Wellesley magazine fall 2010

fall 2010

| BOOKS UNBOUND | LARGE LESSONS FROM SMALL BEINGS | THE BIG EASY COMEBACK

Our actions are testing the resiliency of the ocean

SeaChanges

RICHARD RICH RIC R IC CH HA ARD AR RD R D HO HOWARD HOWA HOW OWA O OW WA W ARD RD

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JUSTIN KNIGHT

Living With Others by Carl T. Heyward (1987, Carl T. Heyward, publisher, San Francisco, 21 cm.) is one of the College’s 1,500 artists’ books housed in Special Collections at the Clapp Library.

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COURTESY LYNN SHERR ’61

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JUSTIN KNIGHT

OUR WATER OUR WORLD.

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©MAURICIO HANDLER FROM SMITHSONIAN OCEAN:

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Features 24 SEA CHANGES

By Deborah Cramer ’73 Human are inflicting lasting damage upon the world’s life-giving ocean waters, Humans with repercussions that are not yet fully understood. Will our seas recover?

Departments 2

From the Editor

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Letters to the Editor

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From the President

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Window on Wellesley

by Alice Hummer, Lisa Scanlon ’99, Francie Latour, Ruth Walker, Jennifer Garrett ’98, Jennifer McFarland Flint, and Abigail Murdy ’12

Perh Perhaps, but the longer we wait, the more difficult the challenges become.

36 BOOKS UNBOUND

By Francie Latour The College’s collection of artists’ books—or books as art—

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Shelf Life

is particularly strong, with about 1,500 works boasting wide-ranging

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First Person— The Big Easy Comeback

by Stephanie Bruno ’74

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WCAA—Your Alumnae Association

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Class Notes

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Alumnae Memorials— Mary Dooley Bragg ’40

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Endnote—Girl Meets Dog: A Love Story—Eventually

by Anna Johns ’09

aesthetics and serious intellectual punch.

46 LARGE LESSONS FROM SMALL BEINGS

By Lynn Sherr ’63 What can grandchildren teach even the most learned among us?

Lesso on life, it turns out. And maximizing profits at a lemonade stand.

Lessons

Cover photograph: An olive ridley turtle coming ashore to nest on a beach in Costa Rica ©Steve Winter, National Geographic Image Collection,

from Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World

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Editor Alice M. Hummer Associate Editors Francie Latour Lisa Scanlon ’99

From the Editor

Student Assistant Abigail Murdy ’12 Design Friskey Design, Sherborn, Mass.

Wellesley (USPS 673-900). Published fall, winter, spring, and summer by the Wellesley College Alumnae Association.

Editorial and Business Office: Alumnae Association, Wellesley College, 106 Central St., Wellesley, MA 02481-8203.

Phone 781-283-2342. Fax 781-283-3638.

Periodicals postage paid at Boston, Mass., and other mailing offices. Postmaster: Send Form 3579 to Wellesley magazine, Wellesley College, 106 Central St., Wellesley, MA 02481-8203.

Wellesley Policy: One of the objectives of Wellesley, in the best College tradition, is to present interesting, thought-provoking material, even though it may be controversial. Publication of material does not necessarily indicate endorsement of the author’s viewpoint by the magazine, the Alumnae Association, or Wellesley College.

Wellesley magazine reserves the right to edit and, when necessary, revise all material that it accepts for publication.

Unsolicited photographs will be published at the discretion of the editor.

KEEP WELLESLEY UP-TO-DATE!

The Alumnae Office has a voice mailbox to be used by alumnae for updating their computer records. The number is 1-800-339-5233.

You can also update your information online when you visit the Alumnae Association website at http://www. wellesley.edu/Alum/.

DIRECT LINE PHONE NUMBERS

College Switchboard Alumnae Office Magazine Office Admission Office Center for Work and Service Resources Office

781-283-1000 781-283-2331 781-283-2344 781-283-2270 781-283-2352 781-283-2217

INTERNET ADDRESS

http://www.wellesley.edu/Alum/

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S

OME ALUMNAE WILL GO TO GREAT LENGTHS to get the scoop on Wellesley. Take Leah Lyman Waldron ’06.

In one of my favorite letters to the editor of all time, she described how her latest issue of Wellesley took a nosedive into the toilet. One can only presume she was catching up on her alma mater in a quiet place where she wouldn’t be disturbed. Her husband wanted to throw the soggy issue out. “But I haven’t read it yet!”

Waldron told him, and then spread it out to dry on the bathroom countertop. “It was worth it,” she wrote.

That, my friends, is reader loyalty.

But Waldron is not alone. We regularly get calls from alumnae asking whether the next issue is out yet—often before we’re finished editing it.

Those are the kinds of contacts any editor loves, since they signal a readership that is engaged. Across the wider magazine industry—at a time when titans like Newsweek are being sold for $1—editors and publishers are trying to reinvent their publications to keep the attention of readers. I recently heard Cathie Black, chair of Hearst Magazines, on NPR discussing the “multiplatform approach” her publications have employed: print, iPad apps, websites, even radio shows and magazinerelated events. “All of us magazine publishers and editors have to think on multiple levels to keep the user engaged,” she said.

Which makes the results of a survey the Alumnae Association recently conducted all the more surprising. This summer, roughly 5,600 of you—in classes from 1940 to 2010—responded to online questions about a variety of WCAA activities, including the magazine. Six out of 10 of you who participated in the survey said you wanted your magazine in print only. Only 8 percent felt comfortable having the magazine available only on the web, but 31 percent are receptive to reading it online and in print.

This startled me, but it made me smile. I’m a print girl from way back; I started in the newspaper business when there were still guys in the back room pasting up layout. I love flipping through a crisp, new magazine. Still, I absolutely live on the internet (I read many publications there) and think the Kindle and the iPad are pretty nifty. I suspect that like many of you—at least those of you over 40—I have a foot in the old world, and a foot in the new.

How the publishing industry will reinvent itself as technology evolves is a topic of endless discussion, and no one can quite see through the fog into the future. As for Wellesley magazine, I can say for certain that we will continue to produce a print product, though at some point, once we have a more complete web presence, you may be able to decide whether you want the paper version or not. In the meantime, we will continue to use tools like Facebook to engage in dialogue with you. Even in this newly redesigned magazine—which now has a look in harmony with the College’s recently adopted visual identity—you’ll see many more references to online resources.

All of this, of course, is to make sure that you stay interested in reading us, and that your bonds with the College and one another stay strong. We were pleased to find that 80 percent of survey respondents said they read some or all of every issue of the magazine. But we’d still like to have more of you engaged. So let us hear from you—about what you think of this redesign, what you like, what you don’t, the kinds of stories you’d like to see more of.

In the meantime, a parting thought. If Wellesley magazine had been available, say, on the iPad, and Leah Waldron had been reading it in her sanctum sanctorum, what would have happened if her e-magazine had gone into the drink?

I’ll leave that to one of my successors to solve.

Alice M. Hummer, Editor

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

I have to admit that I fell a little behind on reading my Wellesley magazines this year. In the midst of getting a graduate degree, it is more difficult to gobble up each issue the day it arrives. Over the course of two days last month, I read through a year’s worth of Wellesley magazines, so when the summer ’10 issue arrived, it was like being greeted by several old friends. My heart sang to read in the editor’s letter of the connection formed between Parnian Nazary ’10 and Patty Ward, one little glimmer of hope emerging from the tragic death of Paula Loyd ’95 (“Paula’s Mission,” summer ’09). I had heard Paula’s story on public radio months ago, never imagining that she was a Wellesley sister. Every page of this summer issue held some delightful note of interest: the “sustainable move out,” recycled paper sculptures, one of my favorite professors (Alice Friedman) sharing with the world the brilliant ideas she has always shared with her students, and those amazing reports from Haiti, a place very close to my heart. I promise never to fall behind on my reading again. Wellesley magazine is too good to sit idle! Keep up the good work!

Rebecca Nelson Edwards ’01 Alexandria, Va.

I just finished reading the summer ’10 issue cover to cover. I didn’t even go to my class notes first. This is a first-class magazine filled with thought-provoking articles on international affairs.

Congratulations! It makes me proud to be an alumna (if a little intimidated by what some others are doing).

Cherie Buresh Weil ’63 Evanston, Ill. ALLISON STACEY COWLES ’55

The Wellesley connection can permeate even the remotest places on earth!

In 2000, my husband and I were at an isolated kasbah in the High Atlas mountains of Morocco, a Shangri-La experience recommended by an innkeeper in the medina of Marrakesh.

