Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly Winter 2020

Mount Holyoke wi n t er 2020

Alumnae Quarterly

I N T H I S I SSU E A FRIENDSHIP THAT CHANGED MOUNT HOLYOKE DUST BOWL STORIES INSIDE THE COCHARY PUB & KITCHEN

Cousins Deborah Northcross ’73 (left) and Rhynette Northcross Hurd ’71

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President’s Pen for each member of the community — move us through a shared experience.

We are students, faculty, staff and alums.

We are Lyons or “Yokes.” Together, we are Mount Holyoke. Not everyone feels completely connected all of the time, but with class colors and loyalty, affinities and Facebook groups, and with Mount Holyoke printed on publications and business cards and emblazoned on sweatshirts and even socks, we know what we mean when we say that “Mount Holyoke forever shall be,” or when we softly whisper the call of the “Alma Mater.”

Mindy McWilliams Lewis ’75, P’05, who is celebrated in this edition of the Alumnae Quarterly (see p. 16), frequently responded to that call, and to others. She was a lifelong contributor to the communities of which she was a part — this College, her church, her local school board. When she received the Alumnae Association’s Mary Lyon Award in 1989, she was praised for her “particular brilliance in identifying groups that can and should be brought together and motivating and facilitating their interaction.”

Mindy was a community builder: She knew how to make a connection with each person, and between people, seeing ways to get things done through her own Mindy McWilliams Lewis ’75, P’05 at Mount Holyoke rich talent of Convocation in 2016assa varius rhoncus. seeing it in others. Mindy was Center and Dining Commons), a shared connection and collaboration, harnessed endeavor, our rituals and traditions, as well in the service of this community and of her as the physical containment of our campus, full and powerful sense of what was right, all reinforce the connection we feel to each what needed yet to be done, and how to lead other, and to place. Networks — different and enlist others in that effort. Her loss is scientist and Harvard professor Robert D. Putnam described the decline of communal activity and community in America in “Bowling Alone,” and, with the publication of an updated edition expected later this year — an edition that explores the impact of social media and the internet on this phenomenon — it is clear that Putnam’s concerns have a continuing, and perhaps even greater, relevance today.

When, in 2016, we put community at the center of our Strategic Plan for 2021, it was because we had a sense that there was some erosion of the “bonding” and “bridging” that occurs in college settings, and that are at the very heart of the liberal arts college experience. We are, of course, not just one community, but a College comprising many intersecting communities, from class years to identity groups, and from a cappella to athletics. Commingling (further enhanced by the new Community

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a great blow to our community, just as she was a great gift to it.

Not everything is perfect in communities, of course. Engagement, advocacy and inquiry do and should lead to disagreement

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We need to remind ourselves that a part of community is care and that our sense of belonging holds within it compassion and empathy, as well as hope and forgiveness.

— S O N YA S T E P H E N S

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and productive tension. There are missteps and mistakes and the deep learning that follows. When there is rub or hurt within our community, when there is disappointment or conflict, and when any member of our community is affected by events, we need to remind ourselves that a part of community is care and that our sense of belonging holds within it compassion and empathy, as well as hope and forgiveness.

As we begin a new year, and as I turn my thoughts to the importance of care and connection in the Mount Holyoke community, Spanish Professor Dorothy Mosby’s moving 2017 Convocation address to this “brilliant, brave and beloved community” comes to mind. Professor Mosby reminded us then that our well-being is caught up with that of others, here on campus and beyond. May your relationships with each other and with Mount Holyoke, as well as with your communities around the globe, bring you, this coming year and in the future, a sense of inseparable interconnection and compassion.

Lisa Quinones

I T ’S BE E N 2 0 YE ARS since political

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Contents W INTER 2020

VOLU M E 10 4

N U M BE R 1

D E PA R T M E N T S

F E AT U R E S

16 Strength, Courage and Vision

2 LYONS SHARE

Workplace connections, Shirley Chisholm excitement, snowfall memories, Uncommon Women corrections

A friendship that changed Mount Holyoke

22 Learning Beyond the Classroom Celebrating 10 years of Teaching with Art at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum

28 The Demands of the Soil The Dust Bowl stories of Caroline Boa Henderson, class of 1901

32 28

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5 UNCOMMON GROUND

European Alumnae Symposium, Weissman Center celebrates 20 years, Miller Worley Center welcomes new director, online book club launches, faculty grants 10 Female Gaze Alum artists on Instagram; authors Christine Muhlke ’92, Becca Tarnas ’10 and Christopher Benfey, professor of English 12 Ten Minutes With Producer Debra Martin Chase ’77 13 The Maven Susan Pincus ’08 on herbal tea

tk

14 Insider’s View The Cochary Pub & Kitchen

Cover: Andrea Morales; back cover: Tim Llewellyn; Dust Bowl illustration by Gracia Lam; Cochary Pub & Kitchen: Joanna Chattman; My Voice: Kelly Bahmer-Brouse ’86

34 M oHOME MEMORIES

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Mount Holyoke’s response to the 1916 polio epidemic; Votes for Women sash

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36 On Display Saint Sebastian statue 37 Then and Now Gracious Dinners 38 A Place of Our Own First snowfall

40 CLASS NOTES 80 MY VOICE

Kelly Bahmer-Brouse ’86, “Boomer, OK”

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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

WORKPLACE CONNECTIONS [I] read your article “Joining Forces” (fall 2019, p. 24) and thought you might enjoy knowing that it is sometimes a straight line from Mount Holyoke to Mount Vernon. From the first of the Seven Sisters to the first president of the United States, George Washington. Preserving our legacies are: me, founder, Washington Committee for Historic Mount Vernon; Sarah Miller Coulson ’75, regent of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association; Nadene Tabari Bradburn ’94, wife of the president and CEO of Mount Vernon; Maria Camargo Chirhart ’03, senior director of development at Mount Vernon.

—Ellen Strauss Boer ’63 via email

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PRAISE FO R TH E FALL ISSU E

@aamhc my heart is so

full after reading this Quarterly!

Hortense Parker AND Shirley Chisholm—my awe and respect has deepened. Blown Away.

Thank you.

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@TA S IAB H EGAN I

TA S IA PROVI D E N CE B H EGAN I ’03

RECOGNITION OF A TRAILBLAZER I was excited to see Shirley Chisholm on the

cover of the fall 2019 issue. I was a project manager on the landscape architecture team that created the master plan and designs for the first and second phases of Shirley Chisholm State Park. I co-led efforts related to the book publication during the master planning phase, concept development, design development and construction documentation work, as well as supervised all on-site installation of the landscapes before and after the governor’s grand opening.

—Hillary Archer ’09 via email Excellent piece (“Catalyst for Change,” fall 2019, p. 17). I love the portrait [of Shirley Chisholm] on the cover. Well written, and relevant. Women of color have come a long way thanks to trailblazers like Chisholm.

We still have a ways to go, but it is good to take a minute to reflect on how far we have come and that the impossible is indeed possible if we fight for it.

—Stefani Evans ’10 via Association website

I enjoyed the Alumnae Quarterly article about alums working together. It reminded me of my first job out of college as a rare book cataloger at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester. I got the job with Doris O’Keefe ’74 through AlumNet and had the pleasure of occasionally working with Caroline Fuller Sloat ’65, P’90. It was a fantastic experience, and I particularly loved celebrating Mountain Day with a long walk during a break from work.

—Molly Taylor-Poleskey ’05 via email

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 Here’s lovely Safford Hall illuminated by rainbows of sunlight.

Did you live here? Tag your roommate! #MountHolyoke #Campus #Rainbow #ResidenceHall

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PRAISE FOR THE MAGAZINE Thank you for the article (“On #MeToo and

the Asian Woman,” fall 2019, p. 80). I have an ancestral connection to Turkish, Iranian, Chinese and Indian women, as well as being black, and I can relate to the trauma of being asked irrelevant questions somehow leading me to believe physical battery or sexual harassment was my fault and the same with other assaults. Thank you, Aysha Baqir ’95, for speaking out.

I also feel good as an African American woman to see the Alumnae Quarterly acknowledge black women associated with the College, like Shirley Chisholm (“Catalyst for Change,” p. 17) and Hortense Parker, class of 1883 (“A Decade of Celebration,” p. 36).

—Kara Ilysia Merry ’91 via email

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I just want you to know I love the Alumnae Quarterly — its design, its photos (always so beautiful), its weaving in of current happenings and alumnae affairs far and wide. I read it slowly, in bits and pieces, sometimes many months later, and it is the only magazine I keep. You … keep the design and content updated, relevant and consistent! It really does do the job it is designed to do — keep me informed and connected to the College community and the alumnae community. Thank you for the hard work of all the staff.

—Ruth Anne Wolfe ’82 via email

WE SHARE D

Now that November is here, the first snowfall won’t be far off! What is your favorite memory about Mount Holyoke all covered in snow?

People often ask me why

I am actively involved with @aamhc and it’s nights like these when I’m exploring the @mtholyoke campus with alums from several different decades of classes and sharing stories about how this institution shaped us into the people we are.

@TAR ANAB HATIA TAR ANA B HATIA ’ 15

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Celebrating the first snowfall with new friends from India and Pakistan who had never experienced it before. A cherished memory with long-cherished friends.

—Lisa Mellen Ben-Shoshan ’83, P’15

Safford Hall: Jessica Riel

Walking from the Mandelles to Kendall gym in the early morning hours for indoor crew team workouts. It was so peaceful and pristine as no one else had been up to make footprints yet. —Ingrid Purrenhage ’96

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Definitely sledding down the hill behind the Mandelles! But also the breathtaking beauty of the frozen lakes! —Alice Finke Stanulis ’93

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Congratulations to Yasmeen Hassan ’91, global director of Equality Now, for receiving a National Public Service Award from Stanford Law School for her social justice work!

“We all want a better and more peaceful world, and we can only get there by treating women as equals,” said Hassan.

