Mills Quarterly fall 2002

Mills Quarterly Fall 2002 Alumnae Magazine

Diana O’Hehir

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Iranian Painting

“More Highways and Fewer Trees”

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ROBERT WORKMAN

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JOHN ROBERT WILLIAMS

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Mills Quarterly

CONTENTS FALL 2002 10

Diana O’Hehir: Range and Depth of Imagination

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Three Views of Mills

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Is the Future Still a Hoax? Stephanie Mills May Have New Answers

Josephine Carson

Diana O’Hehir, Professor Emerita

David M. Brin, MA ’75

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Looking Eastward: An Art Historian Considers Iranian Painting Eleanor Sims, ’64, PhD

D E PA R T M E N T S 3

Letters

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Inside Mills

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Mills Matters

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Alumnae Action

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Annual Report

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Calendar

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Passages

Facing page: “The Birds Assemble Before the Hoopoe,” folio 11r of the Mantiq al-Tayr (The Concourse of the Birds) by Farid al-Din ’Attar, painted in Safavid Isfahan before 1609 by Habiballah of Mashhad. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund, 63.210.11, colors and gold on paper, painting 18.5 (21.5 maximum) x 11.5 cm.

For the accompanying article by Eleanor Sims, ’64, PhD, see page 19.

Photo by Ernst J. Grube.

ABOUT THE COVER: Although the MacArthur Freeway, constructed in the early 1960s, did not take much acreage from the Mills campus, its presence has degraded campus life by the constant noise and the effect on air quality. Since her student days, Stephanie Mills has been concerned with issues of overpopulation and its effect on the environment. Please see article on page 16. Cover photo by HJW Geospatial, Inc.

Mills Quarterly Volume XCI Number 2 (USPS 349-900) Fall 2002 Alumnae Director Anne Gillespie Brown, ’68 Editor David M. Brin, MA ’75 dbrin@mills.edu Design and Art Direction Benjamin Piekut, MA ’01 Summer Intern Cara Johnson, MFA ‘03 Quarterly Advisory Board Robyn Fisher, ’90, Marian Hirsch, ’75 Jane Cudlip King, ’42, Jane Redmond Mueller, ’68 Ruth Okimoto ’78, Cathy Chew Smith, ’84 Ramona Lisa Smith, ’01, MBA, ’02, Sharon K. Tatai, ’80 Heidi Wachter, ’01 Class Notes Writers Barb Barry, ’94, Laura Compton, ’93 Barbara Bennion Friedlich, ’49, Sally Mayock Hartley, ’48 Heather Hanley, ’00, Cathy Chew Smith, ’84 Special Thanks to Jane Cudlip King, ’42 Board of Governors President Karen May, ’86 Vice Presidents Judy Greenwood Jones, ’60 Jane Cudlip King, ’42 Treasurer Bevo Zellick, ’49 Alumnae Trustees Judy Greenwood Jones, ’60 Sara Ellen McClure, ’81 Sharon K. Tatai, ’80 Faculty Representative: Ruth Saxton, MA ’72 Student Representative: Erin Mandeson, ’03 Governors Lynne Bantle, ’74, Micheline Beam, ‘72 Harriet Fong Chan, ‘98, Leone Evans, MA ’45 Lynn Eve Fortin, ’87, Linda Jaquez-Fissori, ’92 Leah Mac Neil, MA ’51, Rachael E. Meny, ‘92 Patricia Lee Mok, ’81, Nangee Warner Morrison, ‘63 Jennifer E. Moxley, ’93, Toni Renee Vierra, ‘98 Sarah Washington-Robinson, ’72, Sheryl Wooldridge, ‘77 Regional Governors Joyce Menter Wallace, ’50, Eastern Great Lakes Joan Alper, ’62, Middle Atlantic Albertina Padilla, ’78, Middle California Adrienne Bronstein, ’86, Middle California Judith Smrha, ’87, Midwest Linda Cohen Turner, ’68, North Central Brandy Tuzon Boyd, ’91, Northern California Katie Dudley Chase, ’61, Northeast Gayle Rothrock, ’68, Northwest Louise Hurlbut, ’75, Rocky Mountains Colleen Almeida Smith, ’92, South Central Julia Almazan, ’92, Southern California Dr. Candace Brand Kaspers, ’70, Southeast Ann Markewitz, ’60, Southwest The Mills Quarterly (USPS 349-900) is published quarterly in April, July, October, and January by the Alumnae Association of Mills College, Reinhardt Alumnae House, 5000 MacArthur Boulevard, Oakland, CA 94613.

Periodicals postage paid at Oakland, CA and at additional mailing office(s). Postmaster: Send address changes to the Mills Quarterly, Alumnae Association of Mills College, P.O. Box 9998, Oakland, CA 94613-0998.

Statement of Purpose The purpose of the Mills Quarterly is to report the activities of the Alumnae Association and its branches; to reflect the quality, dignity, and academic achievement of the College family; to communicate the exuberance and vitality of student life; and to demonstrate the world-wide-ranging interests, occupations, and achievements of alumnae.

Letters to the Editor Betty Jane Narver and Public Policy I’ve been interested and pleased by news about Mills initiating the Institute for Civic Leadership and the MBA program. These are excellent and welcome programs, but I hasten to observe that civic leadership had been Mills’ hallmark for a very long time.

Nearly half a century ago, when I was at Mills, the college was fostering that unique blend of insight, intellect, energy, and fortitude that has served so many communities around the world.

This has been brought forcefully to my mind by the passing of Betty Jane Logan Narver ’56, reported in your spring issue. The death of my very good friend prompted me to search my personal records to share with her family. I found information there that also relates to Mills.

At Mills, Betty Jane, known then as BJ, was editor of the Mills Weekly. She also took her degree in that old-fashioned discipline, philosophy. Her interest in ideas, ethics, and logic were not far, however, from the public policy issues that framed her career. Immediately after college, she spent a year as a teacher at the Pennsylvania Training School (for delinquent youth). There, she called on her own Mills experience to introduce change in that institution’s rigid and counterproductive policies.

She started a school newspaper. In a letter to me in 1956, she described how working on the newspaper gave the boys and girls, who were housed separately, a chance to work together for the first time, in a formal productive atmosphere that everyone found remarkably soothing. While studying Chinese at the University of Washington a few years later, and with two young children, she also began working on behalf of schools and libraries in Seattle. With that same intelligence, energy, and commitment, she went on to become a dynamo of good public policy in Seattle and, indeed, in Washington State and the

entire Northwest, as head of the Seattle Library Board and director of the University of Washington’s Public Policy Institute.

Betty Jane’s sudden death reminds me again of how critical good, sound education is to the quality of life we enjoy and how grateful I am to Mills for nurturing Betty Jane’s unique abilities.

Barbara Sweetland Smith ’58 (For an additional note on Betty Jane Narver, please see Class Notes, 1956.)

Eucalyptus—Friend or Foe? I read with great pleasure Jane Mueller’s article, “Before Mills Hall.”

I noted her description of the natural state dotted with live oaks. Then I read the Audubon Society January ’02 magazine calling the imported eucalyptus a predatory weed and worse. Has thought been given to restoring a natural native planting rather than trying to save the virus stricken eucalyptus?

When I smell eucalyptus, I do evoke Mills, but a destructive icon, I can do without.

Mary Sellers, ’45 (member of the Missouri Native Plant Society) Letter to her Niece Sarah F. Drew, ’84, is administrative officer at the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen, Denmark. This fall, her niece, Alicia Byer, entered Mills as a freshwoman. Sarah’s sister asked her to write Alicia a letter about her experiences at Mills, and here it is.

Dear Alicia, I’m so excited that you will be going to Mills! Your mom asked me to tell you about what Mills was like when I went there, so I thought I’d share some of my experiences with you.

Like you, I was not interested in going to Mills at first. I applied there and to U.C. Berkeley. I didn’t get into Berkeley, but I did get into Mills, so I

went there as the “second best” place.

I planned on transferring in my sophomore year to Berkeley.

The day I went to Mills, in August 1980, I brought with me a bunch of suitcases and a big army footlocker. I thought I was very cool in jeans, T-shirt, and a big gangster hat. I took a taxi from the Oakland airport (my first time in a taxi and all alone!) and when we pulled up in front of my dorm, Ege Hall, the driver left me at the bottom of the hill with this huge pile of luggage. I had no idea how I was ever going to get it and me to my room!

At that moment three wonderful women, Marian Murphy, Linda Treffinger, and Elisa Cafferata appeared out of nowhere and helped me lug my stuff up. They have remained good friends to this day. We did everything together. Linda and I decided to join the crew team. We got up at 5:30 four mornings a week and drove to Lake Merritt for crew practice, then back to the dorm by 8 a.m. to shower, change, and eat breakfast before classes at 9:00.

I took acting, calculus, biology, Western history, and French that first semester. I had an electric typewriter to do my reports on (very advanced)! I was terrible at calculus, and barely managed to get a B. I liked my other courses, especially history. The second week of class the teacher invited me out to lunch and told me she thought I was a great student and wanted to hear all about my life!

My friends and I liked best going over to Berkeley to get pizza, see movies, or buy something from the many street vendors. The Rocky Horror Picture Show, shown at midnight in Berkeley, was a big favorite.

I had applied and was accepted to Berkeley as a transfer student my sophomore year, but by the time the acceptance letter came, I laughed and thought “who would leave this for a school of 20,000?!”

Instead, I decided to participate in

an exchange with Mills’ sister school, Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. I enjoyed the new experience of living on the east coast and saw my first snow fall that winter. I also met Jim, whom as you know, I later married. Although I loved my teachers and classes at Mt. Holyoke, I missed Mills’ relaxed and friendly atmosphere.

I came back for my junior year and decided to major in political science. I became a lifeguard at the pool to earn some money and took a lot of seminar classes with only five or six other students. I really wanted to go overseas, so I concentrated on my French.

That year my buddies and I went around campus wearing baggy army surplus pants and florescent colored sweatshirts (they were really hideous and I have no idea why we did this).

One weekend we all Henna’ed our hair, and since mine was already red, I looked like a stoplight coming from a distance until the color washed out about a month later. We also continued the long and revered tradition of sneaking into the pool late at night to go skinny-dipping. (At that time the

pool was right next to the Tea Shop with only a low fence around it.)

My senior year I was the photo editor of the newspaper, while Elisa was the editor. I spent hours in the dark room developing film and helping edit the paper and writing articles. I also got up the guts to take Calculus 2. (I wanted to prove that I could do it after my horrible experience my freshman year.) I found it ridiculously easy and enjoyed the teacher a lot. Everyone else in the class was freaking out and hated it. At first I couldn’t understand—had I somehow become a math whiz? Then I figured out that that I had changed. In my time at Mills I had lost my fear of math and gained self-confidence in my abilities to do anything I wanted to. I credit Mills, and my mom, with giving me the skills and confidence in my own abilities.

It was a wonderful time.

I hope you make good friends like I did and have many wonderful adventures at Mills! I can’t wait to come visit and hear your experiences and see all the changes that have gone on at Mills.

Love, Sarah

On this Issue Throughout the years Mills College has been graced by great teachers; today that tradition is as strong as ever. In this issue, Stephanie Mills remembers some of her inspirational teachers, as does Eleanor Sims in her article on Iranian painting. Josephine Carson writes about Professor Emerita Diana O’Hehir, whose many students remember her fondly, and who, in turn, are remembered fondly by Professor O’Hehir in her article.

We will continue this theme of great teachers in the winter 2003 issue; several students will express their memories of professors who made significant differences in their lives.

Because of Mills’ small size, students can learn from faculty in deep, intimate ways that result in an education of quality and in life-long connections that change lives, and ultimately, change our society as well.

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inside mills MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT Fittingly, in our sesquicentennial year we have the largest enrollment in recent history.

Adding up new and returning undergraduate and graduate students we have enrolled 1204 students this year. Congratulations to the Alumnae Admission Representatives, to the Office of Admission, and the Graduate Studies Office for their great work.