One afternoon we heard pots clanging, bells ringing, and staff voices raised in a ceremony to welcome important lunch guests, in this case an attractive young couple. The man later modestly informed us that he worked “in management” for the New York Times.

In the course of our conversation, I mentioned that I had graduated from Wellesley, and he said his stepmother had, too. I realized then that he was the publisher of the paper, chair of the New York Times Company, son of Punch Sulzberger, and stepson of Allison Stacey Cowles ’55! What a loss her recent death must be for family, friends, and Wellesley (“Memorials,” summer ’10).

Doris Schaffer O’Brien ’54 Lompoc, Calif.

disappointed in the past by the College’s lack of a visible commitment to sustainability in major campus projects, so this article was a pleasant surprise.

The effort to certify Alumnae Hall is a small step in the right direction, and I look forward to future commitments toward sustainability.

Kara Schimmelfing ’07 Silver Spring, Md. SAFETY FIRST!

In the summer ’10 issue, the photo of students riding College-sponsored bicycles without helmets was disturbing (“Free Wheeling”). I do think the bike program is great and wish they’d had it in my student days, but how can helmets be incorporated into it?

Without them, I fear tragedy!

By the way, the magazine is terrific, as it has been for the last couple of years.

Elizabeth Willis Thomson ’70 Natick, Mass.

COVER TO COVER

I treasure the Wellesley magazine and read it from cover to cover. I’m not surprised that it is acknowledged as one of the best alumnae publications.

I was especially happy to read about the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs and the students who participated in it (“A Crucible for Global Leadership,” spring ’10).

I’m very proud of my Wellesley heritage and owe much of what I have accomplished in life to the Wellesley education I was fortunate enough to receive.

Please keep up the good work.

Jeannie Rudolph Pechin ’49 Hana, Hawaii WELLESLEY PROUD

Reading about our extraordinary Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs brought tears to my eyes. This may well be our finest achievement. I can’t imagine a program with greater promise, and Madeleine and Hillary Rodham Clinton ’69 (Continued on page 85)

CORRECTION

In the summer ’10 issue on p. 47, we incorrectly stated two facts about new Alumnae Association board member Shelley Sweet ’67. Shelley lives in Palo Alto, Calif., and received a master’s in management from John F. Kennedy University in 1990.

Wellesley regrets the errors.

A GREEN ALUMNAE HALL

Thank you very much for mentioning that the College is pursuing LEED certification for the Alumnae Hall renovation (“Re-imagining Alumnae Hall,” summer ’10). I have been

Deborah Cramer ’73 (“Sea Changes,” p. 24) is the author of two natural histories of the sea, Great Waters: An Atlantic Passage and Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World.

Writer and preservationist Stephanie Bruno ’74 (“The Big Easy Comeback,” p. 20) is a native of New Orleans and still lives in the 1880s-era center-hall house where she was raised.

Lynn Sherr ’63 (“Large Lessons from Small Beings,” p. 46) is a former ABC News correspondent who now is happily spending a lot of time with her grandchildren.

RICHARD HOWARD

CONTRIBUTORS

RICHARD HOWARD

CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

CATCHING UP

A FIRST-CLASS MAGAZINE

PETER VANDERWARKER

Wellesley welcomes short letters (a maximum length of 300 words) relating to articles or items that have appeared in recent issues of the magazine. Send your remarks to the Editor, Wellesley magazine, 106 Central St., Wellesley, MA 02481-8203, or e-mail comments to magazine@alum.wellesley.edu.

Francie Latour (“Books Unbound,” p. 36) is an associate editor of Wellesley magazine.

Wellesley magazine is available online at http://issuu.com/wellesley.

Anna Johns ’09 (“Girl Meets Dog: A Love Story—Eventually,” p. 88) is enjoying postWellesley life as a 4th-grade teacher in San Antonio, Texas.

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From the President

Innovation in Learning

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RICHARD HOWARD

I

After careful consideration, the APC recommended and the faculty N MY CONVOCATION REMARKS at the beginning of the academic year, I concurred that we formalize a first-year seminar program. A few first-year spoke about the need both to continue to make the arguments that seminars have been in place for some time, many others are new this fall, demonstrate the value of a liberal-arts education, and also to ensure and still others will be added as we expand the program. that the education we provide is preparing our students for a world It is an important concept for many reasons. First-years arrive at that is changing so rapidly. It is from a position of great strength that Wellesley with unlimited potential but widely varying educational backWellesley takes up this charge. grounds. First-year seminars are designed as an immediate immersion of In those remarks, I noted that Wellesley has sustained its repour new students in Wellesley’s rich intellectual community. Students will utation over the years because we have remained true to our academic participate in the small, collaborative, discussion-based classes that epitotraditions. We teach the basics well in the classical manner. We always have. mize a Wellesley education. They will experience the excitement of new We always will. But, importantly, we have not shied away from innovation ideas. They will feel part of an intellecand from being responsive to the changtual and social community. They will ing state of knowledge and innovative discover early the defining characterisapproaches to teaching and learning. tic of our Wellesley community—the To ensure our continued academic love of learning. As they do so, they excellence, we must be thoughtful about will be developing the educational the ongoing development of our acafoundation we believe is critical to the demic and intellectual community. This scholarly passion that will drive their requires careful planning. Two years Wellesley careers. ago, we formed an all-faculty Academic Many seminars are multiPlanning Committee (APC) to consider disciplinary, and classes are small. the College’s goals for its educational First-year seminars are designed to and research mission and charged the tackle big questions in creative ways. members with making specific recomA sampling of the titles reveals much mendations. In addition, we have had about the intent of the program: three task forces—a task force on the arts, a task force on the sciences, and a > Archaeology and Artifacts: Exploring task force on languages and area stud> Classical Cultures Through Objects ies—meeting in recent years to formulate > Robotic Design Studio specific recommendations related to each of those curricular > Literature and the History of Ideas areas. The integration of these plans, as well as recommenda> Science and the Bible tions that emerge from other academic-planning initiatives, are designed as > The Coastal Zone: Intersection of Land, Sea, and will help shape the future of Wellesley’s academic program. an immediate > Humanity The recommendations that have emerged thus far from > Where Should We Store Nuclear Waste? immersion of our these groups are inspiring. I want to provide you with a flavor > Meet the Dinosaurs: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly. new students of the plans that are in process. This fall we launched an exciting > A Journey Through the Metazoic in Wellesley’s new program based on the recommendations of the APC. > News and Politics: Reading Between the Lines Think back to your most satisfying courses at Wellesley: rich intellectual > Freedom of Speech stimulating discussions; close contact with learned professors community.’ who challenged and inspired you; exciting and freeUltimately, as resources permit, we hope to provide —President H. Kim Bottomly wheeling consideration of life-altering concepts; hands-on enough first-year seminars to allow every student to take .edu/Preisdent projects and assignments. one.

Read the convocation address at These classes probably I am confident that our commitment to the ongoing http://web.wellesley.edu:80/web/ AboutWellesley/OfficeofthePresident/ occurred after your first year. In the work of academic planning will serve us well as we position Wellesley to speeches.psml. past, many first-year courses did a be a leader in making the case for the value of a liberal-arts education. It good job of laying the groundwork for future scholarship, but tended to will also ensure that we continue to be regarded—justifiably—as one of the be larger, lecture-based classes that were less conducive to a participatory best liberal-arts colleges in the world. spirit of intellectual inquiry.

H. Kim Bottomly

WINDOW ON

WoW

WELLESLEY A NOTEBOOK OF NEWS AND INFORMATION ABOUT THE CAMPUS

BY ALICE HUMMER, FRANCIE LATOUR, LISA SCANLON ’99, RUTH WALKER, JENNIFER GARRETT ’98, JENNIFER MCFARLAND FLINT, AND ABIGAIL MURDY ’12

LIVE ON CAMPUS

A Wellesley Homecoming DESIRÉE GLAPION ROGERS ’81 bounded onto the

stage of Alumnae Hall and announced how glad she was “to be back home here at Wellesley.” After a few seconds of cheers, she laughed, stepped from behind the podium, and twirled. (“They will ask, ‘What was she wearing?’” Rogers quipped. “You’ve got to have fun.”) The former White House social secretary and current CEO of Chicago’s Johnson Publishing Company (which produces Jet and Ebony) gave the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Lecture in October, looking back over the various stages of her career in

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government and the corporate world. She had five messages for students, each delivered with a story from a critical juncture of her life: Carry yourself with confidence.

Darling, don’t be afraid. Go for what your gut tells you.