M OUN T HO LYO K E ALUMNAE QUARTERLY Winter 2020 Volume 104 Number 1 EDITORIAL AND DESIGN TEAM

Jennifer Grow ’94 Editor and Senior Associate Director of Marketing & Communications Millie Rossman P’23 Creative Director Jess Ayer Class Notes Editor and Marketing & Communications Associate Jessica Riel Digital Content Strategist for Alumnae Engagement CO N T RIBUTORS

UNCOMMON WOMEN In your summer issue (“Remembering Wendy Wasserstein

Karen Corday Alicia Doyon Christian Feuerstein Althea Finch-Brand ’21 Emily Krakow ’20 Sasha Nyary Maryellen Ryan Elizabeth Solet

’71,” p. 34), Jennifer Grow ’94 writes that after Wendy Wasserstein’s “Uncommon Women and Others” was produced in 1977, “the Mount Holyoke community quickly took ownership of the phrase ‘uncommon women.’” I distinctly remember that expression from my college days, many years before. In fact, I watched the play on TV (it may have been the first time I ever saw or heard of Meryl Streep), precisely because I knew from the title that it must be about Mount Holyoke.

—Leslie Raissman Wellbaum ’64 via email

QUARTERLY COMMITTEE

Kelly Bahmer-Brouse ’86 Lisa Hawley Hiley ’83 Perrin McCormick Menashi ’90 Susana Morris ’02 Emily Krakow ’20, student rep ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Wendy Wasserstein ’71 was certainly a brilliant “uncommon woman,” but the original uncommon woman, not so fast!

While her play “certainly cemented MHC’s claim to the phrase,” let us not forget that it was President Richard Glenn Gettell who first said it in his inaugural address to the College entitled, “A Plea for the Uncommon Woman” at Convocation in 1957, opening with his equally memorable salute to the class of 1961, “Fellow Freshmen.” It was at that moment that the “Mount Holyoke community quickly took ownership,” not 20 years later when the play was first produced in 1977.

—Judith Marshall Kennedy ’61 via email

President Maria Z. Mossaides ’73, P’04 Vice President Antoria Howard-Marrow ’81 Treasurer and Chair, Finance Committee Alice C. Maroni ’75 Clerk Markeisha J. Miner ’99 Alumnae Trustee Erin Ennis ’92 Recent Alumnae Representative Tarana Bhatia ’15 Chair, Classes and Reunion Committee Cheryl Maloney ’73 Chair, Clubs Committee Hilary M. Salmon ’03 Chair, Communications Committee Marisa C. Peacock ’01 Chair, Nominating Committee Danetta L. Beaushaw ’88 Chair, Volunteer Stewardship Committee Arleen M. Heiss ’70

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The Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College, Inc. 50 College St. South Hadley, MA 01075-1486 413-538-2300 alumnae.mtholyoke.edu quarterly@mtholyoke.edu POSTM ASTE R

(ISSN 0027-2493; USPS 365-280)

Directors-at-Large Hilary J. Bland ’92 Eleanor Chang ’78

Please send form 3579 to

Executive Director Nancy Bellows Perez ’76 ex officio without vote

50 College St.

Alumnae Information Services Mount Holyoke Alumnae Association South Hadley, MA 01075-1486

EDITOR’S NOTE: Thank you to all who reached out correcting the error of attributing the term “Uncommon Women” to Wendy Wasserstein ’71. Richard Glenn Gettell’s 1957 inauguration speech, in which he is credited with first using the term, can be read in its entirety at alumnae.mtholyoke. edu/1957inaug.

KNITTING MEMORIES The article “In Stitches” (summer 2019, p. 13) brought

back fond memories. During the years I was at MHC, if your professor did not object, you could knit in class. One of the most popular projects was knitting argyle socks. I still have in my cedar chest the socks and the Norwegian sweater I knit my boyfriend during freshman year. I guess he liked them.

We have been married 53 years.

—Judith Williams Irving ’63 via email

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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 Weissman Center for Leadership celebrates 20 years I N NOVEM B E R, the Weissman Center for Leadership celebrated

Joanna Chattman

20 years, honoring Paul and Harriet Levine Weissman ’58, whose vision and support inspired the creation of the center.

“The 20th anniversary celebration more clearly defined the influence and growth of the leadership center for Paul and me,” said Harriet Weissman. “This was made apparent by speaking with students, whose lives have been transformed by their interactions with the initiative, and by the faculty, whose teachings have been enriched.”

The celebrations kicked off with a pre-broadcast premiere of “Summoned: Frances Perkins and the General Welfare,” a documentary about Frances Perkins, class of 1902, that is to debut on public television in March.

The Honorable Carmen Yulín Cruz, mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, attended the event and gave the keynote address, citing the Weissman Center’s partnership in creating a STEM camp for girls in the Playita neighborhood of San Juan. She spoke of the Weissmans’ “generations of impact” and brought with her letters to read, written by girls who have attended the camp.

All began with the phrase, “Now I am a scientist.”

Congresswoman Nita Melnikoff Lowey ’59, a close friend of Harriet Weissman, said, “In the two decades since Harriet and Paul established the Weissman Center for Leadership, hundreds of Mount Holyoke students have been encouraged and empowered through courses, internships, lectures and a host of other experiences to fulfill the charge of Mary Lyon to ‘Go where no one else will go, do what no one else will do.’”

Read more about the Weissman Center for Leadership’s anniversary celebration at mtholyoke.edu/go/wcl20.

Harriet Levine Weissman ’58 and the Honorable Carmen Yulín Cruz, mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico.

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Changing minds and lives

Kudos!

In December, Music Professor David W. Sanford’s orchestral work “Black Noise” was named one of the 25 best classical music tracks of 2019 by The New York Times. Read more at mtholyoke. edu/go/black-noise.

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT:

The Acropolis at night; Milia Akkouris ’02 (left) and panelist Dia Anagnostou ’91; Florica Kyriacopoulos ’76 welcoming the group to Fougaro; organizers Silvia Maulini ’80 (left) and loli Christopoulou ’01.

organizational challenges that come with refugees living in Turkey and Greece.

A Saturday panel on climate change focused on the interconnectedness of environmental degradation, economic policy and community life and featured Ioli Christopoulou ’01, co-founder and policy director of The Green Tank.

The day ended with a sunset wine tast-

ing at the Semeli Estate and a return to Athens. After another full day of programming, the traditional sing-along of “Bread and Roses” as the symposium closed was especially apropos after a full weekend of conscientious scholarship, knowledge dissemination and community building.

Read more about the symposium at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/greece.

Courtesy of Mount Holyoke European Alumnae Council (4)

The 15th Mount Holyoke European Alumnae Symposium was held October 4–6, 2019, in Greece with the theme “Changing Minds and Lives.” This year’s symposium was particularly notable for the rigorous, scholarly programming curated and developed by the European Alumnae Council and the informal alumnae group of Greece.

The symposium opened on Friday in Athens with a conversation on change at Mount Holyoke with panelists President Sonya Stephens and Alumnae Association President Maria Z. Mossaides ’73, P’04 and was followed by a gala dinner.

On Saturday morning attendees traveled by bus to Fougaro Art Center in Nafplio, a dynamic and ever-evolving creative space founded by artist Florica Kyriacopoulos ’76. The day featured a full schedule of academic and researchbased panels and discussions. Mount Holyoke professor and Carol Hoffmann Collins Director of the McCulloch Center for Global Initiatives Kavita Khory ’84 and moderator Erica Lutes ’02, executive director of the Commission of Educational Exchange between the United States and Belgium, led a discussion on migration, ideological extremism, climate change and political polarization. Other panels included one on migration and refugees in the Mediterranean with Dia Anagnostou ’91 presenting an overview of the trends of refugee and migration flow, Anya Jette Christiansen ’01, who offered solutions for addressing the root causes of migration, and Zeynep Kurmuş Hürbaş ’96, who described the lives of Syrian refugees and explained the governmental and

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.

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“ The alumnae supporting students through scholarships says a lot about the College. It means they must have had a fulfilling experience here. And I am so grateful for being recognized in such a special way.”

MAHA MAPARA ’21

on the impact of philanthropic support on her Mount Holyoke education. Read this year’s Report on Philanthropy at mtholyoke.edu/go/inspiring.

Project Stream: courtesy of Mona Gubow ’72 Mapara: Tim Llewellyn

Project Stream dedication On October 17, more than a dozen members of the class of 1972 gathered on campus to celebrate the dedication of the boardwalk extension of Project Stream, a project led by Adeline Louie ’72. The afternoon included an unveiling of a plaque, remarks by Kate Ballantine, Marjorie Fisher Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, and tours of Project Stream.

During a lively lunch that followed, 1972 classmates and students spent time connecting about their interests and work, with members of the class of 2022 having the special experience of meeting those in their Connections Class. Learn more about Mount Holyoke’s Restoration Ecology Program, including Project Stream, at mtholyoke.edu/restoration-ecology.

Join an Alumnae Association trip abroad

The Great Journey through Europe, July 18–28

We invite you to join one or more upcoming travel opportunities, such as an 11-day “grand tour” of Europe in July. For more information and to register, visit alumnae.mtholyoke. edu/travel.

Lowered Reunion Costs!

Learn more and register at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/reunion.

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In January, Olivia Aguilar joined the College as the new Leslie and Sarah Miller Director of the Miller Worley Center for the Environment and an associate professor of environmental studies.

“I’m thrilled to be a new member of the Mount Holyoke community,” said Aguilar. “My scholarship and teaching focus on the intersection of environmental issues and inclusivity, and I am excited to bring these passions to a campus where both issues are a priority.”

Aguilar completed bachelor’s and master’s degrees in horticulture science at Texas A&M University, where she studied children’s gardens and their effects on youth environmental attitudes. She received her doctorate in natural resources at Cornell University, studying environmental education. She received a Consortium for Faculty Diversity fellowship to teach at Denison University in its McPhail Center for Environmental Studies. There, she taught the core courses for environmental studies, including courses in sustainable agriculture and environmental education. As part of her work examining how environmental and science learning communities can be more inclusive of groups that are often marginalized, Aguilar is currently collecting oral histories from Latinx members to frame their narrative of being outdoors.