Professor Marianne Sheldon, dean of graduate studies, welcomed entering graduate students with information about their class. The 219 new graduate students are a select group, many with already established careers as performers, artists, writers, teachers, and composers. Twelve are in the art department, seven in computer science, ten in dance, 90 in education, 35 in English, 12 in the MBA program, 14 in music, and 35 in the post-baccalaureate pre-medical program. Some are at Mills to embark in new directions. For example, one of the students in the post-bac pre-med program is a tenor who studied opera before coming to Mills. An entering education student completed medical school and decided to become a teacher. The entering class is 78 percent women and 22 percent men; 11 percent Asian, seven percent African American, three percent Latino, one percent Native American, and seven percent multi-racial. While 184 are from California, the rest of the students come from 20 states and seven countries. This class includes what may be a first in the history of the College: one of the entering post-bac pre-med students is the father of a current Mills undergraduate and of a member of the Mills class of 1997.

Finally, I wish to send personal thanks to all the donors who are listed in the Annual Giving Report found in this issue of the Quarterly.

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BRUCE COOK

At opening ceremony for new students on August 21, 2002, Avis Hinkson, dean of undergraduate admission, welcomed entering undergraduate students with information about their class. There are 138 freshwomen, 106 transfer students, and seven Network students (working women who take their classes during evenings and weekends). The new students come from the length and breadth of California and from 26 states and three other countries: 14 from Washington state, nine from Oregon, seven from Texas, six from Minnesota, three from Hawaii, one each from Alaska, Utah, New York City, Taiwan, France, and Japan.

Their academic qualifications are impressive, including membership in national honor societies, dean’s lists, National Merit Scholars, AP Scholars, Golden State Award winners, and more. They are creative, athletic, active volunteers, and diverse. Their ages range from 17 to 72! More than 37 percent identify themselves as women of color, at least 14 are moms, and 15 are Bent Twigs, including one following in her daughter’s footsteps at Mills. They speak 21 different languages including Cantonese, German, Persian, three different African languages, Polish, and Spanish. Among their previous professional positions are paramedic, associate film producer, licensed hypnotherapist, flight attendant, sushi chef, television news reporter, and two military officers. There are also accomplished scholar athletes who have played soccer, lacrosse, rugby, tennis, volleyball, run cross country and track, swum, and participated in kick-boxing and polo. One of our new students holds titles for surf kayaking—first in the United States and second in the world. Six students from other institutions join eight Mills students to participate in the second year of the Institute for Civic Leadership. Two are from U.C. Berkeley, one each from Vanderbilt, Rutgers, Occidental, and one from the University of Zagreb in Croatia.

Professor Marianne Sheldon, dean of graduate studies, (left), President Janet L. Holmgren, and Dean of Admission Avis Hinkson at the welcome ceremony for new students on August 21, 2002.

S E S Q U I C E N T E N N I A L C A M PA I G N N E W S

WOMEN’S PHILANTHROPY DISCUSSED AT MILLS MAJOR GIFTS COMMITTEE MEETING

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he Mills Major Gifts Committee, chaired by Trustee Pauline Langsley, ’49, met in May 2002 to review progress of solicitations for the Mills Sesquicentennial Campaign. A guest speaker, Andrea Kaminski, former executive director of the Women’s Philanthropy Institute and mother of Mills student Alice Kaminski, ’03, engaged the group in a lively discussion of women as philanthropists. In her presentation, Andrea reviewed “six C’s of Women’s Philanthropy,” adapted from Reinventing Fundraising: Realizing the Potential of Women’s Philanthropy by Sondra Shaw-Hardy and Martha A. Taylor, published by Jossey Bass Publishers, Inc. Shaw-Hardy and Taylor’s work is based on their research involving focus groups, discussions, and interviews with women donors to educational, civic, and religious organizations.

Major Gift Committee members agreed with many of the points. Do you?

CREATE Women want to create new solutions to old problems.

Women may create a whole new organization or a new program within an existing institution.

Women regard their giving like a birth—it takes time and it’s not easy. “I don’t have children so in philanthropy I am looking for a way to give something to the future the way parents give through their children.”

CHANGE Women use their financial power to effect change rather than to preserve the status quo.

Many women have felt injustice, inequity, and prejudice and want to

make things better for future generations.

Women give to support mission and vision more than out of a sense of gratitude or loyalty. “I really want to see social change. I want to see the systems change with my money.”

CONNECT Women first connect with a cause and an organization, and having this connection then commit financially to it.

Giving may solidify the relationship between donor and institution or cause.

Women want to feel needed. They want to see the human face their gift affects. “It’s like a child and you have a lifelong commitment and responsibility to that child.”

COLLABORATE Women, through their giving, become collaborators with providers and recipients.

Women prefer to work with others as part of a larger effort.

Women feel that collaboration can avoid duplication, competition, and waste.

“It feels better giving with other women, because we have control of where the money goes.”

COMMIT Women demonstrate their willingness and capacity for commitment through both voluntary service and financial gifts.

Women often give to the organizations they already have volunteer experience with. “I’ve been involved for a long time…. I’ve given time….

and we’re always trying to figure out how to raise money.”

CELEBRATE Women like to celebrate their accomplishments. Events make giving fun.

Use events to recognize leaders and celebrate, not just to raise money.

“Giving money is fun when you can make things happen with it!”

An important “C” of Mills philanthropy is Persis Coleman, Mills Seminary Class of ’97, who is shown here (on the right) with Rosalind Keep, ’03. Miss Coleman was a Trustee of the College and a mainstay of the Alumnae Association. Today she is celebrated and remembered through the Persis Coleman Lounge in the Student Union, a gathering place for commuting students. Rosalind Keep is best known as the founder of the Eucalyptus Press at Mills. The photo was taken in 1937.

Miss Coleman was wearing her mother’s wedding dress from 1852, the year of the founding of the Young Ladies Seminary in Benicia, which became Mills College.

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inside mills SESQUICENTENNIAL CAMPAIGN ROUNDUP Endowment For Students: The Frank and Margaret Lucas Scholarship Fund—$1 million for undergraduate financial aid.

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s of June 30, 2002, the Sesquicentennial Campaign total surpassed $72 million, an increase of $12 million since May 31, 2001. Of the total received, $49.7 million has been applied toward our $52 million goal for current funds and endowments. Facilities and technology accounts for $19.6 million, with a goal of $48 million.

These results are remarkable given the difficult social and economic climate experienced in 2001–2002. Here are some highlights of gifts and pledges received last year. We have written about some of them in previous issues of the Quarterly.

For the curriculum: Multicultural Engagement: Mills and Oakland (MEMO), an $800,000 multiyear grant from the Irvine Foundation.

For campus buildings: $1,200,000 in new commitments for the new science building. We still need $11.6 million to achieve our $15 million goal. $407,577 from the Class of 1951 for Music Building renovation, naming the Ensemble Room and Courtyard.

We still need $15.7 million to achieve our $18 million goal. $1 million in new commitments for the social science renovation, bringing the total already in hand to $1.6 million toward our $3.3 million goal.

Endowment for Faculty: Completion of funding for the Rhoda Goldman Professorship in Environmental Science.

The John and Martha Davidson Professorship, which can be appointed in any subject area.

The Lauren Speeth Lectureship in Ethics, Leadership, and Entrepreneurship, one of the five subject areas in the MBA curriculum.

Mills Sesquicentennial Campaign Progress Since 2000 (in millions)

$72.0

$52.0

$48.0

$50.5

$40.4 $32.6 $13.8 $15.2

Endowment and Current Funds

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A special thank you to the more than 9,000 donors and 90 estates that have given to Mills since the beginning of the Sesquicentennial Campaign!

$100

$61.0 $49.7

for

Some wonderful gifts have come in special purposes, such as: $50,000 to be used for landscaping improvements around El Campanil $3,000 to provide a discretionary fund for the Psychological Counseling Center in the Office of Student Life $60,000 from the Barrett Foundation to support undergraduate research awards, especially for topics related to women’s empowerment $5,000 from the LEF Foundation to support the Mills Art Museum exhibition by Korean artist Inwan Oh A bronze sculpture by Auguste Rodin for the Mills Art Museum, valued at $175,000 $10,000 for the Art Department equipment fund.

$19.6

Facilities

Total

August 2000 August 2001 June 2002 Goal

ORCHARD MEADOW REFURBISHED Orchard Meadow Hall reopened to returning students in August of 2002 after a year of renovations costing $2.75 million. Improvements include a new fully accessible front entrance, an elevator, updated bathrooms and electrical service—not to mention new paint. This fall, 57 percent of undergraduates and 10 percent of graduate students live on campus. First-year

students live together in Warren Olney Hall. Four nights a week, residents of Olney and Orchard Meadow are served dinner in the residence hall.

All students with meal plans may eat lunch in Founders’ Common and the Tea Shop. Architect for the Orchard Meadow renovation was Karen Fiene, AIA, who has worked on many other Mills projects.

SALLY RANDEL

KAREN FIENE

KAREN FIENE KAREN FIENE

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MILLS MATTERS

NEWS OF THE COLLEGE

New Faculty Amanda Davis joins the Mills faculty as assistant professor of creative writing. She is the author of Circling the Drain, a collection of stories that the New York Times called “a wellguided tour of scarred souls who’ve witnessed terrible things, and surprisingly, found odd bits of beauty in them,” and the Center for Book Culture dubbed “one of the best works of literature published in 2000.” A novel, Wonder When You’ll Miss Me, will be published by Harper Collins/Wm. Morrow in March of 2003. Davis is the recipient of a Tara Fellowship for the Short Story from the Heekin Foundation, a Shane Stevens Fiction Fellowship from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, a Teaching Fellowship from the Wesleyan

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Writers’ Conference, and residency fellowships from the Blue Mountain Center, the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, the Tyrone Guthrie Center, the MacDowell Colony, and the Corporation of Yaddo. Her short fiction has appeared in Story, Seventeen, McSweeney’s, and most recently in Best New American Voices 2001. Her nonfiction and book reviews have appeared in Esquire, Bookforum, BlackBook and Poets and Writers. Before joining the faculty at Mills, Davis taught writing at the 92nd Street Y in New York, at Brooklyn College, and at Yale University.

Anne Westwick (right), new assistant professor of dance, holds a BA in dramatic art and dance from the University of

California, Berkeley, and an MFA in choreography from Mills. She has danced in various theatrical venues including solo work for the Martha Graham Ensemble and the San Antonio Ballet. She has toured internationally with a production of The King and I and has worked on numerous

choreographic projects with her husband, Christopher Dolder.

The two recently co-choreographed an adaptation of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana in collaboration with the U.C. Berkeley Choral Ensemble and the University Symphony. In the past year, Westwick choreographed a 25-minute dance for U.C. Berkeley’s University Dance Theater, accompanied by the U.C. Symphony, as well as the second act of the full-length drama The Timestealers for the Wing and a Prayer Inter-generational Dance Company in Reno, Nevada. Westwick has been on the dance faculties of the 92nd Street Y in New York, Solano Community College, and the University of California, Berkeley.

Fifty-Fourth Japan-America Student Conference

Women’s Leadership Institute Honors Edna Mitchell and Gets New Head

Marina Li, ’02, (left), Gretchen Donaldson (left back), Jane Cassedy, ’37 (center), Professor Ruth Saxton, MA ’72, and Deepa Madhavan, MA ’99 (right) at a luncheon honoring the 68-year old Mills-JapanAmerica Student Conference relationship. Li organized the event to promote development of international affairs at Mills, recognizing how such international experiences deepened her interest in working in community both locally and globally. Li was sponsored by Eleanor Hadley, ’38, who attended JASC in 1936 and ’37 and Jane Cassedy, who participated in JASC in 1938. Li is helping lead the 55th JASC in Japan where delegates will explore the theme Civic Participation in a Globalizing Society.

Last May, the 2001–02 Visiting Scholars of the Women’s Leadership Institute paid tribute to outgoing WLI director Dr. Edna Mitchell by establishing the Edna Mitchell Collection at the Olin Library.

Alumnae of the WLI program have been invited to contribute books, monographs, articles, films, and other works that were developed during their residence at Mills.