Opportunities to create change can be

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the most rewarding.

Seek opportunity that speaks not only to the intellect, but to the heart.

Savor everything.

In a question-and-answer period, Rogers discussed everything from the selection of artwork for the White House to the future of magazines.

Asked by a student what she loved most about Wellesley, she responded, “The intellectual stimulation—I’ve never duplicated this kind of RICHARD HOWARD

‘Wellesley is more than a place,’ says Rogers. ‘It’s a philosophy.’ One of her favorite things about the College? ‘Living in Tower Court,’ an answer that elicited raucous applause from her audience.

women’s intellect in one space. This is a very special place to be.”

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inPerson

LISA FISCHMAN, Ruth G. Shapiro ’37 Director of the Davis Museum

Transforming the Davis

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commitment to art and art history on this campus is astonishing and really distinguishes Wellesley among its peers. That feels enormously important, because I don’t have to argue for the value of art in a liberal-arts education.’

—Lisa Fischman

lucky, and you live right around the corner from the MFA, and you’re a member for life, there are always going to be crowds and noise. You’re just not going to get that same kind of contemplative experience.”

Transforming the Davis into the kind of campus nerve center where everyone at Wellesley, not just those studying the arts, can feel at home is one of Fischman’s top priorities. That kind of transformation starts with intriguing, high-impact shows from the collection, as well as temporary exhibitions, Fischman says. But it doesn’t end there. Connecting with the Davis could start as simply as settling in to the redesigned lobby space to use the Wi-Fi. “When I was interviewing here, the students made it very clear to me that they found the lobby cold and uninviting,” she says. “They weren’t complaining about the curriculum. They weren’t complaining about the collections.

They were complaining about this feel, the vibe. . . . So we [are undertaking] a face-lift of sorts in the lobby. And my hope is that students will really come and hang out.”

While they’re there, Fischman says, they might stumble upon a world-shaking contemporary artist or two. Like El Anatsui, a Ghanaian-born sculptor whose massive, politically charged installations of recycled materials reference the history of the African continent and a colonial legacy of inequality. Or Fred Sandback, the visionary minimalist whose floor-to-ceiling sculptures of stretched yarn create illusions of colored glass panes floating in space, and powerfully suggest how perception can alter reality. Both artists’ works are slated to be shown at the Davis in upcoming exhibits in 2011.

“I think the long-standing commitment to art and art history on this campus is astonishing and really distinguishes Wellesley among its peers,” says Fischman.

“That feels enormously important, because I don’t have to argue for the value of art in a liberal-arts education. What I get to do is enhance that, to inspire and spark and fuel the imagination of students and faculty here. So I feel lucky.”

—FL

RICHARD HOWARD

WHEN LISA FISCHMAN, the new Ruth G. Shapiro ’37 Director of the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, asked Wellesley’s faculty for the No. 1 item on its wish list of potential acquisitions, the answer was virtually unanimous: a 17th-century Dutch landscape painting.

“I thought, ‘Hmm. That’s interesting.’ That’s what they feel is really missing,” said Fischman, an Americanist by training who has spent much of her career immersed in modern art and contemporary works by living, international artists. “And what I see is a need for increasing diversity: diversity in material use, diversity in the background of artists. . . . That’s one of the important reasons that this position appealed to me, the way the Davis can serve the mission of the College to raise global leaders of tomorrow.”

In just 10 months, Fischman’s early acquisitions— a print by pioneer confessional artist Louise Bourgeois, a gouache painting by the subversive Layla Ali, and a Harry Callahan photograph from the auctioned and much-sought-after Polaroid Collection of Photography— have followed very much in that contemporary vision.

Provocative works that address themes of power, assimilation, violence, sexuality, and race, the acquisitions reflect global, 21st-century concerns at the heart of a liberal-arts education.

But in taking the reins of the Davis, Fischman says investigating the new doesn’t mean rejecting the old. On the contrary, the Davis What’s New at the Davis? she envisions is one Visit http://www.wellesley.edu/ DavisMuseum/whatsnew/index.html where students to find out. might one day turn the corner of a gallery and find a Dutch masterpiece.

“There are many institutions in the area, like the MFA, Boston, where you could go and look at a Dutch landscape painting,” says Fischman. “But the opportunity to have one here that would really be the focus of study would allow students to become familiar [with a work of art] in an intimate way . . . the same way you look at a friend’s face and think ‘Oh, I never noticed that before.’

“That’s another quality that’s distinctive to a campus museum,” Fischman says. “Even if you’re really

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CAMPUS GROWS BY 10 ACRES

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT

WELLESLEY’S ENDOWMENT

1. It’s not just one endowment.

It’s actually a group of some 3,000 individual funds. Each has been established by a different donor or group of donors—alumnae and others—for a specific purpose.

Each fund is tracked separately, but the money is invested as a single pool.

2. That big pool totaled $1.31 billion as of June 30, 2010.

This represented 9.3 percent investment return for the 2010 fiscal year.

scale. “Wellesley is extremely well endowed,” says Kuenstner.

5. Income from the endowment fund provides roughly one-third of the College’s operating budget every year. Endowed funds for student financial aid and faculty support, including funding for endowed chairs, represent about two-thirds of the endowment, reflecting donor support of these critical priorities.

6. The endowment is roughly half in stocks and bonds and half in “alternative investments.”

These include funds invested in venture capital, private equity, real estate, energy, and timberland.

The holdings of these funds include some rather unglamorous items, such as parking garages, that may nonetheless be good investments.

“Parking garages can generate a lot of cash,” says Kuenstner.

—RW

3. Chief Investment Officer Debby Foye Kuenstner’s longterm target is 5 percent plus inflation. The College plans to use approximately 5 percent of the market value of the College’s investments each year in the operating budget. When the total return on investment exceeds 5 percent plus inflation—about 3 percent recently—the endowment has had a good year. With a 9.3 percent return in 2010, “I feel good about the performance,” says Kuenstner ’80.

“We clearly exceeded our hurdle.”

—AH

LISA SCANLON ’99

4. Endowment per student is the metric that matters. Exact numbers fluctuate, but Wellesley ranks in the top 15 of American colleges and universities on this

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out the window from your room in Tower Court? The reds and golds of the trees across Lake Waban in the fall? The walks around the lake for exercise or procrastination?

Now, thanks to a unanimous vote by the College’s Board of Trustees, Wellesley has secured those treasured views and walks for future generations of Wellesley students, faculty, and staff. In September, President H. Kim Bottomly announced the purchase of 10 acres of land on the opposite end of the lake from the College, close to Pond Street.

Endowment funds were used for the purchase.

“This acquisition is both an investment opportunity for the College and a means of preserving Wellesley’s beautiful landscape,” Bottomly said. “The board’s decision will keep the property’s natural habitat from being aggressively developed; we will work to ensure that the lake path remains open and unobstructed; and we will preserve the beautiful landscape that is so important to the entire Wellesley community.”

Other than the homes owned by members of the extended Hunnewell family, the pie-shaped parcel that the College bought was the last privately held property bordering the lake. It includes a sixbedroom home dating from 1730 and a garage. The house, which contains original paneling and woodwork, was moved to the site from Burlington, Mass., in the 1930s, when two wings were added to it.

According to Andrew Evans, the College’s treasurer and vice-president for finance, the trustees are considering how the College will use the property, and there are “many ideas.” While he notes that its former owners “have cared for the house lovingly over their lifetime,” any use of the house by the College would require compliance with building and safety codes.

REMEMBER THAT VIEW

WELLESLEY COLLEGE CAMPUS

ATHLETICS FIELDS

QUOTABLES

It’s no longer necessary for a community to be bounded by a geographical boundary. They may exist now just virtually, and they exist across continents. And that means the ability for people to come together either for good or for ill, and have a unity of effort, is enabled by this global travel, trade, finance, and Michael Chertoff, secretary of communications. And that means that the threats former homeland security can’t be localized. They really appear all over the speaking on campus at the Wilson Lecture world and often simultaneously.