“We’re delighted that Dr. Aguilar is joining us, following a highly competitive national search,” said Jon Western, vice president for academic affairs and dean of faculty. “She brings with her a strong commitment to environmental justice, sustainability and the work of inclusion.”

The Miller Worley Center for the Environment was established as the Center for Environmental Literacy in 1998 with the goal of making environmental literacy a central part of Mount Holyoke students’ education through the use of the campus as a natural laboratory. In 2010, in recognition of a generous gift from Leslie Miller ’73 and Richard Worley, the Center was renamed the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Center for the Environment.

“I am excited that the Miller Worley Center is infusing sustainability throughout the entire campus and curriculum and playing to Mount Holyoke’s historic strengths of keeping an ever-watchful eye on outside work, while educating students to be able to combat the challenges that await them,” said Miller. — B Y C H R I S T I A N F E U E R S T E I N

The Gates

Want to keep up with what’s happening on campus — from the students’ point of view? Subscribe to The Gates blog. Visit blog.mtholyoke.edu/thegates.

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Alumnae Association launches online book club Nearly 900 alums were among the first to sign up for the Mount Holyoke Alumnae Online Book Club, coming together in the fall to read and discuss “There, There” by Tommy Orange, the College’s 2019 Common Read selection.

The book club is led by a moderator and meets through a private, online forum, where members engage in conversations ranging from character analysis and cultural and historical themes to book recommendations and fond memories of Mount Holyoke.

Future book selections will include those written by alums, including Grace Talusan ’94, whose memoir "The Body Papers" was the second selection.

To learn more and sign up, visit pbc.guru/mtholyoke.

Aguilar: MHC Office of Communications

Miller Worley Center for the Environment names new director

Alums in Law

In October the Alumnae Association piloted an “Alums in Law” event in Boston. More than 30 alums and students gathered for welcoming remarks by Alumnae Association President and Child Advocate for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Maria Z. Mossaides ’73, P’04 as well as a professional panel and networking reception. For more information about alumnae events, including the next “Alums in Law” event, visit events.mtholyoke.edu.

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A sampling of faculty grants received since September 2019

IN MEMORIAM MARVIN RUS KUIPERS died on September 24, 2019, at the age of 74.

Kuipers was associate treasurer and comptroller at Mount Holyoke from 1984 until 2000. Following a career in the U.S. Air Force and the Texas Air National Guard, he received an M.P.A. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1973 and began a career in financial services. He was a founding member and treasurer of Stony Brook Community Church of South Hadley. Among his survivors are his wife, Betty, and three children.

WILLIAM McFEELY, former dean of faculty and professor of history,

McFeely: Courtesy of Carolyn Brown ’73

Aguilar: MHC Office of Communications

died on December 11, 2019, at the age of 89. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University, helping to establish Yale’s Department of African American Studies during that time. After coming to Mount Holyoke in 1970, he served as dean of faculty until 1973, when he joined the history department as a teaching faculty member until 1986.

He won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography in 1982, for “Grant: A Biography,” which he wrote while at Mount Holyoke. He was predeceased by his wife, Mary. Among his survivors are three children, including son Drake and his wife Karen Eliason McFeely ’76, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

GERHARD LOEWENBERG , former political science professor and trustee of the College, died on December 28, 2019, at the age of 91. After emigrating to the United States as a young child with his family, Loewenberg attended Cornell University, earning his bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees. He joined Mount Holyoke in 1953, teaching political science and serving as acting academic dean of the College during 1968–69 before continuing his career at the University of Iowa. Among his survivors are his wife, Ina, two children, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

JANE COUPERUS

Psychology and Education from the National Science Foundation, for a fiveyear project focused on preparing undergraduates for research in STEM-related fields using electrophysiology.

EVAN RAY

Mathematics and Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, through a subaward from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, for a five-year project establishing an influenza forecasting center of excellence.

KATIE BERRY

Biochemistry from the National Institutes of Health, for the threeyear project titled “R15: Genetic Identification of Bacterial RNA Chaperone Proteins and their Mechanisms of Action.”

VALERIE BARR ’77, P’15

Computer Science from the National Science Foundation, for an 18-month project titled “CUE Ethics: Collaborative Research: Evaluating Frameworks for Incorporating Computing Across the Curriculum.”

Call for photos

Athletes to gather at Reunion Weekend

We want to see your original photographs about balance, and we will select at least one for publication in the Alumnae Quarterly.

To read the complete guidelines and to submit your work by March 15, 2020, visit alumnae. mtholyoke.edu/photocontest.

The Alumnae Association and the Department of Athletics and Physical Education are pleased to announce the launch of a new affinity-based reunion program. Alum athletes from the equestrian, rowing, and swimming and diving teams across class years are invited back to campus to participate in Reunion and to attend the 2020 Athletics Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony. Registration opens February 24.

Learn more at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/reunion.

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FE M A LE G A ZE

A RT I S T S O N I N S TAG R A M

On the Grid 1 @TLDuryea

TL Duryea ’94 TL is an artist and creator of the Sheroes painting series and founder of the Duryea Project. Her portrait of Shirley Chisholm was featured in the fall 2019 Alumnae Quarterly.

I T ’S B E E N A L M O S T 10 Y E A R S since Instagram was launched and almost seven years since the Alumnae Association joined the platform. While our intent is primarily to share beautiful photos of campus to “lure you home,” we also love learning about alums through their own Instagram accounts. Here we share images from a half dozen alums who use the platform not only to showcase their artistic talents but also to promote a business in the arts.

Are you an artist on Instagram? Tag us! @mhcalums

2 @claudiapalmiraa

Claudia Acunto Palmira ’95 Based in Rome, Claudia owns a digital design studio, leading art, web and graphic design projects for many clients. She also is an artist working in mixed media and digital collages.

3 @savareseh2o

Lynn AshbySavarese ’78 Lynn is a fine arts photographer based in New York City. She manages two Instagram accounts for her work. This one is exclusively for images of water.

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2

4

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4 @sleepycier

Cierson Zambo ’19 Cierson is a trans+queer artist, whose work includes performance, installation, painting, printmaking, paper and fiber arts.

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FE M A LE G A ZE

B OOKS

5 @emilyjdesign

Emily Cameron Brewster ’04 Emily is a selfdescribed scientist turned designer and mom, whose work includes custom rings and personalized gifts.

6 @marikapaz

Marika Malkerson Summers ’09 Marika is a selftaught artist and illustrator, whose art explores the relationships among animals, humans and nature.

Journey to the Imaginal Realm: A Reader’s Guide to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings Becca Tarnas REVE LO RE PRESS

In “Journey to the Imaginal Realm,” Tarnas guides readers through each chapter of Tolkien’s magnum opus, drawing attention to subtle details, recalling moments of foreshadowing and illuminating underlying patterns and narrative threads.

Becca Tarnas ’10 is a scholar, artist and editor of Archai: The Journal of Archetypal Cosmology. She received her doctorate in philosophy and religion from the California Institute of Integral Studies. She teaches in the Jungian Psychology and Archetypal Studies program at Pacifica Graduate Institute.

Signature Dishes that Matter

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Christine Muhlke PHAI DO N BOO KS

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Credits tk to each artist

This book reveals the closely held secrets behind the world’s most iconic recipes – dishes that put restaurants on the map, from 19th century fine dining and popular classics to today’s most innovative kitchens. Curated by experts and organized chronologically, it is both a landmark cookbook and a cultural history of dining out.

Christine Muhlke ’92 is the executive editor of Bon Appétit and the author of “On the Line: Inside the World of Le Bernardin.” A former food editor and columnist for The New York Times Magazine, her writing has appeared in Vogue, Vanity Fair, Food + Wine and other publications.

If: The Untold Story of Kipling’s American Years Christopher Benfey PE NGU I N PRESS

Named a 2019 Notable Book by The New York Times, “If” is an exploration of the life and work of writer Rudyard Kipling in Gilded Age America. The book traces Kipling’s most prodigious and creative period — a decade from 1889 to 1899 — when he lived for four years in Brattleboro, Vermont, and sought to deliberately turn himself into a specifically American writer.

Christopher Benfey is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English at Mount Holyoke. A frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review and The New York Review of Books, he has held fellowships from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies. He is the author of four books about the American Gilded Age.

WEB EXCLUSIVE

See more recent alumnae books at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ winter2020books.

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TE N M I N U TE S WI TH

PRODUC E R

Trailblazer and Storyteller D E B R A M A R T I N C H A S E ’ 7 7 , producer and CEO of Martin Chase Productions, is the

first black woman to have a deal at a major Hollywood studio. After beginning her career in law, Chase entered the entertainment industry in the 1990s. In addition to her television credits, she is known for the film franchises “The Princess Diaries” and “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.” In November, Chase brought a screening and discussion of her latest film, “Harriet,” a biopic of slaveturned-abolitionist Harriet Tubman, to Mount Holyoke.

On making a career reset: Mount Holyoke women: we’re smart, we have opportunities, we have options.

That process of figuring out what you really want to do is sometimes the toughest part, or certainly one of the toughest parts of making the transition. You have to take the time to figure out what it is that you really want to do. Because I think if you love what you do, you can

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On the power of mentorship: When I got to Hollywood, there was nobody who looked like me who was doing what I set out to do. My two greatest mentors were a man named Frank Price, who in retrospect was one of the last of the old fashioned, great studio bosses, [and] a woman named Nina Jacobson, who at the time ran Disney and was the first openly gay woman to run a major movie studio.

People helped me, and so I’ve just always known that it was my responsibility to pay

it forward. I think particularly for women and for people of color, you’re going to have to work extra hard, you’re going to have to be better than average. But you need a hand up.

On the lessons of “Harriet”: You can’t control where you’re born or your circumstances, but you can control

“

Intellectual curiosity is a huge asset, not just in filmmaking but in life.

It keeps you interesting, it keeps you vibrant, it keeps you dynamic.

—DEBRA MARTIN CHASE ’77

”

who you become and what you do with your life. Harriet Tubman was a woman who could not read, who could not write, who was born destined to be a slave, but who decided, no, that’s not going to be my path, and she changed it. In these times that are so divisive and ugly, I think a lot of us are feeling hopeless and helpless.

