BE R 1
F E AT U R E S
D E PA R T M E N T S
16 Promise of the Infinite
2 LYONS SHARE
Kudos for fall issue, praise for theater arts, remembering library carrels, alumnae achievements
The first focused exhibition at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum of the work of artist Joan Jonas ’58 brings together four mirror-themed pieces that span her prolific career
24 Wild Fire
5 UNCOMMON GROUND
Black Alumnae Conference, Alumnae Symposium in Asia, cruise connections, Association welcomes deputy director, CDC programming
Excerpted from her book of the same title, Heather Hansen ’94 writes of being embedded with an elite wildland fire crew in Boulder, Colorado
10 Female Gaze Chef and cookbook author Jessica Battilana ’00; authors Carol A. Stabile ’83, Natasha Long Bell ’06 and Catherine Zastro Onyemelukwe ’62
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12 Ten Minutes With Athlete and disability advocate Alison Lynch ’10
Cover: Toby Coulson, reproduced with permission from the artist; back cover: Michael Perryman; library carrel: MHC Office of Advancement; cheese plate: Ann Arnold; organ: Deirdre Haber Malfatto.
13 Maven Abigail Hitchcock ’94 on creating a cheese board 14 Insider’s View Abbey Chapel’s Fisk Organ
34 M oHOME MEMORIES Torrey Hall
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35 Then and Now Vespers
36 On Display Joseph A. Skinner’s books 38 A Place of Our Own In front of Abbey Chapel
40 CLASS NOTES 80 MY VOICE
30 We Are Mount Holyoke
Meet some of the students and recent grads who call the community at Mount Holyoke home
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Gretchen Schmelzer ’87, “Trauma, Testimony, Healing and Resilience”
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L ET T E R S
EM A IL
FAC E B O OK
TW ITTER
I NSTAGR A M
L I N K E DI N
Lyons Share
PRAISE FOR FALL ISSUE Thank you for a lovely and most interesting
AT THE THEATER As a theater arts major and as an active
recent Alumnae Quarterly, one of the best I can remember. All the articles were interesting, but I especially liked reading about Nancy Hill, class of 1859 (fall 2018, p. 28). MHC should award her an honorary degree, posthumously, if they do such a thing. She certainly fits the mold of an uncommon woman! —Barbara Blanco Gaab ’60 via email
volunteer in the Yale School of Drama/Yale Repertory Theatre community, I too felt proud when I saw Suzan-Lori Parks’ ’85 “Father Comes Home from the Wars” at Yale (“A Passion for the Stage,” fall 2018, p. 10). I first met Parks in the 1990s at MHC, when she was a featured speaker at the weekend symposium held on campus for theater arts majors. So empowering for everyone in attendance. —Sylvia Van Sinderen ’73 via Association website
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@mhcbotanicgarden Our 48th annual Spring Flower Show is just one (very short) month away!
Leave it to an MHC
alumna to start a global movement! 7 years ago, Asha Curran ’95 helped create #GivingTuesday, a philanthropic response to consumerism that is now a global movement embraced by millions. @A AM H C M O U NT H O LYO KE ALU M S
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Join the Conversation quarterly@mtholyoke.edu
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facebook.com/aamhc twitter.com/aamhc instagram.com/mhcalums alumn.ae/linkedin
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@mhcalums Welcome to the Alumnae Association, December grads!
alumnae.mtholyoke.edu
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Hooked on science after an unintended geology class in her first semester at Mount Holyoke, Heidi Roop ’07 has traveled the world as a climate scientist.
WE SHARE D
Did you have a carrel in the library? Take a look to learn which carrels are the most popular and how current seniors have decorated their own personal study spaces.
Thank you for sharing this! Sending to my kids who are at a pivotal time in life — high school. Keeping our minds open to different paths! —Caroline Hartnett Ogburn ’87 What an amazing place! Gave me so much and changed my life trajectory. Thanks MHC! —Navneet Marwaha ’91
I didn’t have one. I usually just studied from our room. Loved that library though. —Cheryl Chun Nekota ’97 I loved my carrel. My best friend in college was my proxy, since I studied abroad junior year! My carrel was in a quiet nook. It was perfect! —Laura Westfall ’03 I had one with a window. Do I remember correctly that seniors who were writing theses got first dibs? I didn’t decorate it except with philosophy books. —Kristen Mead Materne ’87 I could really concentrate in one. —Claire Jaeckel Cox ’66 I had a carrel but don’t think I decorated it, except with notes from friends. We had a habit of visiting each other’s carrels when we needed a break, often leaving silly notes like, “Where are you Kimber? Shouldn’t you be studying?” —Kim Forsyth Sienkiewicz ’88
@mhcalums Nothing better. What’s your favorite Mountain Day activity? #mtndaymhc
Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly
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M OUN T HO LYO K E ALUMNAE QUARTERLY
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Winter 2019 Volume 103 Number 1
Jennifer Grow ’94 Editor and Interim Senior Director of Marketing & Communications
in the newest [What Is] book about the Women’s
Millie Rossman Creative Director
Rights Movement #MountHolyoke2022.
Jess Ayer Class Notes Editor and Marketing & Communications Associate
@mhc_chi @aamhc @AJ CO N ROY
CO N T RIBUTORS
Tara L. Roberts ’91, chair Lisa Hawley Hiley ’83 Perrin McCormick Menashi ’90 Susana Morris ’02 Carolyn E. Roesler ’86
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AM Y J O (AJ) SCH U PPE RT CO N ROY ’98
Rowan Collins ’18 Alicia Doyon Emily Krakow ’20 Maryellen Ryan Elizabeth Solet
QUARTERLY COMMITTEE
So proud to see
that MHC gets a full page
EDITORIAL AND DESIGN TEAM
The Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College, Inc. 50 College St. South Hadley, MA 01075-1486 413-538-2300 alumnae.mtholyoke.edu
ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS
President Maria Z. Mossaides ’73 Vice President Susan Brennan Grosel ’82
POSTM ASTE R
(ISSN 0027-2493; USPS 365-280) Please send form 3579 to Alumnae Information Services, Mount Holyoke Alumnae Association, 50 College St.,
Treasurer and Chair, Finance Committee Alice C. Maroni ’75
South Hadley, MA 01075-1486
Clerk Markeisha J. Miner ’99
published quarterly in the spring, summer,
The Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly is fall and winter by the Alumnae Association
Alumnae Trustee Rhynette Northcross Hurd ’71
of Mount Holyoke College, Inc.
Young Alumnae Representative Tarana Bhatia ’15
printed in the USA by Fry Communications,
Chair, Nominating Committee Danetta L. Beaushaw ’88
paid at South Hadley, MA, and additional
Chair, Classes and Reunion Committee Melissa Anderson Russell ’01
Ideas expressed in the Alumnae Quarterly
Chair, Communications Committee Marisa C. Peacock ’01 Chair, Volunteer Stewardship Committee Charlotte N. Church ’70 Chair, Clubs Committee Elizabeth McInerny McHugh ’87 Directors-at-Large Casey C. Accardi ’15 Eleanor Chang ’78 Executive Director Nancy Bellows Perez ’76 ex officio without vote
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quarterly@mtholyoke.edu
Winter 2019, volume 103, number 1, was Inc., Mechanicsburg, PA. Periodicals postage mailing offices. do not necessarily reflect the views of Mount Holyoke College or the Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College. The Alumnae Quarterly welcomes letters. Letters should run not more than 200 words in length, refer to material published in the magazine and include the writer’s full name. Letters may be edited for clarity and space. To update your information, contact Alumnae Information Services at ais@mtholyoke.edu or 413-538-2303.
Chef Margarita Forés ’80 has been knighted by the Italian government as a Cavaliere dell’Ordine della Stella d’Italia (Order of the Star of Italy).
alumnae.mtholyoke.edu
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N EWS
FEM A LE GA ZE
TEN MINUTES W ITH
T H E M AV E N
I NS I DE R ’ S V I E W
Uncommon Ground Cruise connection
Photo courtesy of Lorain Heindel Giles ’73
UNCOM M ON WOM E N G O to the ends of the earth to find each
other, but find each other they do. In November Kathryn Willmore ’65, Cyndy Rapp Curry ’63 and Lorain Heindel Giles ’73 (pictured, left to right) embarked on an Antarctic voyage with National GeographicLindblad Expeditions. They soon discovered their “uncommon” connection when Willmore mentioned during a dinner conversation that she had received a very good liberal arts education, and Curry asked if she had gone to Mount Holyoke. Just like that. Taking a look at the passenger manifest (which showed 96 passengers from eight countries), the two saw that Giles lived in South Hadley, and some sleuthing revealed that she, too, is an alumna. The new friends spent days and nights (almost 23 hours of daylight) exploring and learning about the history and science associated with this astonishingly beautiful part of the planet. Shore excursions included climbing up and sliding down glaciers, penguin encounters by the thousands, cross-country skiing and visiting Port Lockroy, an historic whaling and British military base now housing a small museum and the most southerly operational post office in the world. And, of course, there were icebergs: huge enough to force the ship to turn back in a narrow channel or small enough to kayak among — and in every shade of blue from pale to deep to brilliant turquoise, exquisitely sculpted by the wind, water and sun. A highlight of the trip was traveling farther south in the Weddell Sea than the ship had ever been. This is where Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated ship Endurance was trapped and crushed in the pack ice in 1915. There, right up close, to everyone’s delight, was the rare sight of Emperor penguins. Unlike the early age of Antarctic exploration, which was completely and deliberately dominated by men, several of the ship’s Lindblad crew and National Geographic scientific staff were women, including the ship’s second-in-command, as well as four naturalists, two of whom were the expedition divers. Of getting to know each other, Giles said, “It was amazing to discover how much we had in common despite our different graduation years and divergent life paths.” Certainly the trip of a lifetime, made all the better in the company of uncommon women. — S U B M I T T E D B Y L O R A I N H E I N D E L G I L E S ’ 7 3
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The 2018 Black Alumnae Conference took place on campus during the weekend of November 9–11, bringing together 110 accomplished alumnae, faculty, staff, guests and current students who spent the weekend networking, celebrating their achievements in life and at work and discussing ways to empower each other and plan for the future of black women. Organized by a committee of 14 alumnae led by C Dale Gadsden ’84 and Deborah A. Northcross ’73, the conference, titled “Creating Connections, Celebrating our Sisterhood,” included a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of black women’s leadership on campus. The weekend kicked off on Friday with an alumnae-student lunch in the College’s Dining Commons and, later, a cocktail reception with Mount Holyoke President Sonya Stephens at the President’s House. On Saturday attendees began the day with a welcome from Northcross as well as from Alumnae Association President Maria Mossaides ’73 and Executive Director Nancy Bellows Perez ’76, Mount Holyoke Vice President for Equity and Inclusion Kijua Sanders-McMurtry and President Stephens. The program continued with a panel discussion featuring alumnae presenters in Gamble Auditorium, followed by lunch and a “State of the College” panel by current faculty, staff and students. Saturday afternoon activities included a town hall discussion focused on the “State of Black Women in America,” as well as a screening in Gamble Auditorium of “Capturing the Flag,” a film co-produced by Laverne Berry ’71.