At a farewell luncheon on May 1, attended by WLI alumnae from 1995 to the present, visiting scholars honored Dr. Mitchell’s tireless efforts in guiding the development of the WLI and in support of women’s scholarship, creativity, and leadership. After seven years at the helm of the WLI, Dr. Mitchell is now on a year-long sabbatical. When she returns to Mills, she plans to teach full-time in the education department.

Margo Okazawa-Rey has replaced Edna Mitchell as director of the Women’s Leadership Institute. She holds a master’s degree from Boston University’s School of Social Work and an EdD from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. Before coming to Mills, Dr. Okazawa-Rey was a professor of social work at California State University, San Francisco. In addition to serving as WLI director, Dr. Okazawa-Rey will teach two courses a year in our women’s studies program. She has published extensively in a number of areas including militarism and violence against women, multicultural education, and mixed race identity development. We are pleased to be able to rely on Dr. Okazawa-Rey’s scholarly interests, as well as her personal dedication to the advancement of women in society, to establish new connections between the WLI and curricular offerings in our women’s studies program.

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ALUMNAE ACTION Free Email for Life for Mills Alums We are pleased to offer all alumnae and alumni of Mills College the following free email services: A login name at Mills that stays with you wherever you go A Web-based email program accessible from any computer with a Web browser A mailbox (inbox) with additional folders for filing your email.

Ten megabytes of email storage An address directory of Mills alumnae who have signed up for this service.

You will be able to choose an address based on your name with an “@alumnae.mills.edu” suffix. Your name and email address will be viewable by other Mills alumnae who have signed up for this service, but not by the public.

If you are interested in signing up for this service, save this copy of your Quarterly! When you sign up, you will be asked to enter the identification code at the upper right of your mailing label (starts with an A or B followed by eight numbers). You will also be asked to enter your name, which must match the name we have for you in our database. (If you wish to use your preferred first name [“nickname”], please contact us in advance at <aamcrcds@ mills.edu> and we will add that name to our database.) To register for this service please visit the “Connections” page on the “Alumnae” section of the Mills College website <www.mills.edu/INTRO/AAMC/mills.aamc.connections.html>.

Welcome Barbecue For the second year in a row, the AAMC hosted a Welcome Barbecue for the entering freshwomen and transfer students, sponsored by the Alumnae Student Relations Committee and the Diversity Committee. Part of the Office of Student Life’s Orientation Week activities for new students, the event was held at Reinhardt Alumnae House on August 23 and drew approximately 150 students, many more than last year. The new students enjoyed hotdogs, hamburgers, vegieburgers, salads, and drinks in the living room and patio at Reinhardt House and took the time to meet each other and alumnae before moving on to a pool party at the Trefethen Aquatic Center. Vegieburgers were more popular with last year’s entering class.

N E W S O F T H E A L U M N A E A S S O C I AT I O N

AAMC Gives Mills College $955,000 Gift The Alumnae Association of Mills College is proud to report that the fiscal year 2001–2002 gift to Mills College was $955,000. Last year was a year of successes and challenges, both in terms of support for Mills College and in terms of redefining philanthropy across the country. Some of our loyal donors have faced large financial losses in the stock market and/or lost their jobs, yet many continued to make their gift to the Alumnae Fund even during these difficult times.

Our sincerest thanks to each donor who helped us to reach 41 percent participation this year—two percent over last year’s 39 percent. This increase was a real accomplishment!

This is Mills’ sesquicentennial year and the last year of the participation bonus challenge. We are working hard to increase our participation from 41 percent to 43 percent. When we accomplish this goal, we will have raised the undergraduate participation percentage from 36 percent to 43 percent in just three years. Quite a leap! Please continue your support and participation with a gift to the Alumnae Fund.

Corrections MILLS “POST-IT” NOTES

NEW ALUMNA TRUSTEE

These note pads show a eucalyptus branch and the motto “Remember who you are & what you represent.”

The lettering is green on yellow paper, and they come in pads of 50 at $2.00 each plus $1.00 shipping and handling for each order. Mail your check, payable to PAAMCC, to Barbara Hunter, 316 Laurel Avenue, Menlo Park, CA 94025-2819.

Sharon K. Tatai, ’80, was elected alumna trustee for a three-year term.

The three alumnae trustees serve as liaisons between the Board of Governors of the AAMC and the Board of Trustees of Mills College.

Sharon recently served as president of the AAMC and has served Mills and the Alumnae Association in many volunteer capacities.

The Quarterly regrets the misspelling of Lee Turner-Muecke’s name in the last issue. Dr. Turner-Muecke was one of the first four women to receive the EdD degree from Mills. Her dissertation examined mentoring relationships and their reciprocal benefits.

In last issue’s announcement of retiring faculty, the Quarterly incorrectly reported that Professor Emerita Chana Bloch will be teaching one course at Mills. She will be teaching two courses per year at Mills for the next three years.

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DIANA O’HEHIR: Range and Depth of Imagination

by Josephine Carson

D

iana O’Hehir is the author of five books of poetry. The most recent—Spells for Not Dying Again—was published in 1996 by Eastern Washington University Press. She is also author of two novels—I Wish This War Were Over and The Bride Who Ran Away, both published by Atheneum in the 1980s.

Her honors, which are legion, include a Guggenheim Award in fiction, an NEA fiction award, and the Poetry Society of America’s Di Castagnola Award for Home Free, her third collection of poetry.

Her PhD is from Johns Hopkins University, where she taught briefly in the 1940s. Much later, having moved to Berkeley, Diana established, in 1961, the first creative writing courses at Mills, where she taught for 32 years as head of the English department and the creative writing program, retiring in 1990, though continuing to teach part-time for two more years.

However, lists of these achievements, and there have been many others, don’t define the radical, exciting, and thoroughly American life of this essentially 20th century woman.

Living in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. area during World War II, Diana slowly evolved the radical political consciousness that led her to work in the labor movement.

The women friends she made who interested her most were all leftists, intellectually alive. She kept exciting company. It was in the CIO, (Congress of Industrial Organizations), that she met at last her fate—in the form of Melvin Fiske, who, following his return from duty with the Marines in the South Pacific in World War II, had begun writing for The Daily Worker. In 1947, they married and began a politically committed life together. This was during the McCarthy era in the United States, with its purges and trials, threats, and violence.

Diana became pregnant with her first child, Michael, during this period, never ceasing, nor did Mel, to work for the unions through the CIO. But within a few years the political tensions that led to the McCarthy inquisitions began and intensified. With the birth of their first child, these became intolerable. Ultimately, fearing they might be in danger of violence or arrest, or their child taken from them, Diana and Mel separated. Diana moved out of the Washington area, taking their son with her. Finally they were divorced. Mel Fiske always lamented his helplessness to protect them.

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Later both of them remarried and left the East Coast.

Diana settled with her new husband, Brendan O’Hehir, in Berkeley. Ultimately, Mel made Los Angeles his new home. Each of them had children in these new marriages.

Although they shared custody of Michael, they saw one another only once over a 30-year period. Diana continued to write and publish her work in a variety of periodicals, and from 1976 through 1996, her five books of poetry were published.

Before the publication of her first book of poems, in 1962, Diana began her long tenure at Mills. For 32 years she lived in the Bay Area, raised her sons, and gave birth to an astonishing amount of work, ultimately, in the 1980s, writing her first novel—I Wish This War Were Over—which was published in 1984, and brought her great acclaim. This is a war novel, conjuring up much of what Diana had lived with Mel in Washington.

Mel read it. It moved and deeply impressed him. He had separated from his second wife not long before that.

He was struck again with Diana’s originality and her poetic gifts. He wrote her a congratulatory letter that began a new correspondence between them. Diana had also separated from her spouse around that time, though never ceasing her creative work or her teaching.

Mel came to visit her. They knew what they knew within hours of his arrival. His presence at a faculty dinner on the Mills campus that first week was radiant with this helpless knowledge between them that their lives were inseparably linked. Diana defined it as idyllic, even too much so.

Mel moved to the Bay Area and soon they bought a house in Bolinas. Diana had begun her second novel, The Bride Who Ran Away. Its protagonist is a young American woman who escapes a romantic affair. Diana claims that though it doesn’t define their lives together or apart, still it might not have been written if they hadn’t found one another again.

Friends find themselves grinning with delight even now, at the thought and the sight of these two. Even more dramatic, perhaps, is the fact that much of Diana’s work published in the past decade has been dedicated to or in lament for Brendan O’Hehir, who died soon after their separation. To enter as a reader the complex labyrinth of her poetry, that of the ’90s especially, is to glimpse in wonder at the immense range and depth of her imaginative experience as well as the originality of chosen metaphor. This is

especially impressive in Spells For Not Dying Again, the latest of her books of poetry. Inspired by a visit to the British Museum’s Egyptian printed material, and subsequently by reading The Egyptian Book of the Dead, she chose, intuitively, the voices of soul and body, living within death, over against it, lamenting, pleading, passing through, rising at last and anticipating the end with “Recovery Spells: The Ordinary Run of Things” If we get old enough, we get bored with death, just Part of the everyday story, like sunburn or Writing checks or the hum From the electric transformer . . . .

I love you, I tell my new Adventurer, I love your mouth, profile, the fur on your chest, The hum inside it. That’s the soul in there, Strumming its sturdy message, making its energetic graph.

While death, old crouching dynamo, buzzes its different design.

Today’s an early day. Firm, bright, yellow.

And finally ending with a “Dialogue Between Body and Soul” Body! Listen!

As you love life, So must you hate death.. . .

Remember now the dances and dinners of marriage, Remember wine, remember the sprint to the finish line, And love . . . .

These are only touches of this wonderful poetry, meant to entice.

Find Diana in all her work and let her spells anoint you.

Josephine Carson has taught creative writing at Mills, Bennington College, and the University of California, Berkeley.

Her writings include a recent collection of short stories, Dog Star (Santa Barbara Review Press), three novels, including Where You Goin, Girlie? (Dial Press), poetry, and nonfiction.

Poems in this article are reprinted from Spells For Not Dying Again, © 1997 by Eastern Washington University Press, 705 W. 1st Ave., Spokane, WA 99201. Phone: (800) 508-9095 Fax: (509) 623-4283. <http://ewupress.ewu.edu>.

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THREE VIEWS OF MILLS

by Diana O’Hehir, Professor Emerita

I

laughter. She is the most recent of the dent must precede him along the hall taught at Mills College from 1961 to newly-engaged and this is her way of calling out, “Man on second!”

1992, thirty-one years during which announcing it. Marriage stands high on In my classroom this 1961 class wants the college changed enormously. the list of this group’s aspirations. me to be precise and definite, to impart Students became interested in a vast They are polite, and say, “Please,” information in manageable bites, to ask series of new topics, attitudes and “May I?” and “Thank you.” In retrospect questions clearly. All of this is good traincauses. And the institution around them I think of them as the ones with the disciing for me. Quite recently I was an undisalso evolved, partly in response to its stupline and application, the ones who were ciplined graduate student, wallowing in dents, partly in an effort to lead them. always on time to class, who (almost argument and exploration.

I’m going to dip into a few of these always) got papers in on the day, who It seems to me that the members of changes. They’re diffuse enough to need (almost never) understood my jokes. this 1961 class all look alike. (They don’t; their own book rather than a short artiWho were earnest and sincere, and kind that’s just my take on their difference from cle, but I’ll try to handle this by scatterto each other. They are, for Heavens’ graduate students or night school ones.) I shot; beginning with a description of my sake, in their fifties now; they have think of them as tall, scrubbed, blonde, first Mills class in 1961, then moving forturned out to be very nice women. eighteen years old, and cheerful. And I’m ward to other years during my tenure, Fifteen years later, in 1976, I am sure they see me as alien in some way. stopping to examine the groups of stufacing an entirely different group of stu“We don’t know what you WANT,” one of dents in those years, their ideas, their difdents. The class this time is a sophomore them says. If they knew what I wanted, ferences from my first students. group instead of a first-year one, she implies, they would do it.