Hopefully Harriet’s story will remind all of us that one person can make a big difference, that we each have a voice, that we each should use it and we should stand up for what we believe in.

—INTERVIEW BY CHRISTIAN FEUERSTEIN

Joanna Chattman

pursue it wholeheartedly. And if you love it, you’ll be good at it.

I was a very good lawyer; it just wasn’t me. But I always loved film and television.

I said, “Let me try.

If I don’t try, it’s not going to happen.” I didn’t know anybody in the movie business, I didn’t know how it worked, so I spent a year doing research.

I talked to anybody who would talk to me.

I read books, I went to seminars. I read Variety every day to really get a feel for the business. So at the end of that year, I knew what I wanted.

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TH E M AV E N

T E A MAV E N

Enjoying Herbal Infusions

By S US AN PI NCUS ’08

M ANY OF U S are familiar with herbal teas from drinking store-bought tea bags filled with herbs like chamomile or mint. Tea bags are great, but there is so much more to the herbal world: a vast resource of potential plant allies that can be used to customize an herbal infusion to meet your own needs and tastes.

An herbal infusion is the process of steeping herbs in very hot water. Steeping helps pull out the desirable parts of the plant, flavoring the water and offering benefits like increased energy or balance.

As you practice making infusions, you can customize them by expanding your herbal pantry and playing with quantities and steeping times. I customize my blends every day depending on the season and my mood and energy levels.

Start simple Make infusions of just one herb so you can get to know each plant better on its own.

The following herbs are great on their own or when combined:

Ginger: Warming and excellent for digestive support. Ginger can be purchased fresh and grated into infusions.

Holy Basil (also known as Tulsi): All-around nervous system support, including for mental clarity and focus.

Ginger

Lemon Balm: Calming to the nervous and

digestive systems.

Milky Oats: One of the best nutritive tonics

Lemon Balm

for the nervous system.

Holy Basil or Tulsi

Nettles: Full of vitamins and minerals and

useful as a tonic tea to help restore energy.

Favorite winter combos: Mineral-rich blend: Nettles, Milky Oats and Holy Basil

Acquire the supplies and ingredients You’ll need any vessel that can hold hot water (pot, glass jar, French press, etc.), a way to heat water and a strainer.

I make tea infusions with fresh or dried herbs, but during the winter only dried are available to me. If you have a garden it’s easy to dry your own herbs, but you can also purchase high-quality organic dried herbs from local growers, at health food stores or online. My preference is for loose herbs that can be easily combined for special blends.

Make the tea Put four to six tablespoons of dried herbs into a quart jar. Heat up your water until boiling, then pour the water over the herbs until they are covered (or add the herbs to the water and turn off the heat). Cover and steep for 30 to 45 minutes.

Strain and drink. If you like, you can sweeten with a bit of local honey. Compost the spent herbs. Leftover infusions can be refrigerated for a day or so and then gently reheated to enjoy.

Breathe deep As you drink your infusion, take time to notice how your body feels. Much of the magic of drinking infusions comes when you can relax for a few minutes while sipping. Notice how different infusions make you feel, and experiment with new blends as you become more confident.

Since 2012, Susan Pincus ’08 has been running Sawmill Herb Farm in Florence, Massachusetts, a small organic farm dedicated to providing high-quality medicinal and culinary herbs for the region with a fresh herb CSA, plant starts and apothecary items. Both on and off of the farm she works with individuals and groups through plant and nature education and workshops.

Post-dinner digestive blend: Milky Oats

Ginger and Lemon Balm

Nettles

AR E YOU A MAV EN ?

Pitch your area of expertise to quarterly@mtholyoke.edu.

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I NS I D E R’ S V I EW

The Cochary Pub and Kitchen L O CATE D ON the ground floor of the Community

Center, the Cochary Pub & Kitchen offers a selection of pub-style dishes and beverages as well as fresh-baked goods from the campus bakery.

All of the food served in the Cochary is made on campus, using many locally and responsibly sourced ingredients as part of the College’s commitment to sustainability and to creating wholesome, healthy products.

The welcoming space features booths and tables of different sizes for members of the Mount Holyoke community to gather while enjoying a beverage, a snack or a meal.

The Cochary is also now the home of Mount Holyoke’s favorite Chef Jeff cookies, which are available — and freshly baked — every day.

Learn more about dining on campus at mtholyoke.edu/dining/dininghalls.

— E M I LY K R A K O W ’ 2 0

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Joanna Chattman (6); Chef Jeff cookies: Ryan Donnell

Social hub Students who gather at the Cochary can use their dining dollars — provided through their campus meal plan — to purchase menu items.

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I NS I D E R’ S V I EW

A gathering spot With booths and tables large and small, the Cochary offers a casual space for the Mount Holyoke community and anyone visiting campus to enjoy a snack, beverage or meal.

Keeping it local The Cochary serves many locally sourced products, including Pierce Bros coffee, a certified, fair-trade and organic coffee roaster based in Greenfield, Massachusetts.

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Strength, Courage and Vision

A friendship that changed Mount Holyoke 16

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Written by Melonee Gaines Photos by Andrea Morales

In 1968, the city of

Memphis, Tennessee, was at the center of the Civil Rights Movement.

The movement and its leaders were in an escalating dispute between federal and state governments.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had set his sights on the city’s indignities against black sanitation workers who wanted fair wages, safe working conditions and equitable treatment following the crushing deaths of two garbage collectors. In February, 1,300 sanitation workers went on strike, crowding downtown streets and carrying “I am a man” placards. They stood toe-to-toe with police officers armed with dogs and pepper spray.

During this time, Rhynette Northcross Hurd ’71 left her hometown of Memphis to return to Mount Holyoke for the spring semester of her sophomore year.

She was on campus April 4 when she learned that Dr. King had been assassinated. Rhynette, who is now a judge for the Shelby County Circuit Court in Memphis, was already committed to working for justice even before her time at Mount Holyoke, but it was in that moment of learning of Dr. King’s death that she felt the responsibility and certainty that her generation would be the ones to carry Dr. King’s dream forward.

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A sense of duty In 1967, during her senior year of high school, Rhynette was considering schools like Spelman College and Lake Forest College, but her brother, Thurman Jr., at the time a first-year student at Wesleyan, encouraged her to apply to Mount Holyoke. She recognized the school as one that “promoted academic excellence,” she says, but adds that the distance from home and the mounting angst of the civil rights struggles in Memphis gave her a sense of “trepidation” about attending.

“To be honest with you,” she says, “how do you get and encourage black people to come to a small town in Massachusetts that’s below freezing 90% of the time? Where are their friends going to be?”

Despite these concerns, she felt strongly that the fight was not just in Memphis — it was everywhere. And she committed to Mount Holyoke.

When Rhynette first arrived on campus, returning black students came around to each dorm, introducing themselves. They offered her a cultural connection at the College when it was overwhelmingly white in student body, faculty and administration.

“These women gave us advice on where to get our hair done, where to shop, where to eat, where to buy a coat to survive winters in Massachusetts,” she says. “They told us what professors they liked. They were really helpful, and it made settling in easier.”

In her first year at Mount Holyoke, Rhynette found herself in a school with “no classes about African-American history, literature — nothing from the diaspora. We had no black professors,” she says. Up until that time she had only had black teachers. “It was strange,” she says. “I went to Mount Holyoke because I knew I would get an excellent education. But I also wanted to feel that my culture was respected.”

As she continued to find community and a sense of place, Rhynette reached out to her cousin Deborah Northcross ’73. They were the daughters of brothers, and at one point in their upbringing, their two families had lived together.

“She told me to apply and that I didn’t have a choice,” Deborah says.

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In less than a year the two cousins were both undergraduates at the College, and they moved forward together with other black women on campus to bring the charge of the Civil Rights Movement to Mount Holyoke. It was, Deborah says, “a sense of duty.”

In the fall of 1968, Rhynette and Deborah joined the Afro-American Society, a new student organization on campus. (“Afro-American” was a popular term used in the 1960s by black Americans who wanted to self-identify as being of African heritage and American citizenship.) The group was in a coalition with chapters at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst and Smith colleges, and primary to their work was a movement to implement black studies courses at the colleges.

“I went to Mount Holyoke because I knew I would get an excellent education.

Rhynette Northcross Hurd, left, and Deborah Northcross at Deborah’s home in November

But I also wanted to feel that my culture was respected.”

—Rhynette Northcross Hurd ’71

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“I remember we marched in [to Mary Lyon Hall], secured the building and had a sit-in,” Deborah says.

“We didn’t know if we were going to be expelled or what. When it made the national news, my father called me and asked me, ‘Were you involved?’ and I said yes. He asked ‘Is that something you believe in?’ and I said yes, and he said ‘OK.’” “He basically gave you the permission to go ahead,” says Rhynette, “Which I think is profound.

It really speaks to Uncle Theron.”

A Memphis childhood

This was a critical time in black American politics and identity, as the Civil Rights Movement gave way to the Black Power Movement. The movement was reflected in the political organizing, rhetoric, clothing, styling and music of a culture that wanted to define and empower themselves on their own terms and negate any attempts to suppress their Constitutional rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

On December 12, 1968, the Afro-American Society staged a sit-in demonstration at Mary Lyon Hall, demanding a separate space for black students to meet.

From a young age, Deborah made history in the desegregation of Memphis public schools after the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) asked her father, Dr. Theron Northcross Sr., one of the first black dentists in Memphis, to use the family name in a 1960 suit against the Memphis board of education (Northcross et al. v. The Board of Education of the City of Memphis, Tennessee). As the lead plaintiff, she would become a symbol of the equality promised in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that southern states like Tennessee fought to derail.

“I think when the NAACP asked my father if they could use his name on the lawsuit … that gave me an indication that he was a fighter,” Deborah says, “and it showed that he was a stalwart … for civil rights against injustices.”

When Deborah, who is now executive director of the U.S. Department of Education TRIO Training at the Southeastern Association of Educational Opportunity Program Personnel, was one of the first black students to attend Memphis Central High School, she remembers her father telling her, “You’re there to get an education. You’re not there to make friends. Just come home with a good education.”