Be Well wins big
A highlight of the weekend was the award presentation to several alumnae during a formal dinner on Saturday night in the Willits-Hallowell Conference Center. The weekend concluded on Sunday with a master coaching session, worship service
Be Well, the College’s integrated wellness program launched in 2017, received the Program of the Year — State Award from NASPA, the national organization for student affairs administrators in higher education. Read more at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/bewell.
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and a Voices of Faith Choir reunion at Abbey Memorial Chapel and an “At Home” at the Betty Shabazz Cultural Center. A feature is planned for an upcoming issue of the Quarterly. View more event photos at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/bac.
Black Alumnae Conference photos: Michael Perryman; Vespers: Mount Holyoke College Glee Club; Be Well illustration: Marina Li
2018 Black Alumnae Conference
Plastic to paper
International regulations require that the Alumnae Quarterly is mailed in an enclosure. Now, the more than 3,000 alumnae who live outside of the U.S. receive their magazine in a paper envelope instead of a plastic wrapper.
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DID YOU KNOW?
Mount Holyoke College prepares students for lifelong success through a campus-wide approach to connecting each student’s academic work with practical applications of a liberal education. An essential goal of this approach is to help students apply their intellectual flexibility and critical thinking in workplace and community settings. One way in which we achieve this objective is by offering a funded summer internship or research opportunity to every student through The Lynk Universal Application Funding program. 349 STUDENTS granted awards for a total of
TOTAL OF $1,173,073
Vespers 2018 On December 7, more than 700 alumnae, guests, parents and community members attended Vespers at St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City.
1,800 STUDENTS supported with a
TOTAL OF $6,361,315
since the Lynk UAF program began in 2014
I particularly enjoy when my classes help students create a bridge between their individual journeys and a collectivist sense of worldmaking. — A S S I S TA N T P R O F E S S O R O R R AC E , R E L I G I O N A N D E T H N I C I T Y M E R E D I T H CO L E M A N -T O B I A S , O N E O F 1 0 N E W FAC U LT Y O N C A M P U S T H I S AC A D E M I C Y E A R . L E A R N M O R E AT A L U M N A E . M T H O LYO K E . E D U/ 2 0 1 8 FAC U LT Y.
59%
in summer 2018
of the class of 2019 has
RECEIVED FUNDING
Alumnae contribute a great deal to student career preparation and The Lynk UAF internship program: they speak on campus about their careers and industries; participate in advising and networking with students; and contribute to internship funds and offer high-quality internships within their organizations. Learn more at mtholyoke.edu/cdc/alumnae/share-students.
Join the Alumnae Stay program
Alumnae Stay provides free, temporary and safe housing to Mount Holyoke College students or alumnae traveling to pursue academic and professional growth. Volunteer or find a room at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/alumnaestay.
Get Ready for Reunion! For more information visit alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/reunion.
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Alumnae Association hires deputy director
Hampshire seeks partner
In January Hampshire College President Miriam Nelson announced the institution’s intent to find a “long-term partner that can help … achieve a thriving and sustainable future.” Read more at alumnae. mtholyoke.edu/hampshire.
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In Memoriam J O HN F OX, visiting professor of complex organizations from 1985–2011, died on Sept. 12. He was 79. John was a successful tax lawyer in Washington, D.C., from 1964–2000. He was the author of “If Americans Really Understood the Income Tax: Uncovering Our Most Expensive Ignorance” (2001) and “10 Tax Questions the Candidates Don’t Want You to Ask” (2004, 2008, 2012). His articles appeared in The Washington Post and The New York Times, and he was a frequent guest on radio and television shows. Among his survivors are his wife, Gretchen, two children and two granddaughters. E DWARD PHIL B RO OK C LAN C Y , professor emeritus of physics, died on Sept. 28 at the age of 105. During World War II, Clancy taught physics to naval officers and undergraduates at Harvard and Radcliffe and conducted classified national defense research at the Harvard Underwater Sound Laboratory. In 1946 he began working at Mount Holyoke, where he chaired the physics department. He was the author of “The Tides, Pulse of the Earth” (1968) in addition to numerous scientific articles. He retired from the College in 1979. He is predeceased by his wife, Mary “Peggy” Giamatti. Among his survivors are his first wife, five children, 13 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. V IRG INIA E LLI S, professor emerita of English, died Oct. 5 at the age of 84. She worked at the College from 1958–2000, and during that time she participated in a number of committees and wrote, directed and produced Faculty Show.
DID YOU KNOW?
You can subscribe to the
Lyons Tales Newsletter and get updates from MHC athletics delivered directly to your email inbox! Go to athletics.mtholyoke.edu/list-signup
Courtesy of MHC Athletics
The Alumnae Association is pleased to welcome Kevin Fleming as deputy director. Fleming, an alumni relations professional with nearly 20 years of experience working in higher education, joined the Association on November 19. In this newly appointed role, Fleming will partner with executive director Nancy Bellows Perez ’76 to provide strategic leadership and direction for the Alumnae Association, with a primary focus on reimagining the ways in which the Association and the College engage with alumnae and evolving and expanding existing offerings to align with the ever-changing dynamics of the alumnae population of Mount Holyoke. “We are thrilled to have Kevin join the team,” said Perez. “His rich background in alumni engagement will prove invaluable as we focus on our mission to connect alumnae to each other and the College in new and innovative ways while honoring the traditions that have defined us for so many years.” Fleming served most recently as director of alumni relations at Emerson College, overseeing the institution’s alumni engagement efforts and working closely with the Alumni Association Board of Directors to advance alumni relations strategy, communications and programming. Prior to Emerson, Fleming worked at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Alumni Association, leading volunteer recruitment and training, alumni networks, major athletics initiatives and other large-scale projects that incorporated multiple campus departments. With a passion for working with both alumni and students, Fleming has also held positions in admission, residential life and student affairs. He is a newly elected member of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education District I Board of Directors and volunteers for the alumni network of his undergraduate alma mater, James Madison University. Fleming earned a master’s degree in college student personnel from Bowling Green State University and a doctorate in higher education administration from University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is also the author of two children’s picture books, “Reach for the Stars” (2016) and the forthcoming “Beware the Grumplepuss.” “I am absolutely ecstatic to be part of such an exceptional institution with a bold, rich tradition of excellence, leadership and innovation,” said Fleming. “I am greatly looking forward to furthering the powerful connections that exist among alumnae, and I am eager to join the incredibly vibrant and dynamic community that exists at Mount Holyoke.”
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Alumnae gather in India ers for a weekend of panels and discussions, yoga, shared meals, networking and even a bonfire chat with Mount Holyoke President Sonya Stephens, Alumnae Association President Maria Mossaides ’73 and Chair of the Board of Trustees Barbara Baumann ’77. A special highlight was a dance performance by Kaatyaayan Pandey ’18, who has
Mahendra Kumawat
The third Mount Holyoke Alumnae Symposium in Asia drew 45 attendees to the Jai Mahal Palace in Jaipur, India, to explore the theme “India at Crossroads: Past, Present and Future.” Alumnae from around the world, including Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore and India, were joined by students, invited guests and College lead-
Support the Founder’s Fund Your gift to the Founder’s Fund at the Alumnae Association helps us support the activities of alumnae around the world. Visit alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ff.
spent nearly 16 years studying the Indian classical dance form Bharatnatyam. Organized by Vijaya Pastala ’89, Shoba Narayan MHCG’88, Gayatri Rangachari Shah ’94 and Tina Nagpaul ’93, with event branding and design work led by Tania Singh Khosla ’93, the event not only brought the Mount Holyoke community together but showcased India’s evolution into the world’s largest democracy and one of the fastest growing economies. An opening address was presented by Chetna Gala Sinha, an activist, farmer and banker who in 1996 founded the Mann Deshi Foundation in Mhaswad, a drought-stricken area in western India, with the aim of economically and socially empowering rural women. Aruna Roy delivered Saturday’s keynote address. Roy is an activist who has worked to access constitutional rights for the poor. She is a former member of the National Advisory Council and currently serves as president of the National Federation of Indian Women. “The symposium offered insights into the Indian subcontinent’s arts, culture and people,” said attendee Cheryl Greene ’88. “Steaming cups of chai tea kept us all revved up for endless conversations late into the night, and delicious Rajasthani delicacies were served at every meal. And the organizing committee provided so many fresh perspectives that left us excited for more opportunities to work together with our alumnae colleagues in India, Asia and all around the world.” To read more and to see photographs from the event, visit alumnae.mtholyoke. edu/Jaipur.