So. It’s 1961, August, and I am meetalthough in 1961 that wouldn’t have Our first semester together is difficult. ing my first Mills class. They stand, made much difference in the way the Undoubtedly it’s worse for them than for attired fairly unanimously in pastel student looked or behaved. me, but I remember that semester as one sweaters and skirts, holding on to the This crowd is diverse in a number of during which I write enormously long backs of their chairs; they are scared of ways. First of all, they are ethnically notes on their term papers, and nobody me and I am amazed by them. What diverse. The Mills population is still not as seems to understand what I’m saying. they’ve done to amaze me is to stand up mixed as say, San Francisco State’s, but we But by the second semester we have when I enter the room. (I’ve taught are getting there. My class of 20 includes begun to like each other and I am invited before and have never been stood-uptwo black students, one Latina, several to dinner. I’m flattered to be asked to dinfor.) I tell them to sit and then announce, Asian women. Most of these students are ner, but horrified by the songs (“I don’t with false camaraderie, “And now let’s highly conscious of their ethnic backwant a PhD; just give me an MRS”) get to know each other.” They settle in grounds and verbal about them, conscienProbably I’m too solemn and inclined to warily; they know I’m being phony. tious in raising issues of discrimination pertake everything at face-value. Not everyQuite quickly I learn that they want me ceived either against their own to be authoritarian and not groups or against others. They retreat into false coziness, they MOST OF THESE STUDENTS watch this in the literature we want me to be A Teacher.

ARE HIGHLY CONSCIOUS read. (An energetic class arguThis group is used to rules OF THEIR ETHNIC BACKGROUNDS ment: is Dorothea, in and appears to like them. They AND VERBAL ABOUT THEM, Middlemarch prevented from live on campus, in a dorm. The marrying Will because he’s part dorm has schedules and hours.

CONSCIENTIOUS IN RAISING Jewish? Do people in the story Students must eat on time, sign ISSUES OF DISCRIMINATION know that he’s Jewish? What in or out when they’re leaving PERCEIVED EITHER AGAINST does being a Jew mean in the campus, entertain any male visiTHEIR OWN GROUPS OR world of Middlemarch?) tors in a reception alcove open AGAINST OTHERS. One young woman across the front and containing remarks, as a side-comment a couple of innocent little on Daisy’s plight in The Great Gatsby, body singing that song means it. couches facing each other. The dorm has “She’s afraid of divorce. Big deal. Back However, there is also the candlea house mother, a maternal-looking lady home in Birmingham we used to whisper passing ceremony, in which a candlein late middle age. If a male visitor is about how she-had-left-him, and now I’m adorned cake circles the table until somebrought upstairs in the dorm (perhaps a in California and everyone is divorced.” one blows out the fires amid squeals and brother enlisted to carry a trunk) a resi-

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The class now has a heated argument about what Daisy ought to have done to claim her personhood. This group likes to argue.

They love the books we’re reading; they like to get serious about the issues

raised in the books. They’re willing to do a lot of research, though they don’t particularly enjoy having research methods or directions supplied by the teacher. “Well, yeah, but I had another idea on how to go on that,” is a predictable response.

They’re surrounded by a world vigorously filled with issues demanding a participation which they welcome. They go on marches; they strike; they sign petitions.

They support newly-emerging programs in women’s studies and ethnic studies.

Unlikely though it seems, quite a few of my 20 students from this year still live on campus. But the dorm is a different place from the one in 1961, much less rule-clad and with student administrators

supplanting the middle-aged housemothers. There is even a housing unit—an apartment complex—open to the mothers with small children, and both of the young mothers in my class live there.

This group is great fun to work with, but exhausting. I finish each school-year desperately needing my upcoming vacation. I’ve started writing a lot of poetry, and that’s a good sounding board.

My final view of my classes at Mills is of the students in that epochal event, the Mills strike.

By the time of the strike I am teaching several creative writing classes and the students in those classes are the ones I’ll be seeing tonight in this lateevening visit to the embattled Mills campus. The writing students have set up an encampment on the streetcorner behind our classroom building. It’s 9:00 at night; I have loaded up my car with doughnuts and diet cokes, foods that I think will be especially welcome to the ones who are spending the whole night here.

The group, about ten of them, are established in a semi-circle with a mound of sleeping bags, blankets, pillows, a couple of folding chairs, and several high-powered camping lanterns. They are having an extension of their class, reading their work aloud to each other.

They have not only been camping on this corner for three days, attending nonstop meetings about the purpose of the strike, about feminism’s next frontier, about methods of persuasion and resisting coercion, but they also have been writing. They’ll offer each other criticism; they’re intense about perfecting their

craft. They’re good critics who like clean, unobvious writing.

They’re glad to see me but not overwhelmingly so. This is their show and they want to run it themselves. It’s fine if their teachers support them, but that isn’t the real point of anything.

The diet cokes are welcomed and the doughnuts set aside as possibilities. “Most of us,” they remind me, “are on diets.”

I look at them, arranged cross-legged on the asphalt or on the edge of the street coping or on their folding chairs.

This will be one of my last Mills classes; I’m retiring as soon as we get the semester declared over. And briefly, sentimentally, I think about the long years I’ve spent here and I even flirt with the idea of comparing this group to that first class, back in 1961. And then abandon the thought. It’s a no-go. The two groups simply aren’t comparable.

These students are a mixed crowd of graduates and undergrads, all of them older than that 1961 group. (One class member, not here tonight, is older than I am.) They have complicated histories which involve careers, marriages, divorces. Two of those sitting on the ground in front of me are married and have husbands who support the strike; one husband drives up in his truck now; he’s been delivering supplies.

They’re devoted to what they’re learning because the class is self-selecting; there’s competition to get into it.

For strike purposes they are calling themselves The Writer’s Block. I ask how that’s spelled and they look blank. “Hey, great to see you,” they say. They put in a request that if I’m coming by tomorrow— will I bring a salad? With a lemon juice dressing?

They speed me on my way cheerfully.

As I’ve said, I’m peripheral to their project, which is theirs.

I look at them, Goyaesquely lighted from below by their camping lanterns. I don’t exclaim to myself about how things are changing and will continue to do so; mostly I have a sense of powers at work, of a force like electricity, and also a kind of wariness. Look what’s happening. This is important. Now, what comes next?

That’s the feeling I drive off with as I leave my Mills class encamped on the asphalt, reading their work to each other.

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Alumnae Association ANNUAL REPORT

K

aren May, ’86, concluded the first year of her three year term as president of the Alumnae Association of Mills College at the end of fiscal year 2001–2002. At the Association’s Annual meeting on May 11, 2002, Karen noted that volunteers and staff of the AAMC have worked hard to create success after success. She reviewed the work of the Board over the past year in developing the implementation steps for the AAMC’s Strategic Plan. The Strategic Plan goals number eight, and include programs, outreach, governance and leadership, Mills College, fundraising, finance, human resources, and facilities and technology. Karen also talked about the importance of the Board of Governor’s work the past year on valuing and respecting diversity.

Alumna Trustee Judy Greenwood Jones, ’60, gave the Alumnae Trustee report. She reported on the recommendation of the College’s Committee on Strategic Planning that Mills expand its strategic direction to become known as “an institution of higher education devoted to the education and advancement of women in leadership in the community and in the professions, with an undergraduate women’s liberal arts college at its core and an expanded profile of graduate and other programs.” Judy also reported on the

adoption of the Campus Master Plan, the study for the renovation of Lisser Hall, the renovation of the old children’s school/infirmary for use by the social science division, as well as the status of the College’s financial health and the Sesquicentennial Campaign.

Vice-President for Alumnae Relations Jane Cudlip King, ’42, reported on the AAMC’s alumnae relations activities of the past year. Most notable was the impact of the tragedy of September 11, 2001, on Reunion, which prevented some one-third of those planning to attend from actually getting to the College. Those who were able to attend were comforted by the opportunity to be with long-time friends at Mills. Jane spoke about the successful new Welcome Barbecue for the incoming freshwomen sponsored by the Alumnae Student Relations Committee, as well as their successful reinstatement of the tradition of the Lantern Procession at the Alumnae-Pearl M Dinner. She reported on the new initiatives of the Graduate Committee to reach out to graduate students, and the on-going success of the activities of the Diversity and Class Secretary Committees.

Co-chair of the Alumnae Fund, Lynn Eve Fortin, ’87, reported on the changes and challenges which faced

A L U M N A E A S S O C I AT I O N E X P E N S E S , F Y 2 0 0 1 – 2 0 0 2 * GIFT TO THE COLLEGE 49% ALUMNAE RELATIONS PROGRAMS 6% REUNION 6% ALUMNAE FUND 28% QUARTERLY 11%

*Because of a change in the fiscal year, these figures reflect 13 months of expenses.

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the Alumnae Fund the last year.

Suzanne Tye, the new director of annual giving, began work on September 12, three months into the fund year. Her first priority was to increase the efficiencies in the gift acknowledgement process. Other goals included personalizing the solicitations that went to Reunioning classes as well a s t h e d i re c t m a i l a p p e a l s f o r Campanile-level ($500–$1199) donors and above. The Phonathon Program managed to exceed the budgeted revenue set at the beginning of the year. We were pleased that the Reunion Giving Program continued to gain momentum throughout the year.

Suzanne has also worked on improving the Personal Solicitation Program. A challenge for next year will be to fine-tune the Class Agent Program.

The primary initiative of the Annual Fund for the year, however, has been on raising the participation rate of alumnae donors from 39 percent to 42 percent, which would make the Alumnae Fund eligible for a $105,000 bonus from seven special alumnae and friends. With the fiscal year-end extended an extra month (to follow suit with the College), AAMC staff and Board members were working extra hard to have a successful year end for the Annual Fund—in both number of donors and dollars.

Treasurer Beverly Zellick, ’49, MA ’50, reported that the AAMC’s books were in good order: the auditors made no recommendations for changes in the financial operations of the Association during the prior year. Bevo spoke about the challenges of handling the expenses for the 13th month. She also reported that the value of the Investment Fund was (at that time) $1.2 million. Plans for the expansion of Reinhardt Alumnae House were being drawn. Finally, Bevo gave credit to the AAMC staff for keeping operations efficient and productive, and to the members of the Finance Committee for their experience and expertise.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 5:00 PM Swim Team vs. Chapman University Chapman University, Orange, CA. (510) 430-3384 FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 7:30 PM Volleyball Team vs. Bethany College Haas Pavilion.

(510) 430-3283 SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 9:00 AM Cross Country Team: Far West Region II Championship Prado Park, Fresno.

(510) 430-3282

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10– MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 8:00 PM Oakland Public Theater presents: April 10, 1535 Lisser Hall Studio Theater.

(510) 430-2327 MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 5:30–7:00 PM Contemporary Writers Series: Karen Tei Yamashita.

Yamashita is the author of Through the Arc of the Rainforest and Brazil Maru.

Faculty Lounge.

(510) 430-2236.

Kaphan. Concert Hall. (510) 430-2296.

FRIDAY, NOV. 22– SATURDAY, NOV. 23, SATURDAY, NOV. 30, THURSDAY, DEC. 5–SATURDAY, DEC. 7, 7:30 PM; SUNDAY, NOV. 24, SUNDAY, DEC. 1, 2:00 PM A Christmas Carol. The Drama Department will display costume designs by Richard Battle and Taisia Nikonishchenko for next year’s (2003) Christmas Carol in the lobby of Lisser Theatre, prior to this year’s productions. Patrons are invited to sponsor a costume.

Lisser Hall, Main Stage.

(510) 430-2327

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 8:00 PM Joelle Leandre. Bassist, improviser, and composer, Leandre is one of the most active performers on the European contemporary music scene.

Concert Hall.

(510) 430-2296.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3– SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15 First Sight, Encyclopedia of Childhood: Dale Kistemaker.

Photographs from a series that document objects from Kistemaker’s childhood.

Art Museum.

(510) 430-2252

C A L E N D A R MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 6:00-7:00 PM Works in Progress: Informal readings from English students and faculty.

Café Suzie, Rothwell Center.

(510) 430-2236.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5SUNDAY NOVEMBER 17 Rendering: Jeannette Louie.

Large drawings inspired by the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and the writings of Da Vinci.