As a Mount Holyoke student, Deborah called on the courage she had gained in her youth as she spoke out for her beliefs. She found herself returning to her father’s advice, knowing that he supported her actions. “I kept [his words] in mind,” she says. “In a sense, I was a fighter. I was prepared for some sort of tension, some sort of uncertainty. … And I didn’t know what to expect from day to day.”

After four days of student protest in Mary Lyon Hall, a special committee was formed, charged with establishing the Black Cultural Center in the Woodbridge. It was affectionately known as “The Black House” and was a home away from home for black students, according to Deborah and Rhynette.

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The Black Cultural Center was an important step in meeting the demands of those students who had staged the sit-in. But it was only the first step, and the students continued to engage and make demands of Mount Holyoke College President David B. Truman. In 1969, Truman announced that a Black Studies interdisciplinary program had been added to the curriculum. It was another mark of success. And today Rhynette feels pride in the College’s efforts 50 years ago to respond to and support black students who spoke up. She also acknowledges that not everyone feels the same way.

“Some of our friends who were in school when we were there didn’t feel like Mount Holyoke supported them enough,” she says. “It was difficult. … Some could not break through and feel comfortable.”

What could have been In 1971 Rhynette graduated, and Deborah, who had just completed her sophomore year, recruited her friend Mindy McWilliams Lewis ’75, P’05. “[My brother] Thurman was the reason I came to Mount Holyoke,” says Rhynette. “And my being there was the reason Debbie came there. And Debbie being there was the reason Mindy came there. I’d like to think our coming to Mount Holyoke made a difference.”

Though Mindy and Deborah were high school friends, Rhynette and Mindy did not meet until 2000, through a chance encounter at an airport. Almost immediately, the three bonded, with Mindy as their leader and guide. She encouraged both Deborah and Rhynette to become even more involved with the College as alumnae, citing their trailblazing days as students and the need for that work to continue for the students of today.

Until then Rhynette had been involved in the Black Alumnae Conference, held for the first time in 1973.

Since that airport encounter, Rhynette has served on numerous committees for the College and the Alumnae Association and several terms on the Alumnae Association Board of Directors. She has been an alumnae trustee on the College’s Board of Trustees since 2016 and currently serves as a vice chair of the board.

Deborah, too, has served the College in many capacities, including as a member of her class board and of several committees, as vice president of the Alumnae Association Board of Directors, a trustee of the College from 2004–2009 and a member of the Alumnae Trustee Committee for the Alumnae Association.

In 2003 she received the Alumnae Medal of Honor.

And she was co-chair of the 2018 Black Alumnae Conference planning committee.

“Mindy was just amazing,” Rhynette says. “She was just somebody who looked at you — she’d give

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you that look, and she smiled — you knew she meant what she was saying and that you were gonna do what she asked you to do.”

The College leadership recognized these qualities as well, and in 2019 Mindy was named chair of the Mount Holyoke Board of Trustees after a lifetime of dedication to Mount Holyoke. The list of her volunteer roles and event attendance on behalf of Mount Holyoke spans nearly two pages. She started her Mount Holyoke work as a class agent and took on seemingly every possible role in fundraising and alumnae engagement over the course of the next three decades. Mindy famously referred to Mount Holyoke College as her “hobby.” A champion for diversity and inclusion, she had a long career working in development. And a long career serving her alma mater. After years of service to the College, including as a member of the Board of Trustees from 2006 to 2018, Mindy was ready to bring all of her experiences together at the helm of Mount Holyoke. Deborah and Rhynette could not have been more proud.

“Mindy was a person who just pulled good people together,” Rhynette says. “She’s like the glue. I would have loved to see the Mount Holyoke that she would have helped to create.”

In June, just a few weeks before Mindy was to step into her new role, she died unexpectedly. Her closest friends were heartbroken.

“Leaving something better than it was found was always Mindy’s bottom line.”

—Deborah Northcross ’73

Cousins and friends since childhood, Deborah Northcross and Rhynette Northcross Hurd spent time together in November recounting their days as Mount Holyoke students, browsing through yearbooks and remembering Mindy McWilliams Lewis (facing page, top right, in May 2019 and, this page, top, as a student at Mount Holyoke).

The Mount Holyoke community was left wondering what could have been.

“When I think of Mindy today, I think of a young woman who proudly walked through the gates of Mount Holyoke, excelled in her studies and on June 9 took her wings — much deserved for the remarkable life she lived, exemplifying the lessons she’d learned,” says Rhynette. “To think that Mindy was just a little black girl from Memphis, Tennessee, who became the chair of the oldest continuing college for women in this country, and she never got the opportunity [to take the position]. … It is tragic in one sense that she never got to take on the role, but it’s been so meaningful that she had the opportunity.” “[Our legacy] is that we made our parents proud and we served in some way,” says Deborah.

“They were good servants, and I think they would appreciate that we were servant leaders and that we served the community in a good way.”

“And that we were kind to people,” says Rhynette.

“We respected differences and were glad for them.”

Speaking at Mindy’s memorial service in August, Deborah recalled that Mindy had laser-focused vision when carrying out a project. “I found that to be true when working with her on the College’s Legacy of Diversity Committee during The Campaign for Mount Holyoke and on the Alumnae Association’s Black Alumnae Conference. You could say that leaving something better than it was found was always her bottom line.”

In September, when they gathered on campus for what would have been Mindy’s first meeting as chair, members of the Board of Trustees planted an oak tree on Skinner Green in her memory, a true symbol of her wisdom and keen vision for the College, in a central place where her legacy can be remembered.

“When I say we’re in a better place now, 50 years later, there is an awareness that we need to [continue to] meet those needs. We have more Afro-centric courses of study, we have begun to recognize what needs to be done to improve our hiring and curriculum design, we are moving forward,” Rhynette says.

And in her role as vice chair of the board, and with the involvement of her cousin Deborah, she intends to continue to shape the path before her, to continue the legacy of three young women from Memphis whose work in South Hadley and far beyond the gates will have a lasting impact on generations to come.

Melonee Gaines is a Memphis-based freelance journalist with The Crisis Magazine, theGrio.com, Carnegie, and MLK50.com. She is also the owner of MPact Media Group, a digital media and public relations consulting firm.

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Beyond the

Learning

Laura Shea PHOTOGRAPHS BY

Sarah Zobel ’88 WRITTEN BY

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For the past 10 years, Mount Holyoke students across disciplines have been engaging with art through a program that brings classroom work to the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, where

Classroom

curriculum and the visual arts meet.

oncepts at the heart of physics — quantum mechanics, relativity, entropy, chaos theory — are best learned through reading, class discussion and lab experiments — and, sometimes, the visual arts.

“Physicists get excited about these deep ideas that are sometimes hard to explain without a whole bunch of mathematical baggage,” says Assistant Professor of Physics Spencer Smith. His 2018 general education class Interweaving Themes in Physics and Art is just one of many in recent years to bring art into the classroom — and the classroom to the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum.

The Museum, long a haven for art history majors, is now a thriving — and vital — part of the academic experience for students like those in Smith’s course. Drawing from its vast collections, the Museum promotes visual learning in disciplines beyond the arts and humanities through its Teaching with Art program. Initially launched as a three-year initiative with funds from a 2009 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the program was endowed with support from Susan Bonneville Weatherbie ’72 and additional funding

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from Chaney Chang Li ’64, Betse Cannon Gump ’56 and Harriet Farber Friedlander ’52.

The idea that campus museums would focus on a college or university’s teaching mission and involve faculty and students from the social and hard sciences (such as physics) has grown in popularity in recent years, says Ellen Alvord ’89, the Museum’s associate director for engagement and Weatherbie curator of academic programs. It has been a successful endeavor at Mount Holyoke, she says, “because the faculty prioritize interdisciplinary learning and embrace the idea of using art and material culture in innovative ways.”

“Indeed, it is this commitment to cross-disciplinary learning,” says Tricia Y. Paik, Florence Finch Abbott Director of the Museum, “that has inspired our Museum donors to support this forward-thinking program. Thanks to their crucial investment, we have been able to build upon and expand our fruitful collaborations with faculty.”

“By creating this course,” physics professor Smith says, “I wanted to short-circuit the technical physics explanation by saying, OK, a lot of these ideas have some aesthetic resonance, and you can find almost analogous ideas or themes when talking about art.

Visual art is something people feel they can talk about — or at least it is a little bit more approachable as compared to physics.” In practice this means Smith might invite students to consider a painting or a photograph and recognize that it is related to time, for example, but then dig further, asking them to consider: How did the artist intuitively think about time and represent it in their art? What does that tell us about the reality of how time works? With some topics, such as chaos theory, the comparison might be less direct.

“It’s a lot easier to start that conversation by saying, ‘Look at these pictures.

What draws you in?’ There’s often this aesthetic tension between order and

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TOP Physics professor Spencer Smith demonstrates for students the interference patterns in works by Albert Gregory BOTTOM English professor Amy Rodgers and students from her Activist Shakespeare class

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chaos in artwork that intrigues us,” says Smith. Students in Interweaving Themes met at the Museum every Friday, and for the final project, each created a virtual exhibition, acting as curator by pulling together images from collections all over the world, as well as at least one artwork from the Museum’s holdings.

The idea for Smith’s course grew, in part, out of a three-semester faculty seminar, Teaching with the Original, which was organized by the Museum and held over three consecutive semesters beginning in January 2017. Museum staff often host interdisciplinary seminars for faculty to introduce them to the collection and special exhibitions and to give them strategies for object-based teaching, says Alvord. During Teaching with the Original, Smith introduced fundamental physics concepts through artwork to other faculty participants, giving him the chance to try out different pedagogical approaches to teaching symmetry, time and flow. The seminar gave him the opportunity to launch his course as a kind of trial run before formally teaching it for the first time in 2018.

Smith’s former student Emma Grotto ’19, a computer science and physics double major whose mother is an artist, was thrilled by the opportunity to participate in Smith’s class.