Join an Alumnae Association trip abroad
Arctic Expedition Under the Midnight Sun June 21–July 1, 2019
We invite you to join one or more of the upcoming travel opportunities, such as an 11-day cruise through the Arctic Circle. For more information and to register, visit alumnae. mtholyoke.edu/travel.
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FE M A LE G A ZE
CULINA RY A RT S
From Heart to Table “THESE ARE REAL RECIPES from real
life, and they really work,” says Jessica Battilana ’00, describing the recipes in “Repertoire,” her first solo, full-length cookbook. Battilana spent many years co-authoring books with renowned chefs Charles Phan, Chad Robertson and Matthew Jennings before venturing off on her own. While Battilana was growing up, sharing food was always a part of her family’s daily routine, enjoying a meal during the holidays like many families or coming together with snacks after stacking wood outside. It was her mother’s love and enthusiasm for cooking that originally sparked Battilana’s interest in the culinary arts.
During her time on campus as a history major and English minor, what resonated most with Battilana was the power storytelling had in giving someone a voice and showcasing their identity. She felt the same passion for the culinary arts and its ability to spark connections. “The idea that I would do something with food was not so far-fetched,” she says. After graduation, she began her career in the food industry, including an internship at La Varenne, a cooking school in the Burgundy countryside of France, where she tested recipes and learned how to make French classics. A few years later Battilana began working as a reservationist at Chez
Panisse, the Berkeley restaurant founded by chef Alice Waters and known for its devotion to local, organic food. She soon began to put food — and writing — at the center of her life, taking a job in Sunset Magazine’s test kitchen and writing the Repertoire column for the San Francisco Chronicle, work that led to creating cookbooks. “Repertoire” is more than just a book of recipes. Not only does Battilana detail cooking techniques and tricks, she introduces each recipe with a personal anecdote or story, giving people “a window into my life beyond the recipe, which makes it unique,” she says.
Lamb Ragù with Creamy Polenta I NG RE D I E NTS
For the ragù: 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil ½ cup finely diced carrots ½ cup finely diced fennel ½ cup finely diced celery 1 ½ pounds ground lamb 1 tablespoon tomato paste 1 cup red wine 1 teaspoon kosher salt 1 teaspoon fennel seeds, crushed ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes 2 cups chicken stock 1 cup canned whole tomatoes, crushed by hand 1 sprig fresh rosemary 2-inch strip orange zest (removed with a vegetable peeler) For the polenta: 5 cups water 1 cup polenta 2 tablespoons unsalted butter 2 tablespoons mascarpone ¼ cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, plus more for serving Kosher salt
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In a large high-sided pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the carrots, fennel, celery and a pinch of salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft, about 8 minutes. Increase the heat to medium-high, add the lamb and cook, breaking up the chunks of meat with a wooden spoon, until the meat is no longer pink, about 5 minutes. Add the salt, fennel seeds, red pepper flakes, stock, tomatoes, rosemary and orange zest and stir to combine. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat so the liquid is gently simmering, cover partially, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the sauce has thickened and the flavors have melded, about 1½ to 2 hours. Season to taste with additional salt. While the ragù cooks, make the polenta: Bring the 5 cups of water to a boil in a large saucepan. Gradually add the polenta, whisking constantly as you add to prevent lumps from forming. Reduce the heat so the polenta is bubbling gently (I describe the look and sound of polenta at this stage as “La Brea Tar Pit”) and cook, stirring frequently until the polenta is tender, about 1 hour. If the polenta becomes too thick, add a bit of hot water to loosen it. Remove from the heat and stir in the butter, mascarpone and Parmigiano, and season to taste with salt. If you’re not serving the polenta right away, transfer to a heatproof bowl, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and set over a saucepan of simmering water. You can hold the polenta like this for an hour, replenishing the water in the saucepan as needed. To serve, spoon some of the polenta into a bowl and top with a few spoonfuls of ragù. Serve immediately, accompanied by grated Parmigiano.
Ed Anderson
Serves 4-6
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FE M A LE G A ZE
B OOKS
Much of the book’s inspiration comes from Battilana’s family, and she credits her children, whom she is raising with her wife, Sarah Picard ’99, for pushing her to think in new ways. “I don’t have time to go to four different stores [to find ingredients]. The book became an exercise in exploring the recipes we turn to again and again, and why.” Everything in “Repertoire” is made with ingredients you can find at any grocery store, and through its unique narrative describes not just how long to cook ingredients, but what they should smell like and even sound like. Battilana hopes that her book can become a staple in kitchens everywhere, whether you are just starting out or have been cooking for years. “The nice thing about cooking is you can start at any time,” says Battilana. “If you hone a small number of recipes, it’s instantly rewarding.” — B Y J E S S AY E R WEB EXCLUSIVE
View another of Jessica’s recipes at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ repertoire.
The Broadcast 41: Women and the AntiCommunist Blacklist Carol A. Stabile GO LDSM ITHS PRESS
At the dawn of the Cold War era, 41 women working in American radio and television — including Dorothy Parker, Lena Horne and Gypsy Rose Lee — were placed on a media blacklist and forced from their industry. Stabile shares what American radio and television lost when these women were blacklisted, documenting their aspirations and achievements. Carol A. Stabile ’83 is professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies and associate dean for strategic initiatives for the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon.
His Perfect Wife Natasha Long Bell PE NGU I N R AN DO M H OUSE
In this novel, mother and wife Alexandra Southwood is held in a room against her will, forced to imagine how her family is coping in the wake of her disappearance. Natasha Long Bell ’06 grew up in Somerset, UK, and lived in York, Massachusetts and Chicago before settling in London. She holds a master’s degree in creative and life writing from Goldsmiths, University of London. This is her first novel.
Breaking Kola: An Inside View of African Customs Catherine Zastro Onyemelukwe PE ACE CO RPS WRITE RS
When Catherine arrived in Nigeria as an idealistic Peace Corps volunteer,
she had no idea of the wealth of customs and traditions she would come to love. With her marriage to a Nigerian electrical engineer, senior manager in the country’s power industry, she became part of his family, clan and village. In this intimate portrayal of family members, she reveals the secrets of the ties that bind her to his community. Catherine Zastro Onyemelukwe ’62 began her career as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nigeria, where she met her Igbo husband and raised three children. After the Biafran War, which interrupted her teaching career, she co-founded Nigerwives, an organization for foreign wives of Nigerians. She returned to the U.S. to earn her MBA at Yale University and became a professional fundraiser. She returns to Nigeria frequently.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
See more recent alumnae books at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ winter2019books.
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TE N M I N U TE S WI TH
AT HL E T E A ND D I S A B I L I T Y A DVO C AT E
Hitting Her Stride A L I S O N LY N C H ’ 1 0 has been busy the past eight years. She earned a law degree and then a master’s
— in mental disability law — from New York Law School, published in academic journals and established a practice in the Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness programs of Disability Rights New York. She represents people with serious mental illness who live in psychiatric facilities, nursing homes and prisons. She also runs competitively and in the past few years has competed in marathons — including Boston last April — and sprint and Olympic-distance triathlons. Lynch also happens to be legally blind. She was diagnosed at age three with achromatopsia, a recessive retinal disease also known as day blindness that causes drastically reduced vision and gray-scale colorblindness. (Her brother has it, too.)
On practicing disability law: At Mount Holyoke I created a selfdesigned neuroscience and psychology major. One of the few times my parents ever had to tell me something was just not going to happen was when I told them I wanted to be a brain surgeon. So I went to law school instead, and in my first year I met a professor whose focus was mental disability. He had published an article on neuroimaging and its role in criminal justice, which had been the topic of my senior thesis. I worked as a research assistant for him all through law school, as well as for a state organization that represents people in psychiatric hospitals and prisons, and was lucky to find a similar job after graduating. It’s been a nice way to
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blend things I feel strongly about — mental health and criminal justice issues — in both systemic ways in large class actions all the way down to representing individuals.
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The running and triathlons have given me such an amazing avenue to meet people and travel.
well, I hadn’t been on a bike in years, and I’d been running for only about one month. But after that weekend I signed up for the New York City triathlon, with six weeks to train!
”
Lynch at The Armory in NYC, where she trains for marathons and triathlons
On being a competitor: In 2016 a friend asked me to run a 10K. I was intimidated, but I had a great time. Afterward, she asked if I would be interested in running with an organization for people with disabilities who want to participate in mainstream sports. They paired me with a member of the group’s triathlon team, and at the end of a four-mile run — I was just trying to keep pace and not embarrass myself — he invited me to their weekend triathlon training camp. I didn’t know how to swim
I placed third in the female paratriathlon category. Last July I came in second.
On what’s next: I’ve run five marathons, and I’m running my second half-Ironman in Chattanooga in May. Though I’d love to run an ultramarathon and a full Ironman, with my work schedule right now, I don’t have time to train for the performance I’d like. If I’m going to do it, I want to do it well. —INTERVIEW BY SARAH ZOBEL ’88
Rachelle Clinton
On achromatopsia: Early on, my parents noticed I had an aversion to light. I couldn’t identify colors. I could memorize the sky is blue, the grass is green, but I couldn’t answer if someone asked, “What color is this ball?” I underwent an electroretinogram, which measures cone function in the retina — the cones process light and color — and mine showed no cone function. Without sunglasses, my range of vision is about six inches to a foot if it’s bright out. Achromatopsia isn’t something people are familiar with. Ophthalmologists would tell me I was the first case they’d ever seen, and in school and rec programs, they weren’t sure what to do with me. I tried to play sports, but after getting smacked in the face with one too many soccer balls, I turned to music and theater.