Art Museum.

(510) 430-2252 WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 7:30 PM Lectures on Contemporary Art: Shahzia Sikander.

Lucie Stern 100.

(510) 430-2117.

The Mills Repertory Dance Company celebrates its 20th anniversary with performances on November 14, 15, and 16 at 8:00 p.m. in Haas Pavilion with a restaging of Paul Taylor’s masterwork Aureole by faculty member and former Taylor principal Mary Cochran and a premiere by Bay Area choreographer Kim Epifano. The program will also include original works by faculty members Kathleen McClintock, Mary Cochran, and Anne Westwick.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19– SUNDAY, DECEMBER 1 Other Anissas: Anissa Mack.

Art Museum. (510) 430-2252 FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 7:30 PM Out Here—Alternative Rock from the Bay Area, featuring Deerhoof, Live Human, Amy X Neuberg & Men, Victor Krummenacher and Bruce

MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, 5:30–7:30 PM English Department presents Barbara Guest Faculty Lounge.

(510) 430-2252

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 4, 7:00 PM Dance Department: Studio One Night. Haas Pavilion.

(510) 430-2175.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 6:00–8:00 PM Kwanzaa Celebration.

Sponsored by the AAMC’s Diversity Committee.

Faculty Dining Room and Lounge.

(510) 430-2111 SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8, 4:00–6:00 PM Graduation Reception. Come celebrate the accomplishments of January, 2003 Mills College graduates. Student Union. (510) 430-2111 Events are subject to change. Please call ahead or check the Mills College website at <www.mills.edu>.

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Is the Future Still S T E P H A N I E M I L L S M AY H A V E N E W A N S W E R S

by David M. Brin, MA ’75

EVERY YEAR HUNDREDS of college seniors give commencement speeches and enjoy an afternoon of appreciation.

But in 1969, the speech that graduating senior Stephanie Mills gave before an audience at Mills College catapulted her to national fame. She declared “the rosy future” to be a hoax. She went on to say, “The most humane thing for me to do is to have no children,” and explained, “Because you see, if the population continues to grow, the facilities to accommodate that population must grow, too. Thus we have more highways and fewer trees, more electricity and fewer undammed rivers, more cities and less clean air.” Stephanie Mills seized the opportunity that national attention brought her and became prominent in the environmental movement, editing publications, writing books, and speaking before large audiences across the country. She continues to advocate solutions to some of the more complicated problems of our times through her lectures, articles, and books, which include In the Service of the Wild, (Beacon Press) In Praise of Nature (Island Press) and Whatever Happened to Ecology? (Sierra Club Nature and Natural Philosophy Library).

Her 1969 speech was prophetic in many ways—overpopulation continues to threaten humankind and the planet, resources continue to dwindle as we waste them, species become irretrievably extinct, and new threats such as global warming have arisen. Still, in her most recent book, Epicurean Simplicity, (Island Press) Stephanie Mills seems to voice a quiet optimism, and during a recent conversation at Mills she told me, “I’ve been surprised that there’s been as much of a future as there has—at least the future from 1969 to 2002.” She has kept her vow to remain childless, and has worked tirelessly for the causes she believes in.

“One of the themes I wanted to explore in Epicurean Simplicity was apocalyptism—but there was no way I could do it justice. Many of us grew up with this idea that the world is going to come to a screeching, catastrophic halt. I think it’s a cultural inheritance from the Book of John. . . . Another thing that probably conditioned that view was growing up in the nuclear age when there was a very real possibility of total annihilation. Because I’ve lived 30 years of some kind of future since 1969, I know a little better now, and in my work I’m finally learning that scaring people is not a very great way to motivate them to do good things—you can get people’s attention with a dire tale, but to sustain positive, creative work takes something else.”

And Stephanie Mills has provided something else to the readers of her books: a view of the beauty of nature that is so magnificent that the desire to preserve the trees and the open spaces and to do everything necessary to stop the destruction of the Earth is kindled in the mind of her readers. In Epicurean Simplicity, Mills not only outlines a way of life that is gentle on the earth and is satisfying to those who lead it, but she describes nature’s delicate beauties in a way that convinced this reader that leading such a life is worth the effort. She tells her own story of leaving hectic San Francisco in the mid-’80s to find a quieter life in rural Michigan. Her frankness and honesty in relating this story are among the most attractive qualities of her book.

One of the questions that motivated her move, a question that “may be the most serious ethical question we now face,” is “How are we to live—not merely survive?” Mills finds an answer in the early Greek philosopher Epicurus, who “propounded pleasure, simplicity, and friendship as the means and ends of the good life.” The ability to savor the simple pleasures and cultivate gratitude for them is part of this philosophy.

JOHN ROBERT WILLIAMS

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a Hoax?

“Simplicity is not self-abnegation—it’s a way to live far more richly and meaningfully,” she explains. And, I might add, a way to live consciously. As she describes her daily routine and yearly cycle of activities, Mills is constantly aware of the impact her actions have on the Earth, locally and globally.

In addition to Mills’ interest in philosophy and nature, her love of the humanities informs her writing. She credits her education at Mills to helping develop this appreciation. “I arrived at Mills with the gift of intelligence, an ability to articulate, and an appetite for reading; but it was here that I was exposed to the life of the mind, and I loved it,” she told me. “I think I would have just got lost in the shuffle if I had been at a large coed institution and I hadn’t had the opportunity to participate in the student activities that I did—and in the classroom the profs had no choice but to call on the women!

“There have been times in my life when my Mills education really saved my soul. Specifically, shortly after I was married, my then-husband and I were in a head-on automobile accident and both pretty mangled up. I was hospitalized for a month and a half. It was a tough time and I’m not a religious person—lots of people brought spiritual readings to me to try to buck me up, but what really sustained me was a gift of excerpts from Handel’s Messiah that a friend from Mills sent me. It was the humanities—in those works of art that I had learned to appreciate—that I found what I needed as a reason for being. I wrote a big long thank you letter to my mother and father for giving me this great education.

“The character of Mills then was so blessed—it was such a beautiful place to be and learn—I was a youthful hothead for sure, and not as appreciative as I am now, but I look back on my time here as a lovely banquet. I think the best of me was nurtured here. At the same time Mills was like a leafy island in a sea of turmoil, so there was an incongruity. I remember sitting here with the troop helicopters going over to People’s Park, and I had a boyfriend in Berkeley at the time, so I would leave the ‘cloister’ and go over to the ‘war zone.’ It was quite a contrast between the two campuses.”

In Whatever Happened to Ecology? as well as throughout Epicurean Simplicity, Mills tells her personal story and expresses her philosophical, scientific, and ecological concerns. As a result, this reader felt a close personal connection to her and was convinced of the importance of her concerns. Fortunately, her vision of the future includes practical steps that we can take to make meaningful changes that will benefit the regions we

live in and the planet we live on. In Whatever Happened to Ecology? she writes, “I have come to believe that the most loving way to prompt change is through sharing our experience, strength, and hope with one another, each striving, above all, for integrity.”

From Epicurean Simplicity by Stephanie Mills In college I was the beneficiary of some superlative teaching of literature. The professors were so good that for a while, after I graduated, I didn’t see how, unaided, I could fully appreciate a great book. All American high school kids are exposed to them, but my adolescent readings of Jane Austen, Herman Melville, and George Eliot didn’t awaken me to profound interest and pleasure in the novel. It wasn’t until Diana O’Hehir’s James Joyce seminar and Hunter Hannum’s course “The Mind of Modern Germany,” in which we read works in translation by Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Hermann Hesse, among others, that literature came fully alive for me and began to matter very much.

Although she was entirely capable of explaining all of Joyce’s puns and allusions, Diana O’Hehir approached Ulysses as a real novel, not just a mother lode for exegetes. James Joyce changed my life, or the life of my mind; he gave me permission to take inventive liberties with language and to experience interior monologue—that everyday life of an everyman’s or—woman’s mind—as being as worthy of artistic treatment as the matter of myth. For years thereafter, every solitary walk I took was accompanied by Joyce’s kindly hero Leopold Bloom and so was heightened with quotidian symbolism and echoing phrases.

The zenith of the undergraduate literary fest came in my senior year, when as part of an individual study culminating in a thesis on time and transcendence in Ulysses and The Magic Mountain, Hunter Hannum taught The Magic Mountain, lighting his students’ way through Mann’s masterpiece. The love of literature, in which Hunter and his wife, Hildegarde continue— there’s no trash on their reading tables—became the foundation of a lasting friendship, and the friendship an inspiration to lead the life of the mind.

Excerpted from Epicurean Simplicity, by Stephanie Mills.

Copyright © 2002 by Stepahnie Mills. Reprinted by permission of Island Press/Shearwater Books, Washington, D.C. and Covelo, California. All rights reserved.

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MILLS ALUMNAE/I

VOICE THEIR APPRECIATION

BY GIVING TO THE A LUMNAE F UND …

Ellen Tornell, Class of 2000 Substitute Teacher

I give to the AAMC for several reasons: I am thankful for the education that I received and Mills made a strong impact on my life. Part of the reason that I was able to attend was because I received a scholarship from the College. I completely believe that my right and privilege as an alumna is to make that opportunity available to others.

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Lynette P. Williamson, Class of 1972, MA 1974 Director of Marketing Administration I give to the Alumnae Fund because Mills was one of the most important experiences of my life. It was life changing. I have never felt more special and important in my life than the time I was at Mills. As a black student, that meant the world to me.

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Patsy Peng, Class of 1951 Retired I greatly benefited from my experience at Mills. I received financial aid when I attended Mills and I am very grateful for all that Mills gave me. My donations are my way of thanking Mills and offering the same opportunity to other young women.

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David Brin, MA 1975 Director of Communications If it hadn’t been for the wonderful scholarship I received, I would not have been able to study at Mills. Since 1975, when I received my master’s degree, I’ve contributed every year to the Alumnae Fund in hopes of repaying Mills for the gift of education I received, and so that others may enjoy the same opportunity I did.

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…during Mills’ Sesquicentennial Year, won’t you express your appreciation of what Mills helped you to accomplish?

Participate in the next 150 years — Give a gift today!

Looking Eastward: An Art Historian Considers Iranian Painting

by Eleanor Sims, ’64, PhD

MY MILLS COLLEGE EDUCATION CONTRIBUTED IN FUNDAMENTAL WAYS TO MY FIRST BOOK, PEERLESS IMAGES: PERSIAN PAINTING AND ITS SOURCES (WITH BORIS I. MARSHAK AND ERNST J. GRUBE, YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2002).

READING THROUGH PROOFS, I HEAR SO VIVIDLY THE VOICES OF ELIZABETH POPE, IMOGENE WALKER, AND ANNE HUMMELL SHERRILL; THE STANDARDS AND PRACTICES INSTILLED IN CLASSES WITH ALL THREE OF THESE REMARKABLE WOMEN NOW SEEM OBVIOUS IN ALL I WRITE. MILLS ALSO STANDS BEHIND MY ATTEMPTS AT EXPLORING AN ASPECT OF ONE OF THE WORLD’S GREAT VISUAL EXPRESSIONS, IRANIAN PAINTING.

ROBERT WORKMAN

I was an English major at Mills, but I had three years of classes in art history with Alfred Neumeyer, and at some point in my junior year I knew that I was going to turn my attention to the visual arts. In one semester during those years—when Dr. Neumeyer was guestteaching at the Freie Universität in Berlin and his classes were taught by someone from a very different background—I came to appreciate that his approach to the teaching of art history was a particular one with distinguished antecedents. This daughter of a Mills graduate still hears her mother (Deborah Shwayder, BA ’38, MA, ’40) saying that what she most wished in her children’s education was inspiring teachers—and I always knew she had in mind Margaret Prall, who had taught her and overseen her MA thesis in the history of music.

In my senior year, the question of graduate school arose, and naturally Dr. Neumeyer advised me about where to apply, for study beginning after the year I was intending to spend traveling in Europe and looking—in person—at what I had only seen in slides and books. At that point the notion of anything non-Western simply did not occur to me. If I had any idea of what I might concentrate on, it seemed to be illuminated European manuscripts.