“I realized that science was another way to appreciate art,” says Grotto. In a paper on light, for example, she illustrated the concepts of the visible light spectrum, absorption and emission, with the work of Narcissus Quagliata, an Italian visual artist who made the world’s largest stained-glass ceiling, and Diet Wiegman, a Dutch multidisciplinary artist known for his shadow art sculptures made of trash. For her final project, Grotto illustrated string theory — hardly an easy subject to conceptualize — using both sculptures and paintings. Grotto says she has a new appreciation of how scientific discoveries and art have influenced each

other over time and adds that the smallgroup work in class was particularly enriching, with the students familiar with physics learning from those who were not, and vice versa.

“That was valuable, because you don’t get those types of perspectives in other settings,” says Grotto. Classmate Caledonia Wilson ’19, a math major who had experience with drawing and painting in high school but never studied art history, agrees. Before enrolling in Interweaving Themes, Wilson had only been to the Museum for her firstyear seminar, but having the chance to go there every week and talk about art in the context of physics allowed her to examine some of her own “contrarian, baked-in beliefs [about art]. And it gave me a broader respect and overview of movements in art history, as well as [the ability to trace] different lines of scientific thought through history, which is not a perspective I’d had in other science classes,” she says.

I realized that science was another way to appreciate art.

EMMA GROTTO ’19

t’s not only the physics department that is taking advantage of the Museum’s resources.

Associate Professor of English and Chair of Theatre Arts Amy Rodgers routinely brings classes there, in part because it accommodates different learning styles.

“You might have a student who is not as strong in close reading with texts, but you’ll put them in front of an image and they’ll be able to talk about it in incredibly creative and vibrant ways. It often reveals to me how they comprehend the world, and I can [then] help them advance their analytical skills with texts,” says Rodgers. “It’s important to have students exercising both the analytical and the creative sides of their brains.

I don’t like to think about those two things as separate. When they’re working in tandem is when human beings are working at their highest levels. The Museum is a great outlet for that for students — and for me as an educator.”

Students of Mathematics Professor Jessica Sidman looked at ways to use math to analyze and create art — including calculating the optimal distance for viewing artworks — in her course The Mathematics of Perspective Drawing. Likewise, students in Place and Power in the American West and Pacific World, a class taught by Associate Professor of History Christine DeLucia, studied Edward Curtis photographs, landscape paintings, fruit crate labels, Alaskan ivory figures and works made by indigenous peoples of North America to better understand the history of that region.

The Museum staff routinely hosts many first-year seminars as well as introductory biology classes, including a lab where students spend three hours honing their observation skills. The concept was based on a similar

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A Museum for All The Mount Holyoke College Art Museum is enriching the lives of more than just the College’s own students — it has also welcomed students from area schools, particularly those in lesser-served areas. An art and identity program for students from the Springfield Renaissance School, a

program at the Yale Center for British Art, which brings the university’s medical students in to build their observation skills as part of their training.

“We think about the components of observation, what kinds of biases do we bring when we’re looking at something, what kind of cultural knowledge and background do we bring that might help us understand something or might actually get in the way of how we’re interpreting something,” says Alvord. “And then the students make connections between what they did in the Musuem with what they’re doing in biology class.”

STEM-focused magnet high school, was led by museum intern Relyn Myrthil ’19, who worked with the Springfield students, engaging them in conversations about race, class, gender and other aspects of their identities in the context of exhibitions on display at the Museum. They also took part in a weekly handson workshop, using techniques they had studied in the gallery to create their own stories of identity. Likewise, a group from LightHouse Holyoke, a small alternative learning school in Holyoke that has a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics) bent, spent time at the Museum learning to lead art-related discussions in front of their peers. They also worked at the Fimbel Maker & Innovation Lab, with which the Museum enjoys a rich ongoing partnership.

“The students got to see the collaboration between their STEM studies and art, and how their calculations — and making sure to measure twice, cut once — can be used in a creative way that’s not just engineering and computer science,” says Myrthil, adding that observing these groups of students learn to interact with art and each other helped her become a better communicator as well.

A music major and art history minor, Myrthil was a Posse scholar whose own introduction to the Museum wasn’t until her sophomore year, when she and other Posse scholars were invited for a visual thinking strategies workshop largely intended to be a bonding exercise.

Myrthil was surprised at the content and depth of the discussions. She had been expecting to hear about an artist’s technical skills and about the process of creating art, like how fine details are depicted in a painting, for instance. Instead, she says, “We talked about Kara Walker and the history of the Civil War. It was a very interdisciplinary experience for us, and it 100% inspired me to go back to the Museum for the next two-and-a-half years.”

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n exhibition on display at the Museum through June 2020, “Major Themes: Celebrating Ten Years of Teaching with Art,” simultaneously commemorates the program and explores some of those connections.

Alvord and Associate Curator of Education Kendra Weisbin regularly search the course catalogue for courses that might be a good fit with the Museum’s holdings or a forthcoming exhibition. They do so keeping in mind the College’s 10 learning goals, which include evaluating evidence, developing critical and analytical thinking skills, questioning assumptions and engaging in artistic expression.

“Ellen and Kendra have been proactive about reaching out to faculty and trying in particular to get faculty who aren’t traditionally engaged with the Museum to come down there and use the objects they have in the collection in their classes,” says Smith.

Sometimes it works the other way

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TOP Students workshop label text to be included in the exhibition as an assignment for their Activist Shakespeare course BOTTOM

Physics student Anne Bevin ’20 explains how time and motion are encoded in a photograph by Eadweard Muybridge

around. A few years ago, Associate Professor of History Desmond FitzGibbon brought students in a British history course to the Museum and discovered a trove of coins and currency; in response, he developed a 200-level class, Histories of Money. And from those class visits, Fitz-Gibbon and Aaron Miller, associate curator of visual and material culture, developed Money Matters, an exhibition on view until June 21.

“The show has been enlightening, because it brings together so many disparate objects that you might not

associate with money,” says Alvord.

The exhibition includes not only ancient coins and bills but a playing card, shells, jewelry, a bill of exchange and a $20 bill that’s been modified with a stamp of Harriet Tubman’s portrait. “It gets us to think about not only economic implications of money but social and cultural and political aspects as well.”

Equally rich are the many special projects that have been coordinated among faculty, students and the Museum. Rodgers, for example, created an “American Moor” residency in fall

2018. The play, written and performed

by Keith Hamilton Cobb, examines the perspective of black men in America today through the lens of a black actor auditioning in front of a white director for the role of Othello. Alvord brought to Rodgers’s attention a series of etchings of Othello by printmaker Curlee Raven Holton that are among the Museum’s holdings and invited Rodgers and her students to write labels for the works, which were then exhibited to coincide with Cobb’s time on campus. Then, in a roundtable hosted by Rodgers, Holton and Cobb discussed the significance of Othello in 21st-century America. A year earlier, Smith had served as co-curator for “Beautiful Physics,” an exhibition of mid-20th-century black-and-white photographs of physical phenomena

by Berenice Abbott. In turn, he invited members of the Society for Physics Students to join him in writing labels to hang next to the photographs.

The student labels went far beyond a minimalist listing of artist’s name and title of the work, providing deeper explanations of the physics at work in each image.

“We used to think, ‘What’s the best art we have to put on view?’” says Alvord, reflecting on the Museum’s evolution. “Now we ask students and faculty to help us think critically about how we make value judgments.

What are the stories that we’re telling in these spaces?”

Sarah Zobel ’88 is a Vermont-based writer and editor whose work focuses on health and medicine, education, and housing and homelessness.

WEB EXCLUSIVE

Learn more about current and upcoming exhibitions at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum at artmuseum.mtholyoke.edu.

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The

Demands

Soil

of the

The Dust Bowl stories of Caroline Boa Henderson, class of 1901

In a May 1934

Alumnae Quarterly article, Caroline Boa Henderson, class of 1901, gave readers a glimpse of a little-known world — farming during the Dust Bowl decade. From 1930 to 1940, prolonged drought, unrelenting dust storms and widespread economic depression gripped parts of Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.

The Dust Bowl spun into one of the worst environmental disasters in United States history, killing locals, crushing livelihoods and causing the largest U.S. migration ever recorded when 2.5 million people were driven from their homes.

Homesteaders like Henderson were drawn to the area by federal policies selling the idea that hard work could earn them land and a living. After leaving Mount Holyoke, Henderson

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went west to teach, but, after a near-fatal bout of diphtheria, she decided to stake a claim — as a single woman — in a remote slice of the Great Plains marked on maps as “No Man’s Land.”

She was driven also by a strong Jeffersonian agrarianism that put agriculture at the center of American democracy and regarded farmers as morally superior and economically and politically independent.

The Hendersons, including Caroline’s husband, Will, and daughter Eleanor, were among the few families to withstand the physical and mental hardships brought on by unusually harsh atmospheric and social conditions. By the early 1930s Caroline and Will Henderson had been homesteading in the Oklahoma panhandle for 26 years, a hardscrabble existence not W RI TTEN BY well understood by the rest of the Heather Hansen ’94

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country. “Most of my friends and relatives are city people. Of numerous farm-reared kindred in both lines of ancestry, I am the solitary one having still a direct connection with the soil,” she wrote in the Alumnae Quarterly.

In 1908 Henderson explained the idealistic move in a letter to classmate Rose Alden. “A return to the old routine seemed intolerable. I hungered and I thirsted for something away from it all and for the out-of-doors.

So here I am, away out in that narrow strip of Oklahoma between Kansas and the Panhandle of Texas, ‘holding down’ one of the prettiest claims in the Beaver County strip. I wish you could see this wide, free western country, with its great stretches of almost level prairies, covered with the thick, short buffalo grass, the marvelous glory of its sunrises and sunsets, the brilliancy of its starlit sky at night.” Henderson’s letter to Alden was one of dozens the friends would exchange over the next 50 years. Their correspondence is now housed in the College’s Archives and Special Collections.

By the time of the 1934 Alumnae Quarterly article, Henderson had already attracted a national following with her depictions of life on the Great Plains. After the drought and failed crop of 1912–1913, in order to supplement her young family’s fluctuating income, Henderson started writing about her life on the 160-acre homestead in a 14-foot by 16-foot uninsulated, one-room house. In the beginning she wrote for Practical Farmer and penned a popular column called “Homestead Lady” for Ladies’ World Magazine.