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TH E M AV E N
T HE C HE E S E MAV EN
Creating a Cheese Board By ABI G AI L H I T CHCOCK ’94 H U M A N S H AV E B E E N M A K I N G cheese for millennia. It’s the perfect way to make milk last longer without refrigeration. To me, it feels like magic how the flavors and textures evolve into something far more interesting than their plain milk originator. The sheer variety of cheeses found worldwide is mind-boggling. I’m endlessly fascinated that only a handful of milk varieties (most commonly cow, sheep, and goat but also buffalo, yak, camel, horse and just about any mammal) can create so many different styles and varieties. Then there are cheeses that are flavored with garlic and herbs, truffles, beer- or winewashed, and those wrapped in leaves or pressed with flowers and herbs or nuts. Just like wine, good quality cheeses express their terroir, that notion that the food is a reflection not just of one ingredient (milk) but of every aspect of their creation: what the animals eat, the time of year the animal is milked, the breed and every aspect of how the curd is handled and the choices the cheese maker makes along the way. With one of the most well-known cheesemongers in the country two blocks from my restaurant, I am spoiled with selection, and I can taste any of them at any time. If you have access to a good cheese store, I highly recommend supporting it, and always ask for tastes and recommendations. Cheese is alive, and it changes all the time.
Ann Arnold
Rachelle Clinton
How many? If the cheese board is part of an hors d’oeuvres spread followed by a dinner, or if you’re going European style and serving cheese after dinner, then four cheeses provide plenty of variety. If you’re throwing a cocktail party or a tapas/mezze affair, you might increase the number of choices, but I wouldn’t recommend exceeding six. How much? Figure 1 ounce total per person if you’re serving dinner or other food before or after. If
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it’s a cocktail party, depending on how much food you’re having and how long the party is, you could increase up to 2 ounces per person. Here’s the math: Count your guests and multiply by the number of ounces, then that total gets divided among all the cheeses you purchase. (E.g., 12 guests x 1 ounce = 12 ounces total, therefore 3 ounces each of four varieties of cheese.) Some stores don’t let you buy small amounts, but cheese keeps well. Wrap cheeses individually, and keep in separate airtight containers.
How to choose? Consider a variety of milk types and textures. Creamy cheeses are almost universally loved. Blues are always the hardest sell. Sometimes it’s fun to start with a geographic area (e.g., country, France; or part of a country, Loire Valley) as a way to narrow your focus.
How to serve? For accompaniments, I love olives, nuts, seasonal fresh fruit, honey and chutneys. I prefer plain water crackers, crostini, baguettes and sourdough breads. Most flavored crackers conflict with the flavor of the cheese. Don’t forget to bring your cheese to room temperature before serving, usually at least an hour unless it’s hot out.
Abigail Hitchcock ’94 is the chef/owner of Camaje Bistro in New York’s Greenwich Village, where she also teaches cooking classes and — as a certified sommelier — conducts wine tastings. She eats cheese every day, and her menu features a small selection of artisanal cheeses that changes throughout the year. Learn more at camaje.com.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
Learn about some of Abigail’s favorite cheeses at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ cheesemaven.
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I NS I D E R’ S V I EW
Abbey Chapel’s Fisk Organ
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I NS I D E R’ S V I EW
WHILE ABBEY MEMORIAL CHAPEL houses two organs, it’s the Fisk Organ that offers a
WEB EXCLUSIVE
Deirdre Haber Malfatto
View more photos of the Community Center at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ insidethecenter.
spectacular view familiar to anyone who has gazed at it where it sits elevated on a balcony in the back of the building. Installed during the 1984-1985 academic year, the organ was designed and built by C.B. Fisk, based in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and is formally known as the Opus 84. “Organs are very dependent on the room they are in,” says music professor and College organist Larry Schipull, who has worked at Mount Holyoke since 1988. Part of the installation process, he says, was a renovation of the space to acoustically fit the instrument. The thick panels of horse felt that covered the ceiling were replaced with more acoustically reflective panels. And the plaster walls were also treated so that they would better reflect sound. Learn more and view a slideshow at alumnae. mtholyoke.edu/fisk.
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Promise of the Infinite By Heather Hansen ’94
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Joan Jonas ’58 has been creating art for more than 60 years. And in recent years, her work has earned her some of the highest accolades in the art world, including the 2018 Kyoto Prize in arts and philosophy. In 2015 she represented the United States at the 56th Venice Biennale, perhaps the world’s most important exhibition, with work from 89 nations. Long recognized by the College as a remarkable alumna, in 2016 Jonas received an honorary doctor of fine arts degree from Mount Holyoke, addressing the graduating seniors from the stage of Gettell Amphitheater. And now, in a yearlong, focused exhibition, Jonas’ work is being put in front of audiences at her alma mater.
COMING HOME “Promise of the Infinite: Joan Jonas and the Mirror” is the first-ever exhibition of Jonas’ work at Mount Holyoke, a celebration that also resulted in the museum acquiring one of her works into its permanent collection. The show opened in July 2018 and runs until June 16, 2019. The installation of four of Jonas’ works spans her prolific career and explores her ongoing use of the mirror, a theme Jonas has examined since the earliest days of her career. Hannah Blunt, former associate curator at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum and key organizer of the exhibition, was surprised to discover that the mirror had never before been the focus of a Jonas exhibition. She says that mirrors, like other elements of Jonas’ work, are “uncomfortable, risky, precarious.” While the mirror is a universal symbol, Blunt explained, there is tension in its use because what it reflects is a product of imaginations and assumptions. Jonas’ work offers fragments and layers that can take time to put together or peel away, says Blunt. Because of these complexities it isn’t always easy, she says “to find an entry point.” Mirrors and the concept of image and reflection seemed like a
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good place to begin, offering a shared point of entry. Jonas’ work as a “visual artist” (her preferred term) consistently blends intuition and preparation and is as relevant and evocative as ever. At a time when the selfie is a dominant form of visual (and, arguably, artistic) expression and communication, Jonas’ work plays with concepts of self and audience. Her use of mirrors and video (a kind of perpetual mirror) evokes narcissism, intended to make viewers uneasy. She uses the concept of the mirror to show that images are not facts but reflections of the individual ways that we see and interpret them. The Mount Holyoke exhibition includes “My New Theater II: Big Mirror” (1998), in which viewers are asked to gaze down a long black square cone at a video. A small balsa wood chaise longue sits as an inviting prop. In the projection, Jonas is dancing, drawing, singing and reciting a poem. Some actions seem spontaneous, sometimes comically so, as if she is unaware of the camera. At times her movements seem unnatural and awkward. The video plays in a haunting loop and feels fragile and fleeting in the same way mirrors and their reflections are. Other works in “Promise of the Infinite” include people wearing mirror-clad costumes, various looking-glasses and the camera as a figurative mirror. The piece “Mirror Pieces Installation II” (1969/2014) features a retro television set playing an early improvisational film made in Jonas’ Soho loft in which nude performers move around the space holding full-length mirrors. Jonas has long been interested in the perception of women’s bodies and the tension between public and private. “From the beginning as an artist, my dominant focus has been on the roles that women play — in folklore, fiction and in the culture at large — and how they are seen in history,” she told The Guardian last year.
EARLY YEARS As a Mount Holyoke student in the 1950s, Jonas studied sculpture and art history and read Jean Rhys, James Baldwin and Marguerite Duras, whose work had an enduring influence on her. She also came across Ezra Pound’s definition of an image as “that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time” — a concept that would resonate with her and that she has revisited consistently throughout her career. After college, Jonas attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and earned an M.F.A. in sculpture from Columbia University in 1965. She then studied choreography for two years while immersed in the 1960s New York art scene. From the beginning of her career Jonas’ work was motivated by feminist ideas at a time when women were talking more about how they were depicted. In the now-iconic live performance “Mirror Check” (1970), Jonas inspected every inch of her naked body with a small hand mirror, in front of a live audience. The piece illustrates the way she used female imagery to consider issues of women’s rights. Now several decades later, Jonas still pushes boundaries, and her exploratory, non-didactic, interdisciplinary approach means that, for viewers, spending time with her work can be a whole-brain endeavor. Jonas has also heard that, occasionally, viewers have been brought to tears by her creations. “When I go to look at a work of art, I’m interested in the way it affects me, and how it changes my way of seeing things … I hope that my work can somehow give people a different way of seeing things, experiencing things,” Jonas says. “I think you can get something from just walking through, but the only thing I ask is that people give it time. If they don’t then that’s what they don’t see. I don’t try to control the audience,” she says.
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Last year, the Tate Modern held a career retrospective of Jonas’ work, a massive exhibition that spanned multiple levels of the museum and brought viewers through work representing decades of creativity and exploration. The first objects visitors encountered were meant to evoke a feeling of tension and suspense — papier-mâché and wire-mesh masks of various humans and animals, wooden carvings and a variety of stones. These and similar items normally surround and inspire the artist in her Soho loft, where she has lived and worked for nearly 60 years. “In the past I’ve begun with one idea, or an element, or a shape — like a cone,” she says. She then asks as many questions as she can: “What shape is that? What can you do with it? How can you use it? What does it refer to? What is its history, if you look at other sources in which that form appears?” But Jonas is not limited to her own questions and discovery. Other times the origin of a piece may be a myth, fairytale, novel or poem. She deconstructs stories into key elements and rebuilds them into something entirely unique and contemporary. Such is the case with “The Juniper Tree” (1976/1994), based on the eponymous Brothers Grimm tale and included in the Tate installation. The work was originally a performance piece and in the exhibition at the Tate included props arranged in the space to suggest a visual poem. Two-dozen silk canvases, painted red and white with simple, grotesque portraits, were displayed on the walls. A lighted mask of a woman lay atop a bundle of sticks underneath a wooden structure, representing the canopy of a tree. A colorful kimono hung from a ladder nearby. The elements of the piece gave the Tate museum-goer the experience of being immersed in the story of an evil stepmother with themes of jealousy, murder and deceit.