And although in my first year of graduate school I did not take many courses devoted to them, somehow I had acquired a modicum of the knowledge needed to deal with the combination of words and images on vellum pages, including a certain familiarity with the litera-

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ture of the field. If I had a favored period, it was the 15th century; I also found I was more drawn to art made in northern, as opposed to southern, Europe. This meant, then, essentially, French and Flemish illuminated manuscripts. What I truly never did was look eastward, even though on a June day in 1965, exactly a year after I had graduated from Mills and I found myself traveling on the western coast of Turkey heading for Istanbul, I do recall thinking how very far I had traveled in a year. I never dreamed how soon it might be that Istanbul would loom large in my professional life.

Toward the end of my second year of graduate school, I was offered an internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the department of Islamic art. The offer was in part based on my presumed familiarity with European illuminated manuscripts. I could spend the year working with a file of illustrated Persian manuscripts of the 15th century, accumulating the photographs, measurements, and bibliography that would eventually form the basis for a book on the subject; if I didn’t take to the subject, I could look elsewhere in the museum for a position, with the promise of the curator’s assistance in finding it.

ERNST J. GRUBE

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The Concourse of the Birds The file had grown out of the Museum’s acquisition, in 1963, of an illustrated manuscript of importance and beauty: a great work of Iranian mystical literature, The Concourse of the Birds, or Mantiq al-Tayr, as it is called in Arabic, composed by the 12th-century Sufi poet Farid al-Din ‘Attar. It had eight illustrations. Four were painted late in the 15th century in the city of Herat (in what is modern western Afghanistan). However inconsequential Herat may be today, in the eastern Muslim world in the 15th century it was the equivalent of Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge, all rolled into one small but enchanting city. For it was the seat of the dynasty that sprang from Timur—Tamerlane, “the Scourge of God,” as he is sometimes known in European literature of the 15th and 16th centuries. Herat was the capital from which the Timurids ruled Iran. Throughout the 15th century, Timurid princes demonstrated how thoroughly they understood the uses of patronage, sponsoring endeavors that would reshape the city and its environs for the next 300 years.

Throughout the century in which they were in power, Timur’s sons and their heirs built mosques, palaces, and schools in the city, and in its suburbs they restored shrines and planted wonderful gardens. In Timurid Herat, poets, historians, and other literary figures were as important as princes and viziers; all often gathered in these princely gardens for literary events.

It was almost surely at the command of the last Timurid prince to govern Herat that the marvelous manuscript in the Metropolitan Museum was begun. The poem, in Persian, was beautifully copied in Arabic script by a renowned calligrapher, and space was laid out for eight pictures, although various events permitted the completion of only four by the end of the 1480s. Great political turmoil then intervened, but the manuscript itself must have remained safely in Iran, an unfinished treasure in a collection that eventually came to the attention of one of the greatest princes in the next ruling dynasty of Iran, the Safavid Shah ‘Abbas I. This was at some time late in the 16th or early 17th century. In May of 1967 Ernst J. Grube, the curator who had acquired the manuscript for the museum, summarized the next stages in a Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin issue entirely devoted to the manuscript: “The later miniatures were painted in Isfahan [then the capital of Iran] at the order of the Safavid Shah ‘Abbas, who had the pages of the manuscript remounted and given brilliantly colored, gold-flecked margins [see illustration on inside front cover]. New, illuminated opening pages were also added, and the whole was rebound.” The refurbished volume was presented to the Safavid family shrine in the eastern Iranian town of Ardabil in 1609; how it came to be sold at auction in London in 1963 is but the most recent event in its complicated history, engendering much speculation but no certain scenario. Its presence, and the many fascinating aspects of its production, had spurred Dr. Grube into considering a more serious investigation into Timurid painting, and this file on which I was to spend the year of my internship was its raw material.

The Invitation to Look Eastward As the offer came with the possibility of support in continuing graduate study that might lead to a doctorate, and because I found myself intrigued with the material, I accepted the internship. In doing so, I knew I was also accepting an invitation to continue looking eastward. I had much to learn: languages, history, the overall outline and the materials, as well as the literature, of an art that had been the subject of serious study for barely a century, if that long. I did wonder whether it was too late to begin to immerse myself in Islamic art, only to learn that practically all of its practitioners, both past and present, had come from other backgrounds: they were European medievalists, classicists, historians of the ancient Near East, East Asia and South Asia, and more; yet all might bring something of value and interest to the study of one of the younger of major cultural expressions.

So I started to take classes in Islamic art; I made the decision—probably wrongly but time somehow seemed to demand it—not to begin to study Arabic, but Persian instead, and I decided to continue graduate study and work toward a doctorate. In the year I took my doctoral examinations I had also applied for a Fulbright Scholarship for thesis study abroad and was awarded a grant that in 1971 took me to libraries and museums and collections from London and Portugal to Iran and Afghanistan, and back to London again for a long period of work in its many libraries and collections.

Looking back, I realize how crucial that year was to what I have since been doing: in it I saw for the first time most of the major illustrated Iranian manuscripts on which my work of the past 30 years has been based. In London, Oxford and Cambridge, Dublin and Edinburgh, in Paris, Lisbon, Munich, Berlin, and Cairo, but especially in Istanbul, I saw for the first time these extraordinary Islamic treasures, and I also made my earliest acquaintance with those who cared for them and studied them. I still count many of these experts among my most valuable colleagues.

Istanbul is a superb treasury of Iranian manuscripts, even more so than is the Gulistan Palace Library. Istanbul is the capital city of one of the longest-lived Muslim dynasties (indeed, of any ruling dynasty ever), that of the Ottoman Turks, and was never subjected to the damage inflicted by war, siege, and the inevitable consequences of plunder and destruction. Thus, its palaces and mosque-libraries remained relatively safe and undisturbed. The Topkapı Sarayı, or palace, in Istanbul was the residence of the Ottoman sultans from late in the 15th century to very late in the 19th. To the Sublime Porte (as the Ottoman court was known) flowed princely gifts and the booty acquired in its success at establishing Ottoman sovereignty over the Eastern Mediterranean and much of the Eastern Muslim world, especially in the 16th century. The accumulated treasure was vast, and it included many precious manuscripts. After the dynasty came to an end in 1924, and a new Turkish capital was established in Ankara, the Topkapı Palace in the former capital became not only a museum (toward which I was traveling in that June of 1965) but also a central gathering place for the manuscripts and other materials originally kept in its various pavilions, as well as manuscripts from mosque-libraries elsewhere in the city. Another major collection of manuscripts in Istanbul is in the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art. In it are gathered together all the objects, including many volumes, that had been offered as waqf—a specifically Islamic form of inalienable gift—to religious foundations of many kinds during the past five centuries. Thus it is that untold numbers of important manuscripts in Persian, as well as in Turkish and Arabic, are today to be found in Istanbul libraries. Like the library in Istanbul, the Gulistan Palace Library in Tehran is housed in a palace of its former dynastic rulers (the Qajars) that has also been turned into a museum and library. Unfortunately, after the death of a talented and welcoming librarian in 1968, it had become extremely difficult of access, and, unlike in Istanbul, in the early 1970s one could not necessarily count on uninterrupted days of research.

The Journey Between 1973 and 1978, I was lucky enough to travel to Iran once a year, working on projects that have borne both professional as well as personal fruit. I completed, and defended, my doctoral dissertation in late 1973 and almost immediately went to Iran to start working on a project sponsored by the Italian Institute for the study of the Middle East and Asia (IsMEO). Italian restorers working under its auspices had been engaged to work on cleaning M I L L S Q U A R T E R LY FA L L 2 0 0 2

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TO THE SUBLIME PORTE (AS THE OTTOMAN COURT WAS KNOWN) FLOWED PRINCELY GIFTS AND THE BOOTY ACQUIRED IN ITS SUCCESS AT ESTABLISHING OTTOMAN SOVEREIGNTY OVER THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN AND MUCH OF THE EASTERN MUSLIM WORLD. THE ACCUMULATED TREASURE WAS VAST, AND IT INCLUDED MANY PRECIOUS MANUSCRIPTS.

and repairing buildings in Isfahan that had been painted in the 17th-century. Recall that Isfahan was the seat of Shah ‘Abbas I, the Safavid ruler who in 1609 had offered—as waqf— the manuscript of the Mantiq al-Tayr that had come to rest in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Palaces, private houses, and even the monumental gateway of the royal bazaar in this city had originally been decorated with monumental figural paintings, both inside and out; and who better than Italian restorers to clean and consolidate them, returning them to something of their 17th-century brilliance? An art historian’s eye was also deemed necessary, as the cleaning proceeded; my former boss at the Museum was part of the team and asked me to join him in this task. Spending a month each year for the next five years, with our noses close to these murals and photographing them in the course of restoration, was not only a privilege at the time but has since yielded invaluable documentation, especially given the hiatus of access imposed by the events of 1979 and since. I should also say that while documentary sources of many kinds have always noted the existence of figural wallpaintings in Islamic Iran, most of them do not survive, and even those from relatively late periods are not always in good condition. So the five years of access to these 17th-century wall-paintings, and the notes and photographs accumulated in that period and since, have contributed enormously to understanding the similarities between Iranian monumental and “miniature” painting. As it happens, the 17th-century murals, and some related large-scale independent paintings, are subjects that much engage me at the moment. And in early 1996, when I was asked to conceive a plan for a new book on the subject of Iranian painting, it was not difficult to include in it both the arts of the book and examples of 16th and 17th-century monumental images decorating the walls of Iranian palaces and dwellings.

There are other novelties of approach in the book that came to be called Peerless Images: Persian Painting and Its Sources. Indeed, I was asked to consider the entire subject from a new point of view. What I have done is to organize the material by theme and also by pictorial type and setting, rather than present it as a historical survey of Iranian painting.

Included are images of fighting and feasting, receptions and ceremonies of various kinds, and set-types of persons: kings and heroes, the beautiful youth and the bearded sage, lovers, and even angels and demons. Moreover, the subject is not limited to painting of the Islamic period alone but considers the entire sweep of Iranian figural imagery, from the earliest kind of painted pottery—superbly painted vessels with delicate walls that date from the 4th millennium BC, through the Achaemenid and Sasanian periods, through what I have come to call the “Golden Age” of Iranian painting, from the 14th to the 17th centuries, to the intensely figural 19th century and the oil-paintings on canvas, very much in the European manner, that were being done in Qajar Tehran in the early years of the 20th century.

In assembling and writing Peerless Images: Persian Painting and Its Sources, I have had the pleasure of collaborating with a Russian colleague, Boris Marshak, a noted expert in the arts of the Iranian ancient Near East, who has also been excavating for over half a century in Sogdia (east of Iran proper), in a city called Panjikent. There, he and his colleagues have been finding the most extensive body anywhere of early medieval Iranian wall-paintings to have survived the “ravages of time, weather, and the Mongol invasions” of the 13th century.

And lastly, in working on this project and so much more, I have also had the constant assistance of my former boss at the Metropolitan Museum and colleague (from the days of recording the wall-paintings in Isfahan and elsewhere in Iran), Ernst Grube. He has been my husband since 1988. There, too, lies a Mills connection that returns us to the beginning of this account, since Ernst also studied art history with Alfred Neumeyer, in Berlin, on perhaps the first of his guest-professorships at the Freie Universität in 1954 or 1955. We certainly did not know that when we first met nor would it have made any difference in our lives together. But when I reflect on the various ways that Mills has affected my life, it is a pleasure to add still one more thread to the many-colored fabric Mills has woven into my life.

Eleanor Sims, ’64, earned her PhD from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. Her publications include more than 50 articles, chapters in books, and contributions to the Encyclopedia Iranica and the MacMillan Dictionary of Art. She worked in the Islamic Art Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in 1975 she reinstalled the Islamic galleries at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. She is editor of Islamic Art.