Even early on she alternated between hope and fear, delight and despair.

And while she expressed wonder at the singular beauty of her homestead, she also introduced readers to the day-today drudgery of life on the farm. Her daily chores included tending a huge garden, grinding wheat for flour and cereal, helping with harvests, herding cattle, churning butter, assisting with calf births, repairing farm equipment, cooking and cleaning. Henderson wrote poignantly about the snowbirds and

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meadowlarks, the delicious dampness that the years to come may prove that of spring, and the impact nature had our faith in the future of our big lonely on her well-being. She also wrote about country was not mistaken,” she wrote in her affinity for the land, her pride in a letter to Alden in 1912. self-sufficiency, the exhaustion of living A year later she wrote, “For a time I off the land, a desire for fairness, and felt very rebellious and very unwilling the struggle to maintain dignity despite to waste any more time or strength in dire conditions. trying to make this particular part Henderson wrote candidly of the desert rejoice. Whether TOP LE FT: about suffering low moods Caroline Henderson wisely or not I do not know, we’ve and impatience (such as when decided to try our fortunes here in her graduation she asked her husband to get one more year.” Sporadic prospercap and gown. iodine for a frostbitten foot at ous years on the farm encouraged B OTTOM LE FT: the general store 30 miles away, the family to stick it out. “The Caroline and Will and he returned with sardines fascination of being so near the Henderson on their instead). She often felt isolatbeginning of things, of finding wedding day. ed on the farm, sometimes ourselves not quite mastered by RI GHT: Henderson not seeing passersby for days, various calamities, has held us. We in Texas County, and she sometimes went years have always felt that if we could Oklahoma. without going into a town. Doubt hold out for a few more years we was ever-present, and they should succeed; our homestead worried about failure when droughts, would really become a home,” she wrote blizzards, hail storms or grasshoppers in July 1913 to the editor of Ladies’ got the best of the crop. “We are hoping World Magazine.

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but the worst was yet to come. Dozens of dust storms had choked the Great Plains by the time alums would have read Henderson’s article, but it was a phenomenon that people in the East would soon experience firsthand. In the same month Henderson’s Alumnae to the house without a coating of dust Quarterly article was published, a was impossible, and no effort to seal two-mile-high “roller” (as High Plains windows or doors (even with sheets locals called them) of more than 350 coated with kerosene) was completely million tons of topsoil swept across the effective; even the butter inside the nation, coating Boston, New York and refrigerator would be coated with it.

Washington.

She swept the “silt-like deposit” out of The New York Times on May 12, the bathtub and off the kitchen floor 1934, described five hours of “half light,” where it was thick enough at times like a partial eclipse due to dust that to form ripples. “Nothing that you “seemed to have lodged itself in the eyes see or hear or read will be likely to and throats of weeping and coughing exaggerate the physical discomfort or New Yorkers.” The Springfield Union material losses due to these storms,” (MA) headline read: “New England she wrote in March 1936. Thousands of Skies Darkened as Storm Is Whirled people were sickened or killed by ‘dust Here from Parched Farm Lands.” pneumonia’ during the Dust Bowl.

The captain of a ship off Nantucket Now in his early 70s, Grandstaff remarked that the gray air reminded spent summers on the family’s farm him of sailing off Africa, where the from fifth grade through high school.

Sahara Desert sand blew hundreds of He chopped wood, fed the chickens, miles out to sea. At Mount Holyoke, collected eggs and occasionally drove they might have wondered if the the tractor. He gained an appreciation Hendersons’ own acres were among the for how difficult life was for his eerie “red” snow drifts in the grandparents and mother. “It’s winter of 1934-35, and in the hard land, it’s the toughest. … dust they swept from porches.

We are hoping They lived on the rawer edge As farmers despaired, that the years to of things.” No matter how and the federal government come may prove much they prayed, tightened rolled out relief efforts and that our faith in the their belts, or planted trees as soil conservation schemes future of our big windbreaks, there was little (both of which the Henderlonely country was the Hendersons could do about sons embraced, in spirit not mistaken. the weather or crop prices. “In and practice), some East Caroline Boa Henderson, nothing that we can produce Coast publications saw fit in a letter to classmate Rose Alden here is there at present the to chastise those who were slightest chance of any return suffering. In her Alumnae ” on our labor. Yet we keep on working — Quarterly piece, Henderson took really harder than ever,” she wrote in umbrage with the idea that farmers the Atlantic Monthly in 1933. “But of were sitting back and taking governall our losses in recent years the most ment handouts (some programs paid distressing is the loss of our self-rethem to let their fields lie fallow). She spect. How can we feel that our work took ownership for the role farmers here has any dignity or importance played in their own fates, as she did when the world places so low a value many times in her writing. “The on the products of our toil? We are demands of the soil itself for fair humiliated,” she wrote. treatment, for intelligent tillage and In her Alumnae Quarterly piece, maintenance of fertility impress upon Henderson called the early 1930s a sensitive minds the discipline of a “period of almost chaotic darkness,” certain primitive justice,” she wrote.

Courtesy David E. Grandstaff, Eleanor Grandstaff Collection (3)

Almost chaotic darkness Henderson wrote some of the most vivid accounts of the American experience at that moment in history, drawing a portrait of those who stayed on their farms and struggled to survive. Some of the colorful correspondence with Alden formed the basis for her “Letters from the Dust Bowl” published from 1931 to 1937 in the Atlantic Monthly.

Standing with one foot in the pulverized soil of the Oklahoma panhandle, and the other among the East Coast intelligentsia, Henderson had a uniquely appealing voice.

In a letter to Alden in December 1931, Henderson downplayed her success in landing in the high profile magazine. “It really seemed as if someone ought to try to suggest the human side of the wheat situation and it was, I think, only a fortunate accident that caused the acceptance of so matter-of-fact a narrative,” she wrote. Henderson wrote for the Atlantic Monthly, in large part, to offer a more realistic picture of the independent farmer who she felt, up to that point, had been mischaracterized as living off the “free bounty of the earth.” Despite the fact that many readers might have disagreed with her up to that point, Henderson didn’t shy away from topics such as unfairness in agricultural pricing and the dire consequences for farmers as each day dawned with more blasting wind, 120-degree heat and wilting drought.

“Her writing is very direct, very evocative. When she talks about the Dust Bowl, all the privations come through,” says David Grandstaff, a geochemist at Temple University and Henderson’s grandson. She described living with handkerchiefs tied over their faces and Vaseline coating their nostrils in an attempt to avoid inhaling irritating dust. Getting water or milk

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Lessons from the Dust Bowl In reality, several factors converged longed for rain. After reminiscing to cause the Dust Bowl — some due about their years of relative abundance to human activities and others due to in the mid-1920s, she wrote, “Yet now extreme climatic variations. “The Dust our daily physical torture, confusion of Bowl happened for a perfect storm set mind, gradual wearing down of courage, of reasons,” says Alan Werner, Mount seem to make that long continued hope Holyoke professor of geology and climate look like a vanishing dream. … We change specialist. The first decades dream of the faint gurgling sound of dry of the 20th century were wetter than soil sucking in the grateful moisture average on the semi-arid Great Plains, he of the early or later rains; of the fresh says, which gave settlers an unrealistic green of sprouting wheat or barley, the picture of its suitability for agriculreddish bronze of springing rye. But we ture. The adage “rain follows the plow” waken to another day of wind and dust seemed more fact than folklore, and and hopes deferred.” thousands more people flocked to the In May of 1936 Wallace responded, area. Government incentives and higher praising Henderson’s contribution to crop prices during World War I also national “understanding of some of encouraged farmers to plow under more our farm problems and the courage than 5 million acres of native with which farmers are grassland to grow wheat. meeting them.” He said “The big problem was she drew the attention The Dust Bowl that the natural vegetation of urban industrialhappened for a — which, over geologic ized Americans to the perfect storm time, had adapted to “changing, and in many set of reasons. that environment — was ways diminishing place Al Werner, replaced by fields. Where of agriculture in the Mount Holyoke the native vegetation was American economy and professor of geology and climate good at withstanding vision.” In that same change specialist drought, the plowed fields month, in the Atlantic ” were not,” says Werner. The Monthly, Henderson Oklahoma Panhandle was responded to a question never a temperate place (Henderson on the minds of many outsiders: “Why wrote even in the early years about not pick up and leave as so many fierce blizzards and crippling heat), others have done? It is a fair question but weather patterns shifted in the late but a hard one to answer. … To leave 1920s to worsen the heat and drought. voluntarily — to break all these closely Thirsty crops withered and died, and knit ties for the sake of a possibly then the winds came. Without the greater comfort elsewhere seems like deeply rooted grasses that held soil and defaulting on our task. We may have moisture in past droughts, the fertile to leave. … But I think I can never go top soil simply blew away. willingly or without pain that as yet The physical reality of the seems unendurable.” drought and dust storms caused Grandstaff recalls the tight-knit mental anguish as fields and futures group his grandparents were loath to evaporated. In a 1935 letter to U.S. abandon. They helped each other with Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. crops and children and went caroling Wallace, Henderson described the from house to house during the holiworsening conditions as her family days; the glow of distant farmhouses

was always a comfort to his grandmother on the lonely plains. “They developed strong bonds with neighbors, and she appreciated the community,” he says. Besides, even for tough, resourceful people like the Hendersons, prospects were limited elsewhere, says Grandstaff. The nation was still gripped by the Great Depression, and neighbors who migrated elsewhere, mainly California, were met with suspicion and

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discrimination. Many were settled into camps, while others were homeless.

Will Henderson was remarkably handy, remembers his grandson, and Caroline could stretch a penny further than anyone — and had a memorable toughness. “She was very strong-willed,” says Grandstaff. In the mid-1930s, the Hendersons’ dream of living a full, abundant life was nearly gone, but they persevered — surviving on stored grain

TO P:

Caroline and Will Henderson at their home in Texas County, Oklahoma.