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MARGARET CLAPP LIBRARY

WELLESLEY LAND ACQUISITION

PRESIDENT’S HOUSE

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PROFESSOR IN THE NEWS

OVERHEARDONLINE

GOVERNMENT RESPONDS TO FACULTY DISCOVERY of women’s and gender studies, made headlines around the world with her findings that more than 700 men and women in Guatemala were intentionally infected with syphilis by doctors from the U.S. Public Health Service. The 1940s-era medical experiment, conducted mostly without the knowledge of the subjects, was You can download an effort to deterSusan Reverby’s article on the Guatemala study at mine whether penihttp://www.wellesley. edu/ cillin could prevent WomenSt/fac_reverby.html. the disease. Reverby discovered documents describing the Guatemala study while she was researching her book, Examining Tuskegee. Her article on her findings led Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton ’69

and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to issue an official apology in October to the government of Guatemala and to the survivors of the study and their descendants. “Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we are outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise To read more about Reverby, see page 20 of public health,” the secretaries said. “We deeply regret that of the summer ’10 issue, http://issuu.com/wellesley. it happened. . . .” President Obama also telephoned the Guatemalan president with his apologies.

The following are snippets from conversations on one of the College’s electronic bulletins.

WANTED: A GOOD STOVE I want to buy a camping stove for my RICHARD HOWARD

SUSAN REVERBY, professor

husband. Any recommendations for brand, size, etc.? My idea of roughing it is a Motel 6, so I am clueless and don’t want to purchase something inappropriate. Ideally, he would be able to cook a little breakfast and grilled sandwiches.

Nora Hussey, theatre studies Thanks Nora. I needed a distraction. . . .

Car camping or backpacking? Either way, Natick Outdoor Store has a small but good selection, but REI has the best selection in the immediate area but can be more expensive. Eastern Mountain Sports is also very good (for backpacking).

Victor Kazanjian, Office of Religious and Spiritual Life Nora, having just returned from two weeks of tenting—including three days and nights of downpouring rain—I can’t stress enough the importance of having a stove that lights easily in all weather. We love our Coleman propane stove with “Insta-start,” which eliminates the hassle of fumbling around with damp matches.

Lisa Priest CE/DS ’03, art department I did buy a Coleman. Not sure if it starts easily . . . hmm . . . he’ll find out this fall in Acadia, I guess!

Nora Some Colemans cannot be bought.

Flick Coleman, chemistry But do they burn clean and bright??

Paul Mullins, facilities

PICTURE PERFECT UNTIL RECENTLY, pictures of faculty that the College had on hand tended to

be a little outdated—think ’80s or ’90s hairstyles and glasses. In an effort to have a more current photo archive and to gather pictures for a gallery

Ah, Flick has always burned clean, bright, and steadily—at least in my time observing him.

Nora

of profiles on the College’s new website, photographer Richard Howard set out to record the faces of today’s faculty. Working in a tent set up on

Sounds like an old whale-oil lamp. There is

campus, he took more than 200 portraits of professors in four days. As he

a physical resemblance to the whale anyway.

worked, staff set up a gallery of faculty faces in the Academic Quad.

Cheers.

Flick

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WELLESLEYAWAY

WINDOW ON WELLESLEY

WELLESLEY’S TEMPORARY SATELLITE STUDENTS

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ARAB WORLD STUDENT: Alison Pearson ’12

people in America hated Islam, and

MAJOR: International Relations/

if it would be a problem if President

Economics

Obama was actually Muslim.

ORIGINALLY FROM: Avon, Conn.

STUDYING IN: Oman

THE MOST SURPRISING THING THAT HAS HAPPENED SINCE

YOU CHOSE OMAN BECAUSE:

YOU ARRIVED IS:

I’ve been taking Arabic for two years

At the national university, the director of

and wanted to go somewhere where

the library—whom I had met 10 minutes

I could practice it.

before—found out that I liked purple and insisted on me taking the purple ring she

THE KINDS OF THINGS YOU’VE

was wearing. Her mother had brought it

LEARNED OUTSIDE THE CLASS-

back from Thailand, and even though I

ROOM HAVE BEEN:

refused, she told me that both she and

Oman developed in only 40 years, and it

her mother would want me to have it.

is interesting how the old (tribal ties, eat-

I had never experienced such generosity

ing from a shared platter on the ground)

before.

and the new (cell phones, television) interact with and reinforce each other.

ONE SURVIVAL TACTIC YOU’VE

For instance, the TV is used to broad-

LEARNED THE HARD WAY IS:

cast the call to prayer.

You must negotiate the price of a taxi before you get in or they will charge you

THE RECEPTION YOU’VE

an obscene amount once you arrive,

GOTTEN AS AN AMERICAN

and will make up excuses like, “I lived

STUDENT HAS BEEN:

near where you got in, so now I have to

I have only gotten positive reactions

go back.”

. . . but there was one very tense con-

IT WAS A TRIPLE WHAMMY for the Office of Residential Life: The class of 2014 boasts a whopping 633 students (when 590 were anticipated), 10 beds are unavailable in Tower Court because of significant damage from last spring’s rainstorms, and about 30 fewer juniors than usual went abroad this fall. The net effect? There wasn’t enough space on campus for all the students. Wellesley’s solution was to house 39 upperclasswomen at Regis College, a coeducational school in nearby Weston, Mass. Administrators also looked at Babson College, but it was overflowing as well; Olin College only had four beds available.

The College has hired a residential director to live with the students on the Regis campus, former house president and resident advisor ‘This is a very Joan Buck ’10, and the atypical year.’ administration has been —Kristine Niendorf, working hard to make a director of residential bus schedule that accomand campus life modates the students’ busy lives. “We’re on our third trial of a schedule, and I think we’ve got it,” says Kristine Niendorf, director of residential and campus life. “They keep giving us feedback, and we keep adjusting.”

The students at Regis also had to deal with an unexpected tragedy at the Regis campus on Sept. 24.

Two visitors to Regis were stabbed in a parking lot, one fatally, while the other has been treated and released from the hospital. Robenson Daniel (who is not a Regis student) was taken into custody on Sept. 30 and charged with murder and other offenses. In response to the stabbing, Regis and Wellesley police were placed in each of the dorms, and a police officer began guarding the college’s gate from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. “Parents want to know what we’re doing to keep their daughters safe, and I say, the same things that you would do if they were at home. Remind them of their safety tips. . . . We just never know when these things are going to happen,” Niendorf says.

Niendorf is anticipating that by the spring semester, all students will be able to be housed at Wellesley once more. Of course, that depends on how many students go abroad next semester, among other things. “This is a very atypical year, so I’m not going on past years any more,” Niendorf says.

—FL

—LS

versation about why I thought some

fall 2010

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wellesley 9

AMANDA PAPAKYRIKOS ’14 FITCHBURG, MASS.

THE BONE COLLECTOR

THE CLASS OF 2014

LIKE MOST FIRST-YEARS, Amanda Papa-

A Force to Be Reckoned With

kyrikos (below) totes her ID and room key around on a lanyard; unlike most first-years,

THE CLASS OF 2014 arrived at Wellesley in force—quite literally. Six hundred thirty-three strong, they are one of

hers is not the standard-issue College variety,

the largest classes to start at the College in a number of years.

but rather from the Museum of Science.

“This is an extraordinary class,” says Dean of Admission Jennifer Desjarlais. “These young women are really

Papakyrikos has spent the last three summers

tremendous.” They represent 44 states and 48 countries. Among their number are a Junior Olympic fencer, a

working and volunteering at the Boston insti-

Mariachi musician, a historical re-enactor, a fishing guide, and an off-Broadway actor. “They continue to be really

tution, introducing visitors to the museum’s

interested in service,” Desjarlais adds. “They’ve been extremely involved in their communities.”

collection of skulls. Last summer, she also

After working with the new class for a few weeks, first-year dean Lori Tenser characterized the new students as having “a tremendous amount of spirit and enthusiasm.”

worked alongside an anthropologist she met through the museum and coauthored a

“They dove into their academics the same way they dove into their orientation experience—with determination

paper about a fragment of a tibia, estimated

and exuberance,” she says. “At the volleyball team’s first home game against Amherst, hundreds of first-year

to be about 1.9 million years old. “We were

students packed the stands and cheered for the Wellesley Blue—it was one of the best turnouts ever for a

trying to figure out whether it was from a

Wellesley volleyball game.”

human, a nonhuman ape, or a monkey,”

While this class is approximately 40 students larger than many classes, Tenser says the College was

she says. It wasn’t her first foray into scientific

prepared and their entry was smooth. The size of the class, however, represents a triumph for the Office of Admission,

research: Also in high school, Papakyrikos

which reported a 44 percent yield of the students who were admitted, a 4 percent increase over last year.

looked into natural sources of antibiotics with

Read on for more statistics and stories about Wellesley’s latest class.

her high-school chemistry teacher.