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PASSAGES Gifts in Honor of Sena Bergerud, ’02,

by Peggy Weber, ’65 Enrico and Jane Van Rysselberghe Bernasconi, ’53

by Barbara Hunter, ’57 Anne Gillespie Brown, ’68,

by Peggy Weber, ’65 Claudia Jo “Dia” Calhoun, ’80,

by Robina Royer, ’80 The Class of 1946

by Betsy Taves Whitman, ’46 The Class of 1950

by Barbara McCall Bryant, ’50 The Class of 1952—all of the living members

by Jean Cosentino, ’52 The Class of 2002

by The Sacramento Mills Alumnae Branch Terry Dickie Comacho, ’61,

by Elizabeth Frederick, ’61, and Constance Gilbert Neiss, ’61 Caroline Jeruto Chumo, ’02,

by Ashlin Mahood, ’00 Fred Taylor Clarke by Melody Clarke Teppola, ’64 Tracey Franklin Corbett, ’65,

by Peggy Weber, ’65 Mary and Clifford Evans

by Barbara Evans, ’63 Amy Franklin-Willis, ’94,

by Marjorie Christensen, ’85 Katherine DeHart Hale, ’81,

by Robina Royer, ’80 Heather Hamrick, ’00,

by Peggy Weber, ’65 Karen Lee Hancock, ’02,

by Heidi Wachter, ’01 Maurine Martin Harkness, ’71,

by Geraldine Stevens Toms, ’44 Meredith Harkness, ’00,

by Geraldine Stevens Toms, ’44 John Harris by Kiyomi Cohn, ’92 Lorraine Hamilton Havens, ’30,

by Shirley Hambrook Jones, ’52 The Heroes of September 11, 2001 by Mills College Club of New York Mai-Oanh Phan Ho, ’99,

by Ashlin Mahood, ’00

Barbara Hunter, ’57,

by Carol Meyer Doyle, ’81 Whitney Jensen, ’00,

by Ashlin Mahood, ’00 Christina Antoinette Kovach, ’98, by Ashlin Mahood, ’00 Esther Rosenblatt Landa, ’33,

by Paula Merrix Sporck, ’46 Patricia Taylor Lee, ’57, DMA,

by Phyllis Cole Bader, ’35 Carol Lennox, ’61,

by Lydia Mann, ’83 Cynthia Mahood Levin, ’95,

by Ashlin Mahood, ’00 Los Angeles Mills College Alumnae Board of Directors

by Elizabeth Agee Hancock, ’40 Katherine Elizabeth Mahood, ’93,

by Ashlin Mahood, ’00 Florence Mann,

by Louise Mann Tolle, ’52 Stephanie Walker McCoy, ’80,

by Robina Royer, ’80 Marcia McElvain, ’61,

by Ann Gordon Bigler, ’61 Mills College

by Janice Shobert Peterson, ’52 Erin Brooke Mitchell, ’00,

by Ashlin Mahood, ’00 Linda Moody

by Maud Steyaert Nangee Warner Morrison, ’63,

by Bob Whitlock and Peggy Weber, ’65 Isabel Schemel Mulcahy, ’44,

by Jane Cudlip King, ’42 Emily Nelson, ’02,

by Peggy Weber, ’65 Megali Noth, ’98,

by Marina Herrero, ’02 Alison Nowak, ’02,

by Peggy Weber, ’65 Thoraya Obaid, ’66,

by Paula Merrix Sporck, ’46 Melissa O’Meara, ’00,

by Ashlin Mahood, ’00 Elizabeth Parker, ’85,

by Paula Merrix Sporck, ’46 Erin Pehl, ’02,

by Peggy Weber, 65 Tu Trinh Pham, ’99,

by Ashlin Mahood, ’00

Margaret Dollar Powers, ’33,

by Sheila Powers Converse, ’57 Henry Rappaport and Josephine Patrick Rappaport, ’65,

by Peggy Weber, ’65 Joe Rensch and June Burley Rensch, ’52, by Jacquelyn Jagger Parsons, ’52 Dale Robards, ’98,

by Peggy Weber, ’65 Stori Robertson, ’02,

by Dori Wechsler, ’00 Katherine Rybka, ’02,

by Peggy Weber, ’65 Sue Bengston Steele, ’42,

by Jane Cudlip King, ’42 Susan Steele

by The Sacramento Mills Alumnae Branch Maud Steyaert, ’88,

by Heather Cox, ’88 Gillian Swanson, ’95,

by Karilee Wirthlin, ’92 Koh Tatai—in honor of your 80th birthday by Tomoye Tatai Sarah Taylor, ’00,

by Ashlin Mahood, ’00 Adrienne White by Elizabeth Barry, ’94, Melissa Stevenson Dile, ’91, Paula Merrix Sporck, ’46, and Peggy Weber, ’65 Susan Whitlock, ’03,

by Peggy Weber, ’65 Reynold Wik

by Kit Farrow Jorrens, ’57

Gifts in Memory of Betty Lou Mathew Adams, ’52,

by Barbara Smith Brown, ’52 Frances Rehfeld Ahlers

by Ann Rehfeld Fagan, ’52 Mildred “Vicki” Alvarado, ’52,

by Anne Mero Adelmann, ’52 James Anderson by Rubye Campodonico Reade, ’33 Pamela Nickerson Angwin, ’49,

by Sarah Cornew Durrum, ’49 Nancy McCoy Armer, ’48,

by Annette Lee Park, ’55 Francis-Ruth Armstrong, ’31,

by Joanne Gearey, ’52

Robert Arneson, MA ’58,

by Findley Randolph Cotton, ’58 Roger and Ann Arnhart

by Suzanne Arnhart, ’72 Carol Smith Brown, ’47,

by Jennifer Gallison, ’97 John Buehler

by Alice London Bishop, ’58 Anne Hillman Burton, ’42,

by Billie Gardner Axel, ’42, Alice Gonnerman Mueller, ’42, and Norma Godfrey Vermilion, ’41 Evelyn “Peg” Deane, ’41,

by Mary Jane Hart Clark, ’42 The deceased members of the Class of ’52,

by Jean Cosentino, ’52 Grace Searing Dhaemers, ’62,

by Susan Farr Armstrong, ’62 Virginia Peterson DuMont, ’38,

by Lorna DuMont Shinkle, ’79, Paula Merrix Sporck, ’46, and Julia Voorhies, ’66 Edward “Bob” Dunlop

by Leah Hardcastle MacNeil, ’51 Mrs. P. Du Rousseau by Jenella Du Rousseau Placet, ’71 Anne Ritter Farr, ’30,

by Susan Farr Armstrong, ’62 Frances Korbel Ferguson, ’44

by Ann O’Brien Hildebrand, ’61 Ann Noble Fiedler, ’69,

by Patricia and David Burnell Joel Ferris

by Ellen Graue Ferris, ’46, and Dorothy McVeigh Raney, ’45 Josephine Gibson Freeland, ’41,

by Norma Godfrey Vermilion, ’41 Charlotte Frey

by Laurel Burden, ’68, Susan Stern Fineman, ’68, Judith Greenwood Jones, ’60, Linda Kay, ’73, Emma-Jane Peck White, ’35, and Nancy Dreyer Blaugrund, ’68 Dora Herman Gates, ’23

by Phyllis Merrick Purdum,’52 William and Helen Gaw

by Jane Farrell Gaw, ’52 George Goers

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Passages

by Ellen Graue Ferris, ’46 Jane Ericksen Goul, ’50,

by Barbara McCall Bryant,’50 Jean Miser Grant, ’40,

by Eleanore Lundegaard Nissen, ’42 Quentin Griffiths

by Miriam Dyer-Bennet May, ’44 Catherine McClintock Haas, ’52,

by Elizabeth Hoyt, ’52 Rev. George Hall

by Yvonne Mero Baker, ’49, Sally Mayock Hartley, ’48, and Lou Hale Smitheram, ’50 Elizabeth Rulison Harrington, ’40,

by June Melchior, ’01, Mary Kuzell Niznik, ’40, Helen Smith and Grace Sakata Sugiyama, ’40 Ruth Patterson Hart, ’33,

by Melody Clarke Teppola, ’64 Madeleine Sharp Healy, ’39,

by Elizabeth McCaughin Mallory, ’48, John Taylor, Jacquelyn Walter, and Nancy Whyte Work, ’52 Dr. George Hedley

by Sally Mayock Hartley, ’48, and Maryvonne Gelly Mardaci, ’52 Dr. and Mrs. George P. Hedley

by Reed Isbell, ’62 Dr. Francis Herrick

by Sally Mayock Hartley, ’48 Elsa Hill

by Maryvonne Gelly Mardaci, ’52 H. Howard Holmes

by Mary Eleanor King Holmes, ’43 Marion Rowcliffe Howard, ’44,

by Miriam Dyer-Bennet May, ’44

Tomi Sakurai Ishii, ’32,

by Kunio Okayasu Ellen S. Johnson

by Laura Johnson Grey, ’84 Nancy Brown Kitchen, ’47,

by Suzanne Brund Lamon, ’47, and Katharine French Willi, ’47 Sarah Hughes Knox, ’33,

by Molly Fairbank Grassi, ’59 Robert Langner

by Joan Cummings Hobbs, ’48, Sheila Morrow Joost, ’48, and Jane Cudlip King, ’42 Susan Long, ’56,

by Sharon Heaton Kinney, ’56 Elizabeth Heller Mandell, ’52,

by Alan Mandell, Olivia Mandell, Peter Mandell, and Nan Senior Robinson, ’52 Floyd Mann

by Louise Mann Tolle, ’52 Grace Mary Manning

by Mary Manning Graham, ’61 Barbara Pinnell McClelland, ’31,

by Sue McClelland, ’56 Susan McClendon

by Phyllis Cole Bader, ’35 Robert McCord

by Ellen Graue Ferris, ’46 Howard McMinn

by Elizabeth Peterson Macaulay, ’47 Clinton Monday

by M.O.H.R.: Ann Bigler, ’61, Terry Camacho, ’61, Betsy Frederick, ’61, Connie Gilbert, ’61, Mary Linda Luhring, ’61, Marcia McElvain, ’61, Donna Riback, ’61, and Stuart Johnson Sliter, ’61

Vincent Morgan by Jacquelyn Jagger Parsons, ’52 Elizabeth Logan Narver, ’56,

by Caroline Houser, ’56, and Barbara Sweetland Smith, ’58 The parents of Judith Nelson

by Judith Roberts Nelson, ’52 Shirley Nelson, ’45, by Isabelle Hagopian Arabian, ’45, and Beth Larson O’Donohoe, ’46 Patricia Hunt Nevin, ’50,

by Barbara McCall Bryant, ’50 Patricia Timmer Newman, ’49,

by Carol Blundell Miller, ’49 Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd Noble

by Ann Noble Brown, ’52 Erica Dowie Noceti, ’42,

by Billie Gardner Axel, ’42 Steven W. Nordblom

by Catherine LaRoche, ’85 Franklin Ott

by Ellen Graue Ferris, ’46, and Dorothy McVeigh Raney, ’45 Elizabeth Penaat, ’55,

by Irene Harville Hannaford, ’54, and Elizabeth MacMahon Wied, ’55 Dr. Helen Pillans by Janella Du Rousseau Placet, ’71 Dr. J. G. Placet by Janella Du Rousseau Placet, ’71 Jean MacKenzie Pool, ’43,

by Ellen Graue Ferris, ’46 Libby Pope

by Suzanne Arnhart, ’72 Thomas Lawrence Powers

by Sheila Powers Converse, ’57 Elvis Presley

by Ellen Akerlund Gonella, ’68 Donald Reay by Nina Zhito, ’81

Ginnie Rosekrans by Leone La Duke Evans, ’45, MA Edward Rosenfeld

by Phyllis Cole Bader, ’35, Emma-Jane Peck White, ’35, Betty Brosinske Erickson, ’47, Suzanne Brund Lamon, ’47, Janet Clark McCoy, ’47, Melody Clarke Teppola, ’64, and Katharine French Willi, ’47 Virginia Stone Scheflin, ’34,

by Billie Gardner Axel, ’42 Jean Dondero Schmidt, ’45,

by Jean Schweers Burns, ’46, and Mary Martinelli Cathaleene A. Scott

by Carol Scott-Haworth, ’84 Emiko Hinoki Shimizu, ’41,

by Patricia Cooper Niederauer, ’69, and Paula Merrix Sporck, ’46 Eleanor Edgecomb Sinclaire, ’47,

by Betty Brosinske Erickson, ’47, and Suzanne Brund Lamon, ’47 Kathy Sova

by Jeannine Sova Jones, ’57 Joanne Farmer Suppes, ’43,

by Alice Booth Koh Tatai by Tomoye Tatai Jane Taylor, ’35,

by Terry Taylor Elwood, ’67 Shirley Summy Taylor, ’41,

by Terry Taylor Elwood, ’67 C. B. Tennis

by Jacquelyn Jagger Parsons, ’52 Helen Bailey Thirion, ’28,

by Billie Gardner Axel, ’42 Bayra Richards Thrasher, ’30,

by Marian Wickline, ’35

Helen Odell Gilbert-Bushnell, ’43 MRS. GILBERT-BUSHNELL died at the age of 80 at her home in Honolulu on April 8, 2002. She had a distinguished career as a practicing artist and as professor of art at the University of Hawaii, Manoa.