And while murder and deceit aren’t likely to immediately call to mind the concept of beauty, much of Jonas’ work is visually exquisite. “My work has always included an idea of beauty … but, when I start to make an image, I don’t think, ‘I want to make a beautiful image.’ There’s no formula for that. I think if I tried to make beautiful things, I would fail. I don’t want to be sentimental or beautiful in the sense that Renoir, for instance, is beautiful,” she says. Instead she says she has been influenced by artists Piero della Francesca and Alberto Giacometti, whose forms aren’t conventionally beautiful but may express beauty in harmony or balance. Jonas has received the highest praise and recognition for her work. In addition to the Kyoto Prize and the Venice Biennale, her artwork has been included six times in Germany’s high-profile dOCUMENTA, an international exhibition of contemporary art that takes place every five years. Her multi-media installation piece, “They Come to Us Without a Word,” evoked a world in ecological peril,
In addition to being recognized by the Carnegie International and the Tate Modern for a lifetime of extraordinary artistic production, Jonas received the prestigious 2018 Kyoto Prize in arts and philosophy. She is also the 2018– 2019 Mount Holyoke Leading Woman in the Arts — the first alumna to hold that role in the program’s 13-year history. She returned to campus in January to direct a reconfigured staging of two early performances, presented by students.
Performance view of Mirror Piece I (Reconfigured) (1969/2010), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2010. Photo by Enid Alvarez © SRGF, NY. © 2018 Joan Jonas / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
A CELEBRATED CAREER
Joan Jonas’ “Mirror Piece I (Reconfigured)” was one of two pieces restaged and presented at Kendall Studio Theater in January by students pursuing majors in the visual and performing arts
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about which The Guardian reported, “In a show with too little regard for form, her profound and affecting new work proves that politics and beauty are not at odds.” The New York Times celebrated the same piece as “one of the best solo shows to represent the United States at the Biennale in over a decade — an effortless combination of maturity and freshness.” The New York Times Style Magazine commented, “Now, as [Jonas] reaches the height of her creative powers, the art world is finally catching up with her.”
PEER RECOGNITION Ingrid Schaffner ’83, a prominent curator, art critic, writer and educator, agrees. “Joan’s pavilion for Venice was one of the most beautiful, lasting, profound works of art I’ve ever experienced,” she says. Schaffner hit her own careerhigh recently with an exhibition to which Jonas contributed — the 57th Carnegie International, one of the world’s leading surveys of contemporary art. The show opened in October with the work of more than 30 artists selected by Schaffner. For 15 years she
Carnegie International
“Joan’s pavilion for Venice was one of the most beautiful, lasting, profound works of art I’ve ever experienced.” —Ingrid Schaffner ’83
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was chief curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, but in 2015 Schaffner moved to Pittsburgh to devote herself to the Carnegie show. It was three years in the making, and Schaffner’s research took her all over the world, including Africa, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean and Southeast Asia. At a moment when concepts such as nationalism and borders are prominent, the exhibition explores what “international” means. In the show, Schaffner focused on the concept of “museum joy,” which, she explained, has a two-pronged meaning — to find delight in looking at art with others while also appreciating the role of art in society. “Museum joy is not a like thing but a critical thing; it’s work we have to do to build culture at this moment when we’re in a culture war. Museums have to do their work and energize.” For artists and visitors alike, she says, “That work is about how we are drawing connections across time and space and how we have to create new narratives and histories.” Hanging overhead in one gallery, alive and fluttering, Schaffner included an installation that is a collaboration between Jonas and Art Labor, a trio of Vietnamese artists. Traditional Vietnamese kites painted by Jonas to evoke a jungle are displayed from the ceiling. They are part of a larger installation that resembles a hammock café of the kind that make popular pit-stops in Vietnam and that also bring to the forefront the experience of traveling soldiers who carried hammocks with them during the Vietnam War. The collaboration, which blends the work of different generations of artists, is emblematic of Jonas’ energy and generosity, says Schaffner. “We’ve been learning from her for decades,” Schaffner says. “She’s been present for her work, and teaching has been an important part of that.” (Jonas is also professor emerita at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she taught from 1998 to 2014.) The Carnegie International is open through March 25, 2019.
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Heather Baukney Hansen ’94 is an independent journalist. She writes frequently for the Alumnae Quarterly.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
Watch an interview with Jonas conducted during her recent time spent on campus at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/Jonas.
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July 13, 1936: Born Joan Amerman Edwards in Manhattan. Grows up there and on Long Island as parents introduce her to art, theater, poetry. Spends summers in New Hampshire where she explores the woods and stages her own theatricals.
1954–1958:
1964–1965:
Attends Mount Holyoke College and receives a BA in Art History and Literature.
Completes the MFA program at Columbia University, studying sculpture, art history and poetry. Dissatisfied with figurative sculpture, turns to burgeoning performance art as her new medium.
1958–1961: Advised by MHC professor Henry Rox, studies sculpture at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
1959:
Marries Gerald Jonas. The couple separates in 1964.
1961:
Moves to Manhattan, where she still lives today.
ca. 1967: Workshops and performances by dancers and choreographers Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer, Simone Forti, Lucinda Childs, Steve Paxton and others foster Jonas’ interest in movement.
Unless otherwise noted, all photographs are courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York / Rome. 1936 Jonas and friend performing, New Hampshire, ca. 1948; 1968 Photo by Peter Campus; 1969 Performance view of Mirror Piece I (1969), Loeb Student Center, New York University, New York, 1969. Photo by Wayne A. Hollingworth; Performance view of Mirror Piece I (Reconfigured) (1969/2010), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2010. Photo by Enid Alvarez © SRGF, NY. © 2018 Joan Jonas / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; 1972 Performance view of Organic Honey’s Vertical Roll (1972), Festival d’Automne: Aspects de l’art actuel, Musée Galliera, Paris, 1973. Photo by Béatrice Heyligers. © 2018 Joan Jonas / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; 1976 Good Night Good Morning, 1976, video still; Good Night Good Morning ’06, 2006, video still. © 2018 Joan Jonas / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; 1985-1989 Volcano Saga, 1985-1989, video still. © 2018 Joan Jonas / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; 2004-2006 Performance view of The Shape, The Scent, The Feel of Things (2004 2006), Dia: Beacon, Beacon, New York, 2005. Photo by Paula Cort. © 2018 Joan Jonas / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; 2010-2012 Performance view of Reanimation (2012), HangarBicocca, Milan, 2014. Photo © Hans Cogne 2014. © 2018 Joan Jonas / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; 2015 Photo by Moira Ricci; 2016 Photo © Tim Llewellyan, courtesy Mount Holyoke College; 2018-2019 Photo by Toby Coulson, reproduced with permission from the artist.
At Jonas’ core, driving all of her innovation, is a deeply inquisitive mind. “I’m very interested in life and still curious about many things,” she says. Her work, says Schaffner, defies genre. “Joan touches down in many places,” she says. She often incorporates into new installations elements of earlier work — both objects and ideas that recur and knit together several decades of her creations. And it is in this continuity of work that she has found her voice as an artist over time. “In the beginning I certainly didn’t do it consciously. I wasn’t thinking about it in that way exactly. But what I did think about consciously was that I wanted to develop my own language,” Jonas says. “I translate these ideas and images into my own visual language, which is something I’ve built up over the years.” Jonas is energized in particular by travel and new experiences, and then is propelled forward by some unseen but inevitable force. “I’ve always been motivated by an unconscious drive, and once I began I couldn’t really step back,” she says. “I think as you have more experience and get older, as I am, you become more confident in your own language and you trust your judgment in a different way. But you still have to stay on a kind of edge. I believe that questioning, that self-doubt, is very important. An artist should never rest, be satisfied; there is a kind of drive in that sense.”
TIMELINE
DRIVING FORWARD
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1976:
1968:
Produces “Good Night, Good Morning,” in which Jonas films herself telling the camera “good morning” upon waking and “good night” upon going to bed. In 2006, will film a new version of this morning and evening ritual by talking to a convex mirror.
Presents in Manhattan her first realized public performance, “Oad Lau,” which introduces many of the themes that will recur in her oeuvre: a sense of ritual, an engagement with nature and an interest in mirrors. “Produces Wind,” a 16mm film in which Jonas and friend Keith Hollingworth wear mirrored costumes while other performers struggle to stay upright against the wind on New York’s Jones Beach.
1969: Debuts performance “Mirror Piece I” at New York University, in which women carry body-sized mirrors to conceal, reveal and reflect parts of their bodies while two men interrupt their movements, playing with the perception of space and self. In later years, will present variations of this performance.
1972: Introduces “Organic Honey,” her erotic masked alter-ego, in performances and videos that explore feminine stereotypes and women’s roles in society, such as “Organic Honey’s Visual Telepathy” and “Organic Honey’s Vertical Roll.” Incorporating a live feed for a mirroring effect (one of the first times an artist used a live feed in an artwork), both are considered pivotal works that established Jonas’s place in the canons of video, performance and feminist art. Performs at dOCUMENTA 5, in Kassel, Germany, the prestigious international exhibition that features leading contemporary artists. Will participate in dOCUMENTA five more times, in 1977, 1982, 1987, 2002 and 2012.
1970: First performance of “Mirror Check,” wherein Jonas ritualistically inspects her nude body with a compact mirror. She incorporates this performance in numerous works later on.
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Travels to Japan and purchases the first portable video camera, a Sony Portapak. Attends Noh, Bunraku and Kabuki theater performances, noting their use of masks, stylized movement, chanting and wood-onwood noises.
Studies the history of film by attending screenings at Anthology Film Archives and other theaters. The language of film and modernist poetry become major sources for Jonas’ work.
First summer visit to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, where her summers are spent to this day.
1982:
Lives in Berlin through German Academic Exchange Service fellowship. Incorporates Cold War-era news stories in “He Saw Her Burning,” her first foray into explicitly contemporary themes. Awarded National Endowment for the Arts grant.