Why Wellesley? In addition to the interest in science and her hope to study

Life in Pomeroy is grand, particularly with “the nicest roommate in the world.”

anthropology with Assistant Professor Adam Van Arsdale (whose research focuses on the human fossil record), Papakyrikos looks forward to taking poetry classes, creative writing, maybe trying out meditation.

—JF

Purple predominates in the life of the class of ’14.

Glass blowing isn’t something Papakyrikos can do everyday, but she would if she could.

Among her creations? A lamp, ornaments, and cups.

Painting and drawing are among her hobbies, the sort she might do on her own time to unwind.

10 wellesley

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fall 2010

Not a runner in the traditional sense, perhaps, but she’ll be running all over campus pursuing the liberal-arts dream.

RICHARD HOWARD

Papakyrikos’ bookshelf is populated by a collection of texts on bones and fossils that she can’t live without, plus a little Moby Dick and Faulkner for good measure.

WINDOW ON

SHIRIN MAANI ’14 CHICAGO

A PASSION FOR LANGUAGE AND DANCE SHIRIN MAANI was an ESL tutor for refugees

WELLESLEY

«

«

They dove into their academics the same way they dove into their orientation experience— with determination and exuberance.

Lori Tenser First-Year Dean

and immigrants in her hometown. For many of her students, this was their first experience speaking in a language other than their native tongue. “My passions for language and personal interaction combined to make for a very fulfilling experience,” she says. Another of Maani’s passions is Iranian dance. “When the Persian New Year rolls

IN THEIR OWN WORDS Just before they arrived on campus, first-year students took an online survey from the College on everything from their sleep habits to their academic interests.

Their answers paint an interesting picture of today’s generation of Wellesley students.

around at the approach of spring, I know it’s What is the primary method you expect to use to stay in touch with your parents?

dancing season,” she says. From a young age, she was taught every style from tribal to modern. “Some involve quick steps

PHONE E-MAIL TEXT MESSAGING LETTERS VISITS

and constant shakes of the hands because of influences from the port regions of Arabia, while others tell the story of a harvest through lengthy movements,” she explains.

—LS

77% 16% 6% 0% 2%

How often do you expect to be in contact with your family?

AT LEAST ONCE A DAY SEVERAL TIMES A WEEK ONCE A WEEK ONCE EVERY COUPLE OF WEEKS LESS OFTEN

SAPNA JAIN ’14 MEMPHIS, TENN.

ALL OF A PEACE

19% 16% 25% 5% 3%

How many languages in addition to English do you speak fluently?

NONVIOLENCE runs in Sapna Jain’s family.

NONE ONE TWO THREE OR MORE

Her parents founded the annual Gandhi-King Conference on Peacemaking, which is held in Memphis and is in its sixth year, and Jain

51% 37% 11% 1%

has presented at every conference. “I’ve met people from all over the world who are work-

Estimated average hours per week spent doing each activity during the last year of high school:

ing to spread nonviolence at grassroots, national, and global levels,” she says. Through

NATIVE AMERICAN

0%

underprivileged areas of Memphis. These

BIRACIAL

6.6%

are very serious pursuits, but Jain also has a

MULTIRACIAL

0.9%

playful side: “I enjoy letting my inner 4-year-

WHITE/CAUCASIAN

42.5%

old out when it rains by jumping in puddles

INTERNATIONAL CITIZEN

10.9%

STUDYING/HOMEWORK 14.45 WORKING FOR PAY 6.41 EXERCISE OR SPORTS 7.48 EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES (E.G. ARTS, CLUBS) 8.77 SELF-REFLECTION, SPIRITUAL OR RELIGIOUS ACTIVITIES 3.20 SOCIALIZING OR PARTYING 5.07 ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKS (E.G. MYSPACE, FACEBOOK) 5.02 READING FOR PLEASURE 4.27 FAMILY ACTIVITIES (FAMILY TIME, CHORES,

while wearing my rainboots,” she confesses.

UNKNOWN/NOT REPORTED

2.8%

RESPONSIBILITIES, ETC.) 6.42

OTHER

0.5%

the conference, she became involved with the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Non-violence at the University of Rochester, N.Y., where she helped to design a field trip for middle schoolers that focuses on nonviolence and Gandhi’s life. She also took part in the BRIDGES PeaceJam leadership program, an initiative to get high-school students involved in making a change in their communities, primarily in the

—LS

CLASS OF 2014 DEMOGRAPHICS ALANA POPULATION

43.2%

AFRICAN AMERICAN/BLACK

7.6%

LATINA/HISPANIC

6.5%

ASIAN AMERICAN/PACIFIC ISLANDER 21.6%

fall 2010

|

wellesley 11

ART Of WELLESLEY

Collector of Souls Wellesley Girls Alice Neel 1967 Oil on Canvas 42 x 50 in.

Extended loan from Wayne and Kristin Djos Martin ’68

“I KNOW THOSE GIRLS,” says Laura Rubenstein ’09, a graduate student in art history who wrote her senior thesis at Wellesley on the inimitable portraitist Alice Neel.

Rubenstein doesn’t actually know Kristin “Kiki” Djos Martin ’68 or Nancy Selvage ’67, who are depicted in Wellesley Girls. But even across 43 years, seeing Martin’s open knees and Selvage’s folded hands inside a Davis Museum gallery, Rubenstein instantly recognizes two distinct types of students who have long walked this campus: the frank, selfasserting Wellesley girl, and the earnest, © ESTATE OF ALICE NEEL

reserved Wellesley girl. “They’re like two poles of Wellesley identity,” she says.

Neel made Wellesley Girls at the height of her career. Now recognized as one of the greats in 20th-century American painting, she followed a lonely trajecworld fell in love with abstract expres-

In Neel’s body of work, Wellesley

sionism, Neel remained committed to

Girls represents a unique kind of paint-

realism. She had no interest in distorting

ing, the double portrait. Why are they

her figures, as Picasso did. But her art,

special? “The tension and relationship

with its unfinished canvases and intensi-

between the two is classic Neel dynamism,”

fied color, did far more than recreate like-

Rubenstein says. “In these portraits, that

nesses. With faces, postures, and dress,

relationship becomes almost like the

Neel managed to capture psychological

third entity in the painting.”

—FL

complexity and the far-reaching worlds her sitters inhabited. They were Spanish Harlem mothers and Jewish intellectuals, relatives, political personalities, and art stars. Neel was, in the words of a film made about her life, a collector of souls.

12 wellesley

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fall 2010

To listen to podcasts on the Davis Museum collections, visit http://www.wellesley.edu/ DavisMuseum/whatsnew/ podcast.html.

ART IN THE DETAILS A SHARP-EYED OBSERVER can spot whimsical details in the architecture in many places across campus. This decorative concrete corbel peers off the second story of Stone-Davis Hall. John Rhodes, an architectural historian and emeritus member of the art department, points to “those huge glasses” and guesses that the detail may be a “slightly misogynistic stereotype of a woman scholar/graduate (mortarboard & tassel), intended in the spirit of genuine medieval grotesquerie details, which often lampoon their subject matter.”

RICHARD HOWARD

tory nearly her entire career: As the art

WINDOW ON WELLESLEY

ART HISTORY

DINING WITH MICHELANGELO Art and Food in Renaissance Italy, aka ARTH 330, is a multimedia course in the usual sense. Images of great art are available to students with just a few clicks of the mouse. But this course, new this year, is also rooted (literally) in another (growing) medium, too: the soil outside the Margaret C. Ferguson Greenhouses.

When Associate Professor of Art Jacki Musacchio ’89 approached Kristina Jones, director of the Wellesley College Botanic Gardens, about incorporating actual plants into the course, Jones responded, Why not take a plot outside the greenhouses and create a historical Renaissance garden?

It would be planted over the summer so that students could use the plants, plus items in the greenhouse, in their course projects during the fall.

Julie Vining ’12, Caitlin ‘We’ll be looking at McGlynn ’11, and Genevieve the art of Leonardo Goldleaf ’12, Jones’s three and Michelangelo summer interns in environand Veronese and mental studies, rose to the asking what the challenge. They studied Eurodetails tell us about pean garden layouts of the period. They built a wattle daily life.’ fence of twigs and the like to —Associate Professor keep out rabbits.

Jacki Musacchio ’89 The interns even cooked, creating, for example, a squash pie from a recipe that Renaissance cooks used. “They used a lot of spices,” Vining says, “and animal fats. And also a lot of ginger.”

One of the surprises, she adds, was realizing, from looking at art, just how big a role fruits and vegetables played in the diet of Renaissance Europe, especially in Italy.