BOT TO M:

Arthur Rothstein, Library of Congress; top: courtesy David E. Grandstaff, Eleanor Grandstaff Collection

Severe wind erosion made this farm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, uninhabitable.

and what little they could harvest, while clearing dust from their eyes and beds.

“They stuck it out for a long time,” says Grandstaff. Back then, Henderson wrote, “We can’t help questioning whether the traits we would rather think of as courage and perseverance are not actually recklessness and inertia. … We long for the garden and little chickens, the trees and birds and wild flowers of the years gone by,” she said. “They really loved nature, but the terrible conditions seriously affected her. It was pretty awful,” says Grandstaff.

The Hendersons remained on the farm, and conditions began to improve with the end of the Dust Bowl in 1940. They were rewarded, in a way, for keeping to the path they had forged decades earlier, but the experience had taken a toll. Some years that followed were a financial boon, but anxiety and ailments were ever-present. Will died on the farm in 1966, and Caroline died five months later. Their grandson still owns the land, but it was never again tilled, as was Caroline’s wish.

Henderson wrote in the 1934 Alumnae Quarterly, “It does not seem unreasonable to me to hope that people so constrained by the very conditions of their lives to value honest labor, fair dealing, improved means of production, and a just distribution of the earth’s bounty should exert a compelling influence in bringing in a new day of justice and opportunity for our own America and for the world.” Her “Letters from the Dust Bowl” in the Atlantic Monthly did that by communicating farmers’ plight in a way others had not. And they were, then as now, “lessons from the Dust Bowl” about people and nature, conflict, idealism, versatility and the supremacy of weather and climate.

Nearly a century later, climatic conditions and those who endure them are again in the news as many farmers are enduring either flooding or drought.

The high plains farming region is now planted in furrows, buffered by millions of trees, and heavily irrigated by deep aquifers, but its future (along with many

marginal farming regions around the world) is not secure. Climatologists predict a drier future for many of the Dust Bowl states due to human-caused climate change. That means warmer temperatures and more dust storms, particularly in the Southwest and on the Southern Plains.

Climate expert Al Werner warns that, despite advances made since the Dust Bowl, many farmers would likely not be able to irrigate their way out of such a drought. The Ogallala Aquifer, which lies beneath eight Great Plains states and waters more than a quarter of the nation’s farmlands, is being depleted rapidly. “Some of that water is very old, and it’s not being replenished anywhere near the way it used to be,” he says. “It’s not sustainable.

It’s likely in the future we’ll be facing more Dust Bowl conditions.”

“If there are any definite reasons for farmers to be hopeful, they would seem to lie in their habitual capacity for keeping at work in spite of failure and loss, their lifelong training in facing hard facts, their comparative adaptability,” Henderson wrote to Alden in 1932.

At that time she and her family were fighting dust and facing a dismal future.

They still had no radio, telephone, running water, modern refrigeration or lighting, but they had “shining memories to brighten gloomy days, and friendships beyond our deserving,” she wrote. “Perhaps in what many people would count ignoble poverty, we are rich after all.”

Heather Baukney Hansen ’94 is an independent reporter splitting her time between Colorado and Cambridge (U.K.). Her most recent books explore wildfire in the American West and the environmental history of the United States.

WEB EXCLUSIVE

Read the original Alumnae Quarterly article and Caroline Henderson’s letters at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/dustbowl.

Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly

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F R OM T H E A R C H I V E S

ON DI S PL AY

T H E N A N D NOW

A PL AC E OF OU R OW N

MoHomeMemories A Late Start Mount Holyoke’s response to the 1916 polio epidemic I N T H E S U M M E R O F 1 9 1 6 , an outbreak of poliomyelitis, more commonly known as polio or infant paralysis, swept the northeastern and mid-atlantic United States. Health authorities announced the epidemic in Brooklyn, New York, in June, and by the end of the month there were 646 reported cases.

With hospitals continuing to report new cases throughout the summer, College President Mary Woolley led the decision to delay the start

1916 — to date the only time the event has been canceled. The annual meeting of the Alumnae Association, which at the time took place on campus during Founder’s Day, was instead held in June.

By the end of the year, there were more than 27,000 reported cases of polio-related paralysis nationwide, 7,000 of which were fatal.

Massachusetts reported 1,926 cases in 1916, with 117 in Holyoke alone.

At the time, doctors knew little about the epidemiology and treat-

“

On account of the prevalence of infantile paralysis throughout the East, the opening of the College in 1916 was deferred until October 5, a fortnight later than the scheduled time.

As the disease was still epidemic in Holyoke, it was decided to omit the Founder’s Day celebration of October 24.

Trustees freezing ice cream for students gathered at Mary Lyon's grave on Founder's Day, circa 1925–1935

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ment of polio, but efforts to contain it included quarantining the infected, closing public places such as movie theaters, schools and swimming pools, and disinfecting known contaminated areas.

Upon finally arriving at school, Chase wrote, “We were to make up the time lost by losing our single holidays and a week at Easter.”

Woolley recorded the news in her 1916–1917 President’s Report.

Read an excerpt at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/polio.

— B Y K A R E N C O R D AY

Courtesy MHC Archives and Special Collections

of classes at Mount Holyoke in an effort to protect the community from the highly contagious virus. In a September 7 diary entry, amid descriptions of South Hadley weather, trips to Springfield in a friend’s car, and some “nice but smelly” cats making an appearance in her zoology lab, Adaline Chase, class of 1919, noted “college has been postponed until Oct 5.”

In addition to starting the semester a few weeks late, President Woolley also called off the traditional Founder’s Day celebration in

— P R E S I D E N T M A RY WO O L L E Y

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FR O M TH E A R CH I V E S

Dressed for Activism Votes for Women sash

Laura Shea, courtesy MHC Archives and Special Collections

This white cotton dress and handcrafted “Votes for Women” sash were part of the student-curated exhibit “Mount Holyoke Votes: The History of Student Activism for Voting Rights” on view in Archives and Special Collections in the fall.

The dress, part of Mount Holyoke’s Historic Dress Collection, belonged to Louise Dunbar, class of 1916, president of the Equal Suffrage League on campus.

The sash, constructed from paper and cotton, belonged to Florence Tuttle Chandler, class of 1916. Tuttle and two of her classmates made their sashes for the College’s Suffrage Day on May 9, 1916, and marched in a band to promote their cause. More than 300 Mount Holyoke students were members of the Equal Suffrage League at that time.

Last summer Lynk interns Eva Jeffers ’20, Ellie Norman ’20 and Gabrielle Spano ’21 researched materials in the archives, interviewing alums and assembling the exhibit, which explored student activism on campus for voting rights from the 1890s through the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and included other objects, such as buttons, personal letters, photographs and printed materials.

The full exhibit can be viewed online at alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/votingrights.

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Follow Mount Holyoke Archives and Special Collections on Instagram at mhcarchives.

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O N D I S PL AY

SCUL PT U RE

Saint Sebastian Statue N E S T L E D I N the Abbey Interfaith Sanctuary sits a statue of Saint Sebastian.

Standing at roughly 36½ inches tall, the statue is made of wood with gold gilt and is estimated to have been constructed in the early 17th century.

In 2000 Charlotte Huston Reischer Clark ’51 gifted the piece to the College in memory of Marianne Katscher of the former Czechoslovakia. Katscher, the cousin of Clark’s husband, George, was accepted to Mount Holyoke with the incoming class of 1943 but was unable to attend, as the Nazis arrived in her region a week before she was to leave for South Hadley. According to the Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, Katscher died in 1941. Charlotte Clark died in January 2019.

The statue had been in Clark’s family for many generations and held significant sentimental value to her. Now displayed in a place where the community can come for reflection, meditation and a moment of peace, the statue — representing a saint remembered to have been martyred for his beliefs — is, according to Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life Annette McDermott, an expression of “an interfaith relationship that connects a family member through marriage across differences … and adds one more fascinating dimension to the alumnae community.”

— B Y J E S S AY E R

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Sage Shea

Holding beliefs

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TH E N A N D N OW

T HE N

N OW

1940s

2020

Also referred to as Gracious Living or simply Gracious, Gracious Dinners were held every Wednesday night and Sunday afternoon in the residence hall dining rooms and were more formal than other meals. First-year handbooks throughout the decades specified that the dinners were by candlelight and followed by tea or coffee in the living rooms.

Students were encouraged to invite faculty and staff members to dine with them. President Roswell G. Ham was a frequent Gracious Dinner guest.

Students were expected to dress formally, with stockings and heels required. By the 1980s, the dress code was dropped, and Gracious Dinners became special occasions throughout the semesters.

Twice each semester around holidays, the Dining Commons is transformed for Gracious Dinner with string lights and ice sculptures.

Gracious Dinners are announced with flyers at the Commons entrance.

Faculty and staff members often attend Gracious Dinners with their families. Dinners are still candlelit affairs, with a candle and tablecloth on each table throughout the Commons. Students eagerly await these evenings, which offer a special menu showcasing locally sourced food, such as roast prime rib from Austin Brothers Valley Farm in Belchertown and mashed potatoes from Jekanowski Farms in Hadley.

Image from the Alumnae Quarterly's first color advertisement featuring Mount Holyoke-themed dinner plates, May 1931

WEB EXCLUSIVE

Watch a video of a Gracious Dinner in the Dining Commons at alumnae. mtholyoke.edu/graciousdinner.

— B Y E M I LY K R A K O W ’ 2 0

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“

2009 was this Jamaican’s first time seeing snow.

My student advisor came to my room to let me know it was snowing, and I was really happy to have a community that celebrated this first time with me.

—CANACE MORGAN ’13

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Joanna Chattman

A PL ACE O F OU R OWN

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M Y VO I CE

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Because the march — for access, opportunity, progress — goes on.

One college.

One community.

One goal: To ensure that Mount Holyoke forever shall be.

Community Challenge:

4,000 $ 400,000 DONORS

mtholyoke.edu/go/march4mhc

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50 College Street, South Hadley, MA 01075

“It was a very interdisciplinary experience for us, and it 100% inspired me to go back to the Museum for the next two-and-ahalf years.”

—Relyn Myrthil ’19. Read more on page 22

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