1985–1989:
Creates performance and video “Volcano Saga” featuring actors Tilda Swinton and Ron Vawter, drawing from natural Icelandic landscape and a 13th-century Icelandic folk epic to address issues of social isolation and individual madness.
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2015:
1990:
Commissioned by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, creates “Revolted by the thought of known places …,” her first performance for a professional theater company (Toneelgroep Amsterdam), realized in 1994.
1994:
Stedelijk Museum presents her first retrospective where she translates selected performances into installations for the exhibition, including early works that incorporate the mirror such as “Mirror Piece I” (1969). Becomes professor at Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart and teaches there for 6 years.
1997:
Invents her own art medium, portable video theaters made of wood that house props, TV monitors and projections, titled “My New Theater” series. Such miniature installations offer a sense of live performance without a performer physically present.
2007– 2010:
Produces “Reading Dante,” a series of performances and multimedia installations that draw inspiration from Dante’s “Divine Comedy”; incorporates text fragments and various imagery to relate medieval narratives to the present day.
Represents the United States at the celebrated Venice Biennale, 56th edition, with “They Come to Us Without a Word,” a large-scale multimedia installation that examines the fragility of nature and our planet.
2009:
Receives Lifetime Achievement Award at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
2016:
Mount Holyoke College awards Jonas with Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts.
March 14, 2018:
Tate Modern, London opens major traveling retrospective celebrating Jonas’s entire career.
June 22, 2018:
The Inamori Foundation selects Jonas as a laureate of the 2018 Kyoto Prize, Japan’s highest private award for global achievement.
October 18, 2018: Serves as the 2018–2019 Leading Woman in the Arts at Mount Holyoke and presents lectures to MHC community.
1998:
Begins professorship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; after 16 years of teaching, becomes Professor Emerita.
2004-2006:
Presents “The Shape, The Scent, The Feel of Things” at Dia:Beacon in upstate New York. This ambitious large-scale installation and performance about history and myth was inspired by her 1960s travels to Arizona where Jonas witnessed several Hopi rituals, and German art historian Aby Warburg’s 1923 essay about his own travels to the American Southwest.
2010–2012:
Inspired by Icelandic author Halldór Laxness’s novel “Under the Glacier,” creates “Reanimation,” an immersive installation and multimedia project that highlights the beauty of glaciers and their current state of melting.
2014:
HangarBicocca, Milan, presents a comprehensive retrospective of Jonas’ work.
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January 31, 2019:
Returns to Mount Holyoke to perform “Mirror Piece I & II: Reconfigured)” (1969/2018–2019) with MHC students.
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A book excerpt, with an introduction by the author
By Heather Hansen ’94
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hen news of the Camp Fire in northern California began to emerge early last November my thoughts snagged on certain phrases — “wind-driven, fast-moving, heavily populated.” I’d been studying and reporting on wildfire since 2015 and knew those factors plus hot and dry conditions made it likely that lives had already been lost and homes wrecked in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. As the ash settled, the totals were grim — at least 88 dead (dozens more were still missing at the time of this writing, three weeks later) — and nearly 19,000 structures and 150,000 acres had burned. Tens of thousands of residents who’d managed to escape the blaze slept uneasily in shelters, either having no home to return to or waiting out what is often wildfire’s second act — heavy rain that brings ash, mud and debris flows through the burn area. The Camp Fire was the deadliest wildfire in California on record in more than a century. I learned in my reporting for my latest book, “Wildfire: On the Front Lines with Station 8,” that it’s part of a new abnormal that is characterized by bigger, deadlier, costlier and more destructive blazes. Wildfire is a natural part of many ecosystems, and we cannot and should not prevent it from performing its duty on the landscape — thinning forests, clearing underbrush, killing pests and prompting new growth. But for a century we have sought to control fire, tamping it down at every opportunity, and that has left us with overgrown forests in many places, particularly the West. It’s tempting to blame forest management alone, but that ignores the critical part we all play in the current crisis. Without fire on the landscape we were further emboldened to build millions of homes in or near the wild. Too many trees or too many people among them is, however, only part of the problem. It is climate change that is really driving the extreme fire behavior we’ve seen in recent years. Studies estimate that from 1984 to 2015 the area burned was twice what it would have been without climate change. Nationally, temperatures are going up and humidity levels are going down, which means spring is coming earlier and vegetation has more time to dry out. This has lengthened the traditional fire season and has made conflagrations more severe. Most firefighters and scientists I talked to agree on how to solve the problem — knowing it won’t be easy — but the personal and political will to get it done is static. In the meantime, we should expect many more heartbreaking, life-altering wildfires. While reporting for this book, I became a certified wildland firefighter, and spent roughly 18 (exhausting) months embedded with an elite wildland fire crew in my hometown, Boulder, Colorado. I’ve been close to fire’s chaos — skin prickling from the heat and throat closing around the smoke. What you’ll read on the following pages is an excerpt from the book, my account of a growing wildfire near my city, which is part of a bigger story about firefighters getting an increasing number of dangerous calls to battle blazes in bone-dry terrain.
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Ignition D AY O N E ( S AT U R D AY )
July 9, 2016, dawned warm and quiet in Nederland, a small mountaintown at the top of Boulder Canyon. Mike Smith had on his off-duty summer uniform — shorts, T-shirt, flip-flops and visor. Fly-fishing gear in hand, he headed out the door around 6:30 a.m. Just ten minutes from home, Smith met an old friend at Arapaho Ranch, and there they waded into the transparent creek to cast their lines. The sky was cobalt and clear except for a few storybook puffy clouds. That “glorious morning,” as Smith described it, couldn’t have been more different from what lay ahead. It was the beginning of a much-needed weekend off. He had just spent two weeks as a supervisor in New Mexico on the Dog Head Fire in the Cibola National Forest. The fast-moving blaze in the Manzano Mountains east of Albuquerque engulfed burly stands of ponderosa pine and tangles of juniper, helped along by a string of 95-degree days and relative humidity hovering around 10 percent. The fire started small, as they all do, but Dog Head soon grew from puppy to beast. On day three, after sundown when fires generally hush, the flames blasted forward and sideways more than 10 miles. NASA’s Terra satellite captured an image of the voluminous smoke as it blanketed states to the north and east. In the middle of New Mexico, several hundred firefighters cut fire lines and did what they could on the ground to fortify hundreds of homes. From above, six air tankers dropped dozens of loads of flame retardant, and a handful of helicopters did countless water drops in an effort to slow the fire’s advance. The National Guard assisted with evacuations; an archbishop in Santa Fe offered a prayer for first responders (and for rain); and inmates at a state prison donated hygiene kits to displaced homeowners made from items bought at their commissary. Ironically, the fire was started by a masticator, a tool used in forest thinning, which was being used on a wildfire mitigation project. Some fuels being chewed up by the machine ignited, and the crew on site could not quickly quash it. Ultimately, the blaze cut across 18,000 acres, terrorized several small communities and burned a dozen homes. Smith had just returned from that event, and he and his teammates at Station 8 had also just made it through the Fourth of July — one of those hold-your-breath-till-it’s-over holidays during wildfire season — without serious incident in Boulder. On that Saturday, the perfect antidote to the weeks past was a cold stream and a cool beverage. Smith spent the morning casting his fly and reeling in a few comically small rainbow trout and a lot of brookies. But the beers would have to wait.
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The sun climbed high and dragged the temperature along with it. Residents and visitors went about their errands, barbecues, hiking, cycling, paddling, yard work. Then, around 1:30 p.m., tentative puffs of smoke gathered near the junction of Cold Springs Drive and Peak to Peak Scenic Byway, Colorado’s oldest scenic route, which is flanked with groves of conifer and aspen and views of burly peaks. Unpaved roads off the highway lead to trailheads, alpine lakes, campgrounds and ghost towns. Cold Springs Drive is a dirt road bordered by a low wood-slat fence. Beyond the fence lies private land covered with tall grass, some aspen and pine. A little farther east the road crosses North Boulder Creek, and the land gets lumpy with tree-clogged gullies, rocky knolls and
“He didn’t like what he saw — a lot of people, many homes, and a blaze that was acting erratically.”
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pine-covered hills. The immediate road is sparsely populated, but, for miles in every compass direction, there are housing subdivisions. About 2 miles southwest lay downtown Nederland, where the ice cream cone–licking kids and espresso-sipping adults were also about to have a change of plans. When the initial smoke report came over the radio, Smith couldn’t see it from where he was. He sent a local engine to check it out while he drove into Nederland to get eyes on the fire. From there Smith wasn’t worried about the look of it; it was disorganized, and it seemed as if a big bucket of water might let everyone get back to their weekend. But within minutes the smoke began to pull itself together and billow skyward in consistent puffs.