The garden was almost too successful: Much of it had to be harvested over the summer. As what Vining calls “a happy coincidence,” bees from Assistant Professor Heather Mattila’s beehives nearby proved splendid pollinators. “The garden went crazy,” Vining says. (“If you plant it, they will come,” Jones quips.) And when the interns discovered medieval woodcuts showing beehives in gardens, they felt all the more historically correct.

Musacchio calls Dining with Michelangelo a “natural extension of my longtime interest in material culture.” The course is an interdisciplinary look at how Renaissance Italians made and ate and used food—and a study of the symbolism, religious and erotic, in the art.

She points to a fascinating little bridge between high art and daily life: Michelangelo’s shopping list, with the items both written in words and drawn in pictures, presumably for the benefit of an illiterate servant.

“We’ll be looking at the art of Leonardo and Michelangelo and Veronese and asking what the details tell us about daily life,” she says.

DINING WITH MICHELANGELO:

RICHARD HOWARD

As environmental-studies interns last summer, Julie Vining ’12 and Genevieve Goldleaf ’12 designed, built, and tended the Renaissance garden, down to its wattle fence. The garden produced a bumper crop.

OBJECT OF OUR ATTENTION

SUSTAINABILITY ON WHEELS THEY CALL IT THE “SUSTAINABILITYMOBILE.” It’s an all-electric utility truck, made by the Columbia ParCar

Corp. of Reedsburg, Wis., put into service at the College this spring. It’s part of a campaign to “downsize the fleet” in vehicle size and gas consumption, explains Patrick Willoughby, director of sustainability. The “Mega-Van” is battery operated; its built-in charger plugs in anywhere with an ordinary extension cord.

But the motor pool has installed solar panels onto the roof of the truck as well. “We always park it in the sun,” Willoughby says.

This winter will be a real test.

Willoughby isn’t sure how well the truck will do with its heater and defroster running and consuming energy. “If we were in Florida, there would be no question,” he says.

—RW

—RW

fall 2010

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wellesley

13

WELLESLEY ATHLETICS

Pulling Hard for Wellesley is not the kind of person who does anything halfway.

Not academic work. (“I can’t just do homework for doing it. I need to be there fully—fully engaged mentally, and giving it the best I can.”)

Not running marathons. (In her second marathon ever last year, she clocked a time good enough to qualify for the 2011 Boston Marathon.)

And certainly not varsity crew.

Six days a week, Suquilanda is on the Charles River before the sun is up, sweating and perfecting her rowing technique as she and her teammates skim across the water. In the afternoon, between classes, labs, and homework, she is doing “secondary”—working on the erg machines at Keohane Sports Center, pounding through brutal conditioning workouts.

“With rowing it’s so tangible, something that is so easy to see, all the work, all the hours that you put in,” she says. “If your heart is there and your body is there and your mind is there, then the rewards are going to come. You will see it manifest into something great.”

Last year, in her first season as a Wellesley rower, Suquilanda was indeed part of “something great,” when the varsity crew took fifth place at the NCAA Division III National Championships—a dramatic improvement from five years before, when the team was ranked 17th out of 18 schools in New England fielding varsity-8+s.

Suquilanda, a lightweight under 130 pounds, For the latest in Blue crew news, visit http://www.wellesleyrowed in the first varsity 8+ boat at nationals. blue.com/sports/.wcrew/index.

Although the rowers constantly challenge one another for their seats in one of three varsity boats—always hoping to move to a higher-ranked boat through better speed, conditioning, or technique— Suquilanda says they are a tightly knit group on and off the water.

“You have to see that girl in front of you and know that she’s pulling just as hard as you,” she says. “You’re both willing to take the risk and know that even if you think you can’t hold that pace, even if you think that you are about to die, that the girl in front of you is also holding that same exact pace, and that you’re all going to make it.”

PATTY SUQUILANDA ’13

RICHARD HOWARD

‘If your heart is there and your body is there and your mind is there, then the rewards are going to come.’ Patty Suquilanda ’13

Suquilanda sees that team-risk-taking attitude spilling into other areas of her life. Last summer, she and a group of Wellesley students launched a communityhealth project in rural Guatemala—training teenage girls as community health workers and raising funds to send them to middle school. Suquilanda and her friends raised more than $6,500 in the first year of the program.

“Right now is the time when I can fall on the ground and fail, and I can still get back up,” she says. “I’m strong, I’m young, I’m malleable. I can take that risk. I can plunge into the marathoning. I can plunge into crew. I can plunge into Guatemala. Even if some of them fail, I can always try again.

There’s no limit to what I can do right now. Why wait?”

—AH

SUSTAINABILITY

REDUCE, REUSE, REDECORATE IN THE ALUMNAE HALL BALLROOM on the Sunday before

During the move-out rush last spring, the Office

classes start, volunteers stand behind booths labeled

of Sustainability provided giant bins to collect students’

“Kitchen Supplies,” “Storage Containers,” and more.

unwanted supplies and belongings. Over the summer

Students go through the treasures: twinkle lights, party

Gaglini and others sorted through the cast-offs and

beads, TVs, coffee makers, old textbooks, posters—even

prepared for the August rummage sale. The goal? To

roller skates. Most items sell for under $5.

“reduce, reuse, and recycle.” Profits will go to the Green

RICHARD HOWARD

“This is definitely going to be an annual thing,”

14 wellesley

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fall 2010 2010

Fund, supporting campus sustainability initiatives.

says Danielle Gaglini ’11, glancing at the diminished

Before the “craziness” began at 11 A.M., each

collection of dorm goods. She rates the first Sustain-

volunteer got to pick one item for herself. Gaglini’s find?

able Move-In Rummage Sale an overwhelming success.

“A rubber ducky trash can.” Success, indeed.

—AM

WINDOW ON WELLESLEY

ORCHESTRA IN RESIDENCE

CollegeRoad

BOSTON MODERN ORCHESTRA PROJECT, one of the most prominent orchestras in the country devoted to playing 20th- and 21st-century orchestral music, will be in residence at Wellesley during the

REPORTS FROM AROUND CAMPUS

2010–11 academic year. In addition to performing a three-concert series, BMOP musicians will interact with student composers, performers, and music RANKINGS TIED TO GIVING

historians through master classes, ensemble

CHIP IN FOR WELLESLEY, and you help to boost the College’s rankings in lists such as U.S. News and World

Report’s “Best Colleges 2011.” This year, Wellesley tied with Middlebury for the No. 4 slot, after Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore. The rankings draw on a college’s “alumni giving rate,” seen as an indirect measure of student satisfaction. In 2009–10, Wellesley’s alumnae giving rose to

4

coaching, and classroom visits.

#

45-percent participation, reversing a steady decline over a number of years. Gifts for unrestricted uses and current-use financial aid reached $10 million, a goal topped only once before in the last 25 years..

OVERHEARD

‘Iff someone were to ask what the value off liberal-arts education is, a simple p answer might g be: to instill the love off learningg and provide the tools to do it.’

—H. Kim Bottomly, 2010 Convocation Speech

HISTORY OF FAITH GOD IN AMERICA, a PBS series that explored the

interaction between religion and democracy and aired in October, featured Stephen Marini, Elisabeth Luce Moore Professor of Christian Studies and professor of

FACULTY ART ON PARADE

BY THE NUMBERS: RESTORATION WORK ON STONE-DAVIS HALL

CALCULATED RISKS, a show at the Davis Museum

celebrating the creative diversity of the studio-art faculty, runs through Dec. 12. It features paintings,

LAST SUMMER, one of the most visible renova-

sculpture, drawings, collage, photographs, film,

tion projects on campus was the replacement

video, and interactive new media and is installed in

of the slate and copper roof on Stone-Davis.

152,493 2,650 16,260 42

gallery spaces throughout the museum.

religion. An expert in American religious life in the colonial, revolutionary, and early national periods, Marini spoke about topics including Puritanism, Evangelicalism, religious liberty, and the separation of church and state.

Missed the series on PBS? Visit http://www.pbs.org/godinamerica/.

PIECES OF SLATE INSTALLED

RICHARD HOWARD PHOTO/F.CO ILLUSTRATION

POUNDS OF COPPER NAILS USED

SQ. FT. OF COPPER EMPLOYED

For upcoming exhibits at the Davis, visit http://www.davismuseum.wellesley.edu/ exhibitons/index.html.