Before coming to Mills, she attended the Punahou School in Honolulu, and after receiving a bachelor’s degree in art from Mills, she went on to earn an MFA degree in art at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, where she taught for 30 years.

She also held appointments as visiting professor of art at the Parsons School of Design and the Pratt Institute in New York.

Mrs. Gilbert-Bushnell gained a reputation as an innovative artist. Although painting occupied most of her time, she also produced more than 100 editions of prints and pioneered the use of polarized light in kinetic sculpture.

Her work is in numerous public and corporate collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the Tate Gallery in London. Mrs. Gilbert-Bushnell is survived by her second husband, Kenneth W. Bushnell, two sisters, and her seven children by her first husband, Dr. Fred I. Gilbert, including Kristin Gilbert, ’68, and six grandchildren.

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Passages Michael Tielemans

by Borgee Ng Chinn, ’41 Louise “Weezie” Hayes Vanderliet, ’53,

by Suzanne Adams, ’48, Joan Thompson Armstrong, ’51, Penelope Baird, Kay Miller Browne, ’53, Yvonne Steele Byron, ’50, Kathryn Dudley Chase, ’61, Anne Sherwood Copenhagen, ’44, Joan Lewis Danforth, ’53, Melissa Stevenson Dile, ’91, Leone La Duke Evans, MA ’45, Ruth Gillard, ’36, Lucile Pedler Griffiths, ’46, Jean Logan Henderson, ’34, Barbara Hunter, ’57, Muriel Johnston, ’42, MA ’46, Judith Greenwood Jones, ’60, Linda Kay, ’73, Nancy Kennedy, Jane Cudlip King, ’42, Lisa Kosiewicz, ’91, Janet Armes Koupal, ’57, Liza Kuney, ’88, Leah Hardcastle MacNeil, MA ’51, Eleanor McDonald Meyer, ’36, Carol Blundell Miller, ’49, Diana Birtwistle Odermatt, ’60, Loadel Harter Piner, ’50, Barbara Berger Pratt, ’53, Eleanor Stein Rusnak, ’36, Carole Joseph Silva, ’54, Paula Merrix Sporck, ’46, Cynthia Taves, ’48, Muffy McKinstry Thorne, ’48, Amy Turner, Joyce Turner, Toni Renee Vierra, ’98, Peggy Weber, ’65, and Carol Lu Leland Zischke, ’80 Muriel Van Hoosear

by Joyce Van Hoosear Moulton, ’53, and Marilyn Van Hoosear Goode, ’53

Dr. Henry J. Vaux, Sr.

by Melody Clarke Teppola, ’64 Jean Macduff Vaux, ’33,

by Melody Clarke Teppola, ’64 Imogene and Franklin Walker

by Katherine Farrow Jorrens, ’57 Maude McArthur White

by Alice Groch Sheppard, ’66 Helen Bryan Wik

by Katherine Farrow Jorrens, ’57, and Melody Clarke Teppola, ’64 Robert Work

by Shirley Hambrook Jones, ’52 Evaline Wright by Flora Kirschner Isaacson, ’54 Ian Zellick, MA ’52, by Joaquina Ballard Howles, ’52 Charlene Nugent Zoller, ’52,

by Patricia Heskins Gumbiner, ’52, Elizabeth McCaughin Mallory, ’48, Beatrice Sarett Tesch, ’52, and Nancy Whyte Work, ’52

Martha Tway Mills, ’45 Martha’s interest in government came early and easily. At the age of 10 she spent many hours sitting in a gallery seat of the Arizona State Legislature where her father was speaker of the house.

She majored in economics, philosophy, and politics at Mills, while being editor of the Weekly and then president of Olney Hall. Martha also spent two years studying international relations at Stanford. In 1947 she married Donald Clair Mills in Carmel. She served as her class secretary and as regional governor for the mid-Atlantic states.

Martha spent time in Japan after World War II working on a project to help Japanese women accept the rights given them in the MacArthurdesigned constitution. She and Don moved to Washington, D.C., and in 1952 Martha joined the League of Women Voters national staff. By l978 she was director of the education fund. Her last four years with the League were spent as deputy executive director. When she retired in 1989, the League’s official publication commented, “Her service is unlikely ever to be equaled,” and “There will be no replacing this legend.” The League also created The Martha T. Mills Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her contributions. She was the first recipient of the award, and as the citation states, she “unfailingly offered the League her wisdom, warmth, optimism, and humor.”

She is survived by her husband, Donald Clair Mills, and her sister Jean Herridge.

—Martha Wickland Stumpf, ’46

M I L L S Q U A R T E R LY FA L L 2 0 0 2

25

Nominate Your Choice for Alumna Trustee Today Now is the time for you, the alumnae of Mills College, to nominate the next candidates for Alumna Trustee.

Who are they?

The three Alumnae Trustees serve on both the Board of Trustees of Mills College and the Board of Governors of the Alumnae Association, and convey the majority view of the Board of Governors to the Board of Trustees and serve as a liaison between the two Boards.

One Alumna Trustee is elected each year.

What are the expectations of the Alumnae Trustees?

Each year the Alumnae Trustees are expected to attend three two-day meetings of the College’s Board of Trustees (plus possible additional committee meetings) and six evening meetings of the AAMC’s Board of Governors, as well as a day-long Retreat and the Annual Meeting.

The Alumnae Trustees serve a three-year term and may run for a second term.

participation in college activities such as the Alumnae Admission Representative program, and fundraising/financial support of the AAMC or the College.

In order to be assured that there is at least one Alumna Trustee who lives outside the Bay Area, the AAMC Board of Governors has restricted nominations every third year to alumnae who live outside the Middle California region.

This year nominations are unrestricted.

How are the Alumnae Trustees elected?

Three final nominees, selected by the Nominating Committee, will be featured in the spring 2003 Quarterly.

All alumnae are eligible to vote by mail-in ballots provided in the Quarterly, and one Alumna Trustee is elected from the three nominees. (The newly elected Trustee begins her term on June 1, 2003.)

How are the Alumnae Trustees nominated?

Nomination of candidates, or self-nominations, are mailed, faxed, or emailed to the AAMC Nominating Committee before November 30, 2002.

In January 2003, candidates who choose to be considered complete and return to the Nominating Committee a questionnaire that details their qualifications and position statements.

For more detailed information...

Ask the AAMC to send you the complete Alumna Trustee information packet.

What background and experience are desired?

The Nominating Committee is looking for individuals who have demonstrated participation in alumnae activites such as branch or regional leadership or service as a class secretary or agent, or

Current Alumnae Trustees Are: Judy Greenwood Jones, ’60, Sara Ellen McClure, ’81, and Sharon K. Tatai, ’80.

Questions?

Contact Anne Gillespie Brown at Reinhardt House at (510) 430-2112, or email her at <annegb@mills.edu>.

N O M I N AT I N G F O R M NAME OF NOMINEE

CLASS YEAR

ADDRESS OF NOMINEE

TELEPHONE OF NOMINEE

YOUR NAME

CLASS YEAR

You may use the envelope at the center of this magazine to return your nomination form, or you may fax a copy to the AAMC at (510) 430-1401 or email it to <annegb@mills.edu>.

Death Valley and the Mojave Desert March 28–April 5, 2003

Join us! . . . as we explore California’s desert paradise on a splendid spring vacation!

Discover the lowest point in the U.S. and snow-capped peaks which soar more than 11,000 feet overhead. Learn about the history of earth preserved in the astonishing cliffs and landscapes. Delight in the spring wildflowers and wildlife of the desert—from desert pupfish to roadrunners and kangaroo rats. Explore ancient lake beds, pine forests, rock salt pinnacles, and fabulous sand dunes. Relive the days of the 49’er gold seekers and the prospectors at historic Mitchell Caverns, and explore immense Scotty’s Castle.

Join us, your host from Mills, Professor of Biology John Harris, and naturalist David Wimpfheimer, and discover the magic of Death Valley and the Mojave Desert this spring!

Cost of tour is $2,290 per person twin share (from Las Vegas), single $350 additional.

For a detailed color brochure, please call the AAMC at (510) 430-2110, fax (510) 430-1401, or email us at <aamc@mills.edu>.

PHOTOS BY ROBERT P. NANSEN

Visit Death Valley I’m delighted to be traveling to the Mojave Desert this spring on this exciting trip organized by the Alumnae Association. If you ask the average person to characterize a desert, he or she is likely to include extreme heat, lack of rain, and extensive dunes in their description. Our trip to Death Valley and the Mojave should go a long way toward correcting those stereotypical impressions! If anything, desert climates can better be characterized by their variability. We are likely to experience temperatures ranging from freezing to comfortable “shortsleeve” weather. The spectacular landscape will include some of the most scenic dunes in North America to be sure, but also will include majestic desert mountains, diverse shrub-dominated communities, stream courses, and the remnants of Ice Age lakes. The chance to view the earth’s exposed history is one of my favorite features of desert travel: nearly 600 million years of the earth’s history are exposed to view in Death Valley. At the same time, the evidence of the cooler climates and woodland vegetation of just a few thousand years ago can be seen. It’s hard to believe that today’s home of cacti and creosote bush had camels and giant ground sloths not so long ago!

California has three distinctly different desert regions: the Great Basin (Mono Lake and northeastern California), the

Colorado Desert (Anza Borrego State Park and Southern California desert) and the Mojave Desert. Though our trip is centered in the Mojave, we’ll have a chance to see plants and animals representing the other desert regions when we visit the Mojave National Preserve. As a preview to the trip, participants might enjoy either of Edmund C. Jaeger’s books: The California Deserts, and The North American Deserts.

Much of my career as a biologist has been spent studying small mammals in desert environments from Mono Lake to the southern San Joaquin Valley, to the western Mojave Desert. I’m particularly excited to have the opportunity to share what I’ve learned about these wonderful animals and their adaptations for surviving in this variable and often difficult environment. We’ll have the chance to capture and observe small mammals at close hand at the Zzyzx Springs Desert Studies Center. We should also see a variety of desert bird life and reptiles, including the endangered desert tortoise. I would not want to predict wildflowers this far in advance, but the El Nino conditions that some climatologists have predicted for this winter should result in a good year for flowers.

—John Harris, Professor of Biology

Jade Snow Wong, ’42 Bowl, 1951, enamel on copper. Interior: coral-red and white enamel. Exterior: blue, black, and silver enamel. Photo courtesy of the Chinese Historical Society of America.

Mills Quarterly Alumnae Association of Mills College Reinhardt Alumnae House Mills College PO Box 9998 Oakland, CA 94613-0998 510 430-2110 aamc@mills.edu www.mills.edu

PERIODICALS POSTAGE PAID AT OAKLAND, CA AND AT ADDITIONAL MAILING OFFICE(S)

ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED

Printed on recycled paper with soy-based inks.

Viewers have a rare opportunity to see ceramics and enamelware by Jade Snow Wong, ’42, in a retrospective of her work, running through December 22, 2002, at the Chinese Historical Society of America, 965 Clay Street, San Francisco. For more information call (415) 391-1188 or see <www.chsa.org>.