“I sent the engine thinking it was going to be nothing, then a bunch of 911s were coming in. So I hauled ass home and grabbed my work truck and wildland jammies,” Smith said (“jammies” being wildfire garb, including fire-resistant Nomex shirt and pants, and shin-high leather boots). Fire has just three requirements, two of which (fuel and oxygen) are almost always present. The third is heat, which comes first as an ignition source. All it takes is lightning, enough friction, the spark of metal on metal, a discarded cigarette or an ember from a longforgotten campfire to turn things upside down. Within fifteen minutes of the initial smoke report, Smith arrived at a vantage point west of the fire. He could see it had burned just an acre or so, and he was relieved it still looked manageable. “When I first got there I thought, ‘This isn’t going to be that big of a deal. We’ll catch this at a couple of acres, and it’ll be fine.’” His old boss, Nederland’s Fire Chief Rick Dirr, greeted him. Since Smith is qualified to command national incidents up to a Type 3 severity, Dirr immediately put Smith in charge of the fire as the initial attack incident commander. The first engine Smith sent to the fire came from Station 1 of Nederland Fire, which like most fire departments in these hills is a mostly volunteer corps of emergency responders. But Charlie Schmidtmann, an experienced firefighter and the Nederland Fire Captain, was also among them. There was no vehicle access to the fire since it was burning in remote terrain, so a handful of firefighters toted bladder bags, or water packs with pumps, on their backs up the steep hill to the point of origin. It wasn’t long before they were forced to retreat. Just nine minutes from the time Smith assumed command of what he named the “Cold Springs Fire,” he was taken aback by a bold move. “The fire stood up,” he reported later, and made a 40-acre or so run up a hill and across a ridge. He thought, “Alright, we’re not going to catch this.” The fire growth and unpredictability had him worried about life safety, and he pulled back the Station 1 engine crew until he could reassess the situation. At the same time he began to call in the cavalry. “Very intentionally right before I ‘cued the mike,’ I took a big breath,” he said. “I wanted everyone on the radio to hear me as ‘smooth jazz voice.’” Smith had lived and worked in this area for many years. He knew these woods and subdivisions better than most and had started playing out various scenarios in his mind for how the fire in front of him could progress. He didn’t like what he saw — a lot of people, many homes and a blaze that was acting erratically. But it was important to him to set a “calm operational tempo” in his radio appeal. “Everybody knew it was blowing up by the amount of resources I was ordering but not by how I was acting,” he said. The dispatcher he was ordering resources from at first sounded incredulous about the request — aircraft, engines and highly experienced crews. “I just kept saying, ‘Yeah, here’s what I need.’” Those resources would prove critical in the coming days.
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That morning before the fire started, Jamie Carpenter had checked off an item long on his “bucket list” — cycling from Rollinsville to Winter Park. The 25-mile route climbs more than 3,500 feet, over the Continental Divide at 12,000 feet, before dropping down to Winter Park. Carpenter was looking forward to lunch and a cocktail, when he got a cryptic phone call from a colleague about smoke in Nederland. He checked with the Boulder County Office of Emergency Management and, at least initially, wasn’t too concerned. “But then I looked up and saw the [smoke] column and I thought, ‘Oh, boy.’” He called [team member Mike “Smitty”] Smith. Smith barked into the phone, “I’m getting my ass kicked! Where are you? Get down here!” Carpenter told Smith he was on his way. Then he rang [Matt] Hise at Station 8. Hise had just picked up his young son from the airport for a two-week visit. So he had to drop him off to stay with family. As the minutes ticked by, the news on the fire wasn’t getting any better. “[Hise] tells me the fire is at Peak to Peak and Cold Springs and it’s making a run east,” said Carpenter. It was heading directly toward many homes, including his own. Carpenter and his wife, Annie, didn’t know if they’d be able to get to their house but they decided to try. They piled into the car with their border collie, Whalen, and headed east, back over the Divide. After a wet spring, the grasses and shrubs had come up tall and dense on Colorado’s Front Range. They grew atop thick mats of dead vegetation from seasons past, a cycle of spring blooms and winter die-offs that was several years in the making. The beginning of July was characteristically
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hot and dry, though warmer and with less rain than normal. One fire meteorologist reported that Boulder County, compared to areas north and south along the Front Range, was an especially dry geographic pocket with only 40 to 60 percent of average moisture. Across thousands of acres of private land and open space in Boulder County, the foothills’ once green carpet had cured into a yellow-brown thatch, a veritable welcome mat for fire. Trees and shrubs were also stressed; some needles were turning rust-colored in protest of the lack of moisture. Some state and federal entities pre-positioned a handful of fire response resources along the Front Range. The dry, hot, windy days came together to form a trifecta of fire fears. The crew at Station 8 was on guard; they knew a fire under those conditions would be formidable. Weeks of mental training in the cooler months had helped them shake off the rust built up over several quiet seasons. And they pushed themselves on ass-busting workouts day after day. They played out fire scenarios in different locations around the county. But when I had asked at the end of that winter, “Are you ready?” there was an air of caution in their responses. Hearing the tones for a wildland fire over the radio is like having a starting gun go off in the room. No one really knows for sure if their legs will carry them, if their minds will guide them. We were all about to find out. I had spent the weekend in Fort Collins, about an hour’s drive north of Boulder, feeling uneasy. [The division’s wildland fire operations manager Brian] Oliver was my main conduit to Station 8, and I knew he would call me if there was any fire activity in or around Boulder. But he’d gone to Idaho on a fire assignment. Plus, it was a Saturday after a long week on high alert and most of the crew was trying to relax. So I settled for listening to the police scanner online and refreshing a local news website on my phone every hour or so. I was watching the weather incessantly, like the Station 8 crew. I had a nagging feeling, and in the early afternoon I took a screen shot on my phone of the weather in Boulder—91 degrees, 13 percent humidity, 6-mile-per-hour northeast wind. It was the perfect beach day, and ideal for a fire. At 2:15 p.m. Smith did his first official “size-up” of the incident. He reported: “Cold Springs Fire; 60 acres; running and torching; short crown runs; spreads 20 to 40 chains per hour, spread potential high; spreading to the east; ownership is county; numerous structures threatened, some likely lost; cause is human, campfire identified.” The report was a dire one. A “running” fire is rapidly spreading with a well-defined head, or intense forward momentum. “Torching” meant Smith was seeing a surface fire move into the crowns of trees, then drop down again to the ground. “Crown runs”
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meant the fire was advancing across the tops of trees mostly independently of the surface fire — very serious fire behavior. The fact the fire was moving at 20 to 40 chains per hour was another indication of intense conditions. “Chains per hour” are units used to describe the fire’s rate of spread (ROS). One chain (a surveying term) equals 66 feet. Smith could estimate the ROS by watching how fast the blaze was spreading in 1 minute; 1 foot in 1 minute meant 1 chain per hour, and 20 to 40 chains per hour meant the fire was moving upward of a half-mile per hour. Smith knew that putting firefighters anywhere on the head, flanks or rear of the fire were not options at that moment. The fire was acting too erratically to order anyone to go “direct” on it. With a complex mix of fuels, topography and weather in the area, the fire could sprout new heads or fingers in any direction. It could also back up onto itself, making the “black,” or already burned area that is usually the safest place for firefighters, a dangerous one. If an area has not burned thoroughly, it can easily burn again with a shift of the wind. So Smith set up a defensive line of firefighters along Ridge Road, which runs parallel to Cold Springs to the south, in hopes of stopping the blaze there. If the fire reached them, they would do their best to hold their ground and tamp it down, but they would not go chasing it through the woods. “My directive is nobody engages this fire. We’re doing point protection and evacuations; we need to get people out of the way and keep firefighters in safe locations. We’ll catch this thing when we can catch it,” he said. Within an hour of the ignition Smith had ordered additional major resources — multiple engines, helicopters, heavy air-tankers and an air attack. His rationale was this: The engine crews could start making efforts to protect structures. The helicopters could dip their buckets in the nearby Barker Reservoir and douse the flames. The heavy air-tankers could drop retardant in targeted strips to try to slow the advance of the fire. And the air attack could be the ground crews’ eyes in the sky. Smith was feeling good about the crews requested, until dispatch came back to him with some bad news — the three hotshot crews and three Type 2 crews he ordered were not available locally. They had all been sent to other fires. Smith told dispatch, “Let’s go national; I don’t care where they come from, ’cause we’re going to need them for the long haul. Order them.”
Heather Baukney Hansen ’94 is an independent journalist. She writes regularly for the Alumnae Quarterly. Excerpted with permission from “Wildfire: On the Front Lines with Station 8” (Mountaineers Books, March 2018) by Heather Hansen.
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“One thing I learned from Mount Holyoke’s community? Listen, listen, listen. Everyone has a story.” Kimberly Ho ’18 (L) Walnut Creek, California
“I have learned about acceptance, understanding and patience.” Mira Kelly-Fair ’17 (R) San Francisco, California
Photos by Tim Llewellyn
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We Are Mount Holyoke The one thing readers of the Alumnae Quarterly are sure to have in common is that all were students on this campus at one time or another. Here we offer a look at some of today’s students, who tell us in their own words what Mount Holyoke means to them. Get to know some more current students and recent grads at mtholyoke.edu/go/wearemountholyoke.
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“We are surrounded by so many international students at Mount Holyoke. World affairs become so much more real when you know people from so many countries.”
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“Everyone is so incredibly focused on doing what they love, and they go to great lengths to share what they love with the Mount Holyoke community.”
Javeria Kella ’19 (L) Karachi, Pakistan
“My first impression of Mount Holyoke? I could see myself wanting to be like the people here.”
Camila Mirow ’19 Miami, Florida
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Donari Yahzid ’19 (R) Atlanta, Georgia
“Mount Holyoke feels like one of the safest real-world classrooms you could ever make mistakes in.”
“Everyone here is working toward something they are passionate about. Students are engaged, critical thinkers who are not afraid to express themselves and their beliefs.”
Relyn Myrthil ’19 Miami, Florida
Daniella Hanelin ’19 (R) Newton, Massachusetts Ariel Fry Demetria ’19 (L) Berkeley, California
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“This love at first sight was meant to be.” Lisa Garrity ’19 Longmeadow, Massachusetts
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“I feel like the connections I make with the community here, professors, staff, students, etc. are genuine and built out of a desire to achieve as a whole.” Melissa Curran ’19 (L) Pembroke, Massachusetts Lynn Shen ’19 (C) Suzhou, China Zhuoran Yu ’18 (R) Shanghai, China
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“Mount Holyoke has been a warm and welcoming environment for me since day one. I’m constantly surrounded by peers and professors who embrace my mistakes and empower me to be the person I want to become.”
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“Being here? It has challenged me to think deeper and see the humanity in everyone.” Vickie Victor ’18 Miami, Florida
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“The community I found through the cultural centers has been my rock. MEChA has changed my life both as an activist and a person.”