POUNDS OF DANISH CONSUMED BY THE CONSTRUCTION WORKERS

fall 2010

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wellesley 15

FocusonFaculty

COMPUTER SCIENCE

Social-Media Scholars

16 wellesley

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fall 2010

On the screens behind Professor Takis Metaxas are graphs representing connections among Twitter users.

people who were interested in the elections, and they were sent by an organization that was not signing their actions,” says Metaxas. “They were spreading false rumors that [candidate] Martha Coakley is against the Catholics, and that she says that Catholics should not practice medicine. It was an interesting thing that you can just use technology to actually unveil these kinds of groups and their behavior.”

Metaxas is an enthusiastic user of social media himself, particularly of Twitter. (“Facebook is mostly uninteresting chitter chatter,” he says.) He finds that Twitter is a great way to hear about news or research that he otherwise would have missed. For example, he follows one of his former students, Betsy Masiello ’03, who now works in public policy at Google. “[She] spoke at a conference about the Follow Professor privacy settings in Google. And Takis Metaxas on Twitter: I would have completely missed @takis_metaxas. it if she had not said on Twitter, here is the link to a video of my talk,” Metaxas says. Metaxas sums up his experience of Twitter by saying, “Social media makes you have less free time, but at the same time, it makes your life much more interesting.”

—LS

RICHARD HOWARD

FACEBOOK AND TWITTER are the kinds of social media sites that students use to distract themselves from coursework. But in the case of CS114, The Socio-Technological Web, they are the coursework.

“These kids are coming with a lot of experience in these media, but as a matter of fact, they are using them without really understanding how they work,” says Takis Metaxas, professor of computer science.

To illustrate the point, Metaxas begins the popular course with a deceptively simple question: If you post a picture on Facebook, but then five minutes later have second thoughts and delete it, will that picture show up in a Google search a year later? “What happens to a picture when you upload it? Where has it been stored? If you delete it, is it really deleted? . . . It has to do with how the search engines work and how our privacy settings are set. Younger generations don’t of the building, a map, and the history of the buildthink very deeply about privacy,” says Metaxas. ing,” says Metaxas. Many students who described Metaxas hopes that CS114, which won the Colthemselves as “technophobes” at the beginning of lege’s Apgar Award for teaching innovation last year, the class wound up creating very fancy social will make students think more carefully about thorny applications, he adds. issues such as security, digital-rights ownership, and Metaxas also devotes time to studying social privacy. “I think they have several ‘wow moments’ media like Twitter outside in the class, when they start of the classroom. He and realizing what happens with Eni Mustafaraj, a fellow information and how hard it ‘What happens to a in the computer-science is to forget the past,” he says. picture when you upload department, monitored the There’s also plenty of it? Where has it been flow of tweets just before the programming. Students learn Massachusetts special elecstored? If you delete it, HTML and CSS, as well as tions in January. There was the nuts and bolts of how is it really deleted? . . . a small group of Democrats search engines work. In adIt has to do with how and a large group of Repubdition, last year, the students the search engines work licans who were tweeting used Android smart phones and how our privacy frequently. But they also noto create mobile applications. ticed a group of heavy users settings are set.

“One of my favorite apps of Twitter that had no conwas one where you can walk Younger generations nections to the Republicans. around campus and take a don’t think very deeply “We found out that actually picture with your phone of about privacy.’ this was a robot that was a building, and information sending tweets directly to —Takis Metaxas will appear about the location

WINDOW ON WELLESLEY

COGNITIVE AND LINGUISTIC SCIENCE

LANGUAGE OF INVENTION PROFESSOR Angela Carpenter CE/DS ’99

better” with the natural version of the

Invented Languages: From Wilkins’

playing with language, they’ll be

likes to make up words. And she’s en-

language than the unnatural one.

Real Character to Avatar’s Na’vi.

learning more about how it is struc-

As she was creating these lan-

Carpenter is teaching the course this fall,

tured and how it is learned. Carpenter

All in the name of research, of

guages to test her theory, however,

and during the semester, students will

hopes to be learning a few things, as

course. “My interest in invented or arti-

she began to wonder about other

create their own language—starting from

well. “My hope is that [the class] will

ficial language is really to test linguistic

invented languages. “I’m a Trekkie,”

mere sounds and moving up to complex

really trigger some interesting ideas,

theory,” the Wellesley assistant professor

she laughs. “I thought Klingon was

grammar rules. “There’s something in

different things to test,” she says. “I’m

says. Her research looks at languages

just a bunch of words they made up

us as humans, I think, that makes us

hoping that it will shoot me into fur-

not artificially constructed (“natural”—

for Star Trek movies.” It turns out, it’s

want to play with language,” she says.

ther exploring invented languages.”

those that evolved naturally in his-

a complete language—with a diction-

tory, such as French and English) and

ary, grammatical structure, and people

whether facets within those languages—

who speak it. “I got fascinated with the

such as how words are stressed—are

idea of inventing languages, and the

innate. “If there is something to natural

more research I did on it, the more I

language and innatism,” Carpenter

found that lots of people have been

says, “then the natural language would

doing this and thinking about it for

be advantaged, and people would learn

centuries,” Carpenter says.

couraging students to do it, as well.

the natural language a little bit easier than the unnatural version.”

—JG

And while the students are

All that research has led to a 300-level linguistics seminar entitled,

tests have returned positive results,

‘My interest in invented or artificial language is really to test linguistic theory.’

as her subjects did “signifi cantly

—Professor Angela Carpenter CE/DS ’99

that mimic “natural” language. She’s also created a language with opposing rules, however, to see which version is easier for people to learn. Her early

PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES THE PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES program—with 17 majors in

is PEAC 324: Grassroots Development, Conflict Resolution, and the Gandhian

the class of ’10 and one full-time dedicated faculty member, Catia

Legacy in India, a 3 1/2-week Wintersession program offered every other year.

Confortini, a lecturer appointed this year—has its roots in individual

“There’s no question, some students come [to Wellesley] for that course,” says

faculty members’ work in efforts such as the Campaign for Nuclear

Lawrence Rosenwald, co-director of the peace and justice studies program.

Disarmament during the 1980s. It was formally organized only after

F.CO

the Cold War had ended.

Peace and justice major Tyler Branscome ’11 has traveled to the Bal^

PROFILE OF A MAJOR

RICHARD HOWARD

To that end, Carpenter has created a language with particular rules

kans to study nonviolent movements in Serbia under Slobodan Milosevi´ c.

Victor Kazanjian, dean of religious and spiritual life and co-director

She notes, “I have an incredibly well-rounded academic base for my

of the program, notes that it’s not just a conflict-resolution program. It’s

concentration of choice through this vibrant and growing department.”

meant rather to teach students how to look through multiple lenses

She hopes eventually to work with NGOs in the Balkans to help with post-

beneath the surface to perceive the “embedded conflicts” in societies.

conflict transformation and community building.

The peace and justice studies major relies

Rosenwald, the Anne Pierce Rogers Professor of

heavily on courses offered in other academic

American Literature as well as a longtime war-tax resister,

departments. But as the program has formalized

became involved in the program when he was asked to

over the years, aligning with other efforts in the field,

teach a course on nonviolence and American literature. “I

it has acquired four core courses of its own,

learned . . . that I really liked teaching this kind of student,”

including Conflict Transformation in Theory and

whom he goes on to describe as those “having a deep

Practice and a capstone seminar.

commitment to their way of being a citizen in the world.”

Of the four courses, one of the biggest draws

—RW

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ShelfLife

COURTESY OF MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

REVIEWS OF BOOKS BY WELLESLEY AUTHORS

Portrait of A Portrait ERICA HIRSHLER ’79

Sargent’s Daughters: The Biography of a Painting MFA Publications, Boston 256 pages, $29.95 A WORK OF ART CAN, if we’re lucky, become irresistible,

grabbing our attention and not letting go. Such is the power of the 1882 painting at the Museum of Fine lawyer-turned-painter Edward “Ned” Darley Boit Arts, Boston, of four American girls dressed in white and his vivacious wife, Mary Louisa “Isa” Cushing pinafores, the Boit sisters, posed in the shadowy foyer Boit. Thanks to Isa’s inheritance, they lived luxurious of their family’s immense, austere Paris apartment. lives abroad with their four daughters, sisters immorErica Hirshler, now an MFA senior curator, talized by the painting: 4-year-old Julia, sitting on the was a Wellesley freshman when she first saw John floor and holding her doll; 8-year-old Maria Louisa, Singer Sargent’s The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit. hands clasped behind her, off to the left; 12-yearThe painting’s beauty and mystery never left her, old Jane, in the background, standing at attention; and she channeled her obsession into this impresand 14-year-old Florence, leaning against a sively researched book. Hirshler constructs her story giant Japanese vase flanking by peeling away layers of history, the entry, the only figure turned biography, and art, exploring how When it was painted, away. These girls and their the work came to be painted; the ever-wandering family form the career of the man who created it; Henry James called the fate of the family it depicts; the Sargent’s painting a “happy book’s emotional center.