Ashley Huang ’19 Los Angeles, California
Kimberly Mota ’18 (C) New York City, New York FROM LEFT TO RIGHT
Iliana Enriquez Linares ’18 (L) Los Angeles, California Genesis Lara Granados ’21 Bronx, New York Luciany Capra ’21 Parkland, Florida Diana Jaramillo ’20 (R) Greenwich, Connecticut
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“I’ve never felt so comfortable with so many people. Everyone is approachable, friendly and always eager to learn.”
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Violet Gehr ’19 (L) Brooklyn, New York
“At MHC, I’ve been surprised by the range of interests and passions. And how no matter what yours are, they are supported.”
“We all come from such different paths, but there’s always something to be found that we share in common.” Liz Tucksmith ’19 Chatham, New York
Monika Sharma ’19 (R) Amherst, Massachusetts
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T H E N A N D NOW
ON DI S PL AY
A PL AC E OF OU R OW N
MoHomeMemories What’s in a Name? Torrey Hall
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president of the United States just two years after his mother’s death in 1907. More than 100 years after Torrey was a student, a new dormitory was built on campus. Completed in 1949, the hall — the largest residence for students at the time — was temporarily named Lakeside. But in 1956, a year before he would step down as Mount Holyoke’s president, Roswell G. Ham shared that he wished to name the building Torrey Hall, in memory of President Taft’s mother. Ham thought that Lakeside sounded like the name of a “tourist resort.” College librarian Flora B. Ludington was displeased with this suggestion, and sent a memo to Ham, writing, “To name a building in honor of a non-graduate student in attendance only the one year 1843/4, who had no later known connection with Mount Holyoke would seem to be an honor which would need to be explained with care.” She provided other alumnae with the name Torrey. But in the end, the building was renamed for Mrs. Taft, and the residence hall on the near banks of Upper Lake has been known as Torrey ever since.
MHC Archives and Special Collections
I N T H E FA L L O F 1 8 4 3 , Louisa Maria Torrey, class of 1845, of Millbury, Massachusetts, stepped through Mount Holyoke’s gates, suitcases in tow and head filled with ideas of being a teacher or a writer. Looking around, she was amazed by the turnout of students eager to attend the relatively new seminary. “I should think there were as many as forty young ladies got out of … at least three large stages,” she wrote in a letter home on October 13. “There is something very delightful to me in the novelty of a first introduction to a school like this and in the first impressions one receives of persons and things.” Torrey continued to attend Mount Holyoke through the school year, studying and performing her assigned domestic task of shaping loaves of bread, but she left the College after just one year of study. Ten years later, Torrey married widower and Superior Court Judge Alphonso Taft of Cincinnati, Ohio, and became stepmother to his two children. She bore five children, including son William Howard Taft, who would one day grow up to become the 27th
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TH E N A N D N OW
Vespers
THEN
1920s In 1920 and 1921 Mount Holyoke singers traveled to New York City to perform at Aeolian Hall, a concert hall in midtown Manhattan. The concerts were specifically planned as part of a fundraising effort to raise money for the College’s endowment. In 1925, choral director William Churchill Hammond brought the Glee Club to Town Hall in New York City to perform a Christmas Concert for the first time. On Thursday, December 15, 1927, 90 students who were selected to join the Mount Holyoke Carol Choir sang medieval Christmas chants, old European folk songs, some modern adaptations and carols — in a performance referred to as Vespers for the first time. All proceeds from the concert tickets went to covering expenses for running the New York City Alumnae Club.
Then: MHC Archives and Special Collections; Now: Mount Holyoke College Glee Club
2018 Today, in addition to the annual on-campus performances, Vespers alternates between Boston and New York City each year — a change that began in 1996. On Friday, December 7, 2018, the 81st New York City Vespers was held at St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City with special guest President Sonya Stephens. The Glee Club, Choral and Chamber Singers, Vocal and Chamber Jazz Ensembles, English Handbell Ensemble and the Flute Choir all perform in the concert. The Vespers program includes songs from a variety of religious traditions. This year’s theme was “On a Winter’s Night,” and music selections included images of stars, dreams, memories and the magic and wonder of the season, including a rendition of “I See the Light” from Disney’s “Tangled,” performed by the Flute Choir. Proceeds from ticket sales go toward a tuition scholarship fund for Mount Holyoke students from New York City. — B Y E M I LY K R A K O W ’ 2 0
NOW
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O N D I S PL AY
ARTIFAC T
Cataloging the Collection Joseph A. Skinner’s books establish a digital catalog of the book collection of Joseph A. Skinner, until recently only available for viewing at Mount Holyoke’s Skinner Museum. To do so, each of the 684 books and manuscripts would need to be carefully packed and transported from the museum to Williston Library. From there, each volume would be handled with gloves and culled for data: author, title, volume, date, edition. Phoebe Cos ’16 stumbled into an early conversation about the project when, early in her sophomore year, she arrived at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum to introduce herself to curator Aaron Miller, director of the Skinner Museum. She was hoping for an internship. She came away with a project. Cos spent a year and a half of her remaining time on campus methodically cataloging volumes of books. She was one of a team of several students who did the detailed work of not only logging each volume but also looking for matches in the Five College Catalog and WorldCat, an online catalog that lists items found at libraries around the world and is accessible worldwide. More than once Cos found that a book in Skinner’s collection was one of only a handful of copies on record. Cos, who is now in graduate school for museum studies, continues to be energized by the project. “The collection has been part of Mount Holyoke for almost a century,” she says, “and now it’s available to anyone.” The books themselves have long been returned to the Skinner Museum, where visitors can view them from May to October. They can be accessed by anyone, anytime, at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/skinnerbooks. —BY JENNIFER GROW ’94
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Among Skinner’s collection is a copy of the complete works of Thomas Moore and the “Biography of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence.” The collection also includes many versions of the Bible, hymnals, a copy of the Qu’ran, children’s textbooks (complete with doodles in the margins) and an illustrated volume of Shakespeare’s collected works.
Laura Shea/Mount Holyoke College Art Museum
T HE P ROJ E CT WAS an ambitious one: to
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Joanna Chattman
A PL ACE O F OU R OWN
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“
It still makes me smile
when I think of my roommate from southern California dancing around on the Ham Hall deck celebrating the first snowfall. As an upstate New Yorker, I couldn’t get
Joanna Chattman
over how excited she was.
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—LIZ HITCHCOCK ’82
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M Y VO I CE
E S S AY
Trauma, Testimony, Healing and Resilience By GR ET CH E N S CH MELZ ER ’87 THE FIRST “ME TOO” MOMENT I recall was in 1984 in Politics of Patriarchy, a 100-level course taught by Professor Jean Grossholtz. She began the lesson on the first day by drawing a baby on the blackboard and asking where the baby would end up in its life. We spent the class discussing all the ways the baby’s life would change based on gender, race, religion, sexual orientation and socioeconomic class. It was my first real discussion of the white, patriarchal system that we lived within and had to contend with. And that, we were seeing, was bigger and more powerful than us as individuals. The class syllabus required that we each write a paper about the first time we knew we were a woman. Most of the 20 women in the class responded to the prompt about womanhood with stories of assault, abuse and violence. We found that we were united in womanhood through our experience of trauma. It was a spring of candlelight vigils to “Take Back the Night.” We listened to Ferron’s song “Testimony” and responded with testimony of our own as we gathered on the steps of Blanchard Hall, spilling over onto the green. Flash forward 33 years to October 2017, when actor Alyssa Milano tweeted that anyone who had experienced sexual assault or harassment reply with #MeToo, the hashtag first used by civil rights activist Tarana Burke to encourage what she calls “empowerment through empathy.” Milano’s tweet resulted in 12 million responses. Twelve million. Staggering. This past year, the #MeToo movement expanded as women began to share more about their stories of assault, many after the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford during the Supreme Court nomination hearings for Brett Kavanaugh. Now, people weren’t just acknowledging #MeToo, they were sharing their whole stories — woman after woman recounting a story of sexual assault. The politics class was my first experience of witnessing people share their experience of trauma openly — and with support. Over the course of my career as a therapist and consultant I have worked with survivors of domestic violence as they shared their stories of abuse, and I have worked in Cambodia with survivors of the Khmer Rouge as they shared their stories of surviving genocide and war. I have worked with Alaska Native leaders as they shared their stories of intergenerational trauma. All of these stories were powerful and important — but
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they marked the beginning of the healing process, not the end. We need to tell our stories, and we need to witness each other’s stories, but testimony is not enough. Testimony is only the beginning of the healing journey. The stories will never end — as #MeToo has shown us — and sharing “what happened” is not enough to heal. Most trauma is not just a single entity. Most trauma takes three forms: “what happened”; the protections you used to survive the trauma — the ways you changed your personality, your beliefs, your behavior; and “what didn’t happen” — the growth and development, the experiences that were halted in the aftermath of the trauma itself. As students in Grossholtz’s class, grappling with previously unexamined traumas, many of us realized we had never let anyone get close to us. We didn’t know how to ask for help. We also learned that by sharing our stories we might begin to heal. As #MeToo came to light I was brought back to that classroom in Clapp Hall. The storytelling and the healing that occurred. And I continue to be struck by the ways in which we, as a society and as individuals, have so much more work to do in our culture of stopping, so often, at testimony. Yes, testimony makes for splashy headlines. The long work of healing doesn’t. We need a bigger conversation, a longer conversation, that supports healing. We need to be sure that women don’t need to be enrolled in Politics of Patriarchy to be able to share the trauma, see it, heal from it and survive. Gretchen Schmelzer ’87 is a licensed psychologist and trauma survivor who has worked for 25 years on the complex issues of trauma. She is the author of “Journey Through Trauma” and writes a web mag dedicated to healing trauma at gretchenschmelzer.com.
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