Henry James had enduring cultural setting for everything that play-world of a family friendships with Sargent and the happened; and the reasons the picof charming children.

Boits. All were members of the ture resonates so deeply.

American expatriate community Her cast of characters in Europe when Paris was the resembles those found in a Henry art-world capital. They indulged James novel—and James, it turns a love of the arts along a nonout, is among them. John Singer stop social circuit, roaming Sargent (1856–1925) is the artfrom grand city apartments to ist raised in Europe by nomadic sea and mountain resorts to the American parents, a renowned occasional steamship trips back portrait painter, unmarried, adept to America to reconnect with at languages, music, and friendtheir familial roots. ships. Among his fellow proBut as the story protagonists are Sargent’s wealthy, gresses, we learn that beneath Boston-bred friends and patrons,

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the glittering surface dwell stiffer currents, elevating the story from a chronicle of privileged individuals and their milieu to a richer, more satisfying narrative. Ned and Isa’s firstborn son at age 2 presented behavior we might now understand to be autistic, and was sent away to a special boarding school. The second son was born sickly and died. Several Boit daughters in adolescence suffered from physical and psychological problems, including Jane’s possible anorexia. The girls, to their mother’s despair, rejected her social aspirations and never married or had children. With the exception of Jane, whose fragile health required nursing care, the girls were able to lead active and rewarding adult lives surrounded by friends and family.

When it was painted, Henry James called Sargent’s painting a “happy play-world of a family of charming children.” By the time Isa died in 1894 at age 48, James would write that “I am very sorry indeed for poor Boit and his crazy children and have tried to tell him so.” Hirshler’s book guides us well along the The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit’s haunting trajectory.

—Jill Janows ’72 Janows is a freelance writier/producer and works in nonprofit development. She was executive producer for Sister Wendy’s American Collecion and other PBS arts programs at WGBH/Boston.

Bibliofiles

Unemployment To Fulfillment

THE ROAD TO GOOD

money, and effort—to identify

FOLLOWERSHIP

and cultivate leadership skills

ALL SORTS OF INSTITUTIONS,

in adults. Unfortunately, much

Wellesley College not least

of what passes for adult

among them, devote consider-

leadership ‘development’ is

able energy to training leaders

actually remedial retraining

DOMINIQUE BROWNING ’77

who can excel in business,

Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put on My Pajamas & Found Happiness Atlas, New York 250 pages, $23

politics, science, and other

Great Followers Create Great

and bad behavior patterns

fields. But behind every

Leaders and Organizations

that have frequently persisted

successful leader stand some

(Jossey-Bass). The book is

since childhood. Isn’t it

number—often an enormous

introduced by leadership guru

cheaper and easier to build

number—of followers.

Warren Bennis and has a

incremental leadership and

foreword by political scientist

followership skills in our

James MacGregor Burns.

children as they growth, rather

legendary editor of the defunct House & Garden, has written a memoir in the tradition of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love. It’s the story of an accomplished and affluent woman whose life is upturned, forcing her to rethink her priorities. In Browning’s case, it’s the loss of her job rather than a husband that inspires the revelations, and where Gilbert found profundity in travel, Browning finds it in staying home and enjoying simple pleasures. But like Gilbert, Browning ultimately lands in a different but more satisfying permutation of her privileged existence.

Along the way, her prose sparkles with an experienced editor’s knack for detail. Whether it’s the brand of her pajamas, the scent of her bath, or the particular blend of her herbal tea, Browning knows well that the more specific the description, the more compelling the prose.

She skillfully transports the reader into her world, a world of trips to the Lincoln Center, plucky Parisian relatives, and d cherished h i h d old ld bbooks. k Early on, Browning makes it clear that her finances were never seriously threatened by her unemployment. Her situation does not involve foreclosure, ramen noodles, or the Dollar Store. Instead, it’s a genteel unemployment of sleeplessness and bruised self-esteem.

In the aftermath of losing the career that defined her life, Browning no longer has anything to do. She spends some time lounging in her favorite pajamas, longing for the strict deadlines that come with running a magazine. She misses the surrogate family of her staff, which provided a buffer against DOMINIQUE BROWNING,

(Continued on page 85)

Does anyone focus on followers and training them?

Yes, quite a number

of poor interpersonal skills

Lipman-Blumen has a

than having to instill these

of people, as it turns out. In

chapter in the book, as does

skills de novo, once adults

1988, the Harvard Business

her daughter, Lorna Blumen

find themselves in leadership

Review published an article,

’76, an educational consul-

positions?”

“In Praise of Followers” that

tant in Toronto. The latter’s

was groundbreaking. The

is “Bystanders to Children’s

bullying, “Most people still

field of followership studies

Bullying: The Importance

believe that if they are neither

has exploded as scholars and

of Leadership by ‘Innocent

the bully nor the target, they

practitioners have identified

Bystanders.’” In her essay,

are not involved. . . . ‘I was

the complexities of the rela-

Blumen both gives a strong

just an innocent bystander.’

tionship between leaders and

hint of the “leadership”

Nothing could be further from

followers.

qualities implicit in good “fol-

the truth. There are no inno-

lowership” and makes a case

cent bystanders. Failing to

Jean Lipman-Blumen ’54 is

for why “leadership training”

intervene to stop the bullying

one of the editors of a recent

really begins in childhood.

of others makes us silent

Public-policy scholar

contribution to the field, The Art of Followership: How

“We allocate many resources today—time,

Later she writes of

colluders. . . .”

—Ruth Walker

FreshInk Marjorie Agosín, faculty—The Light of Desire, Swan Isle Press, Chicago

Margaret Fleischer Kaufman ’63—Inheritance, Sixteen Rivers Press, San Francisco

Kathleen Cushman ’71—Fires in the Mind: What Kids Can Tell Us About Motivation and Mastery, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco

Bijoyalaxmi Hota and Carissa Leventis Cox (Carissa Pilar Gonzalez Leventis Cox ’97)—Yoga for Cancer: Esoteric, Yogic, & Dietary Remedies, Rupa & Co., New Delhi

Barbara Ghazarian (Barbara Mooradian Ghazarian ’78)—Simply Quince, Mayreni Publishing, Monterey, Calif.

Betty Brown Hayes (Bettine Brown Hayes ’50)— Reflections of an Octogenarian, The Hayes Press, New York Linda Goetz Holmes ’55—Guests of the Emperor: The Secret History of Japan’s Mukden POW Camp, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Md. Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz ’63—Wild Unrest: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Making of The Yellow Wallpaper, Oxford University Press, New York

Ronald Riggio, Ira Chaleff, and Jean LipmanBlumen ’54, eds.—The Art of Followership: How Great Followers Create Great Leaders and Organizations, Jossey-Bass, San Fransisco.

Adrienne Odasso ’05—Lost Books, flipped eye publishing, London Katherine Hall Page ’69—Have Faith in Your Kitchen, Orchises Press, Alexandria, Va. Georgia Pellegrini ’03—Food Heroes: 16 Culinary Artists Preserving Tradition, Abrams, New York (Continued on page 85)

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FIRST PERSON

The Big Easy Comeback As New Orleans emerges from the cataclysm of Katrina, a native of the city observes that her hometown and its people have changed—and she’s glad

By Stephanie Bruno ’74

I

‘

T WILL NEVER BE THE SAME.” I can’t count how many times I heard that phrase in the weeks, months, and years since Hurricane Katrina blew through New Orleans and surrounding communities. We would lose our culture, I heard. One scenario had it that lattesipping yuppies would take over the streets, crowding out the indigenous folks. Others predicted that New Orleans would devolve into a backwater community, a pastiche of its former self.

I am here to report that neither of these visions has come to be—at least, not yet. Instead, what has transpired in my hometown is something much more complex and difficult to describe. A recovery in progress, yes. And in some ways a transformation. But neither term does justice to the full scope of what happened after the levees and floodwalls failed and the “City That Care Forgot” was depopulated in a matter of days.

Here’s how I see it: Things are never the same from one minute or one day to the next. They change all the time. One day your favorite restaurant is open for business; the next, there’s a “For Lease” sign on the door. One morning you leave for work and pass the vacant lot at the corner; you return home in the evening and workers are laying the foundation for a new house.

These are the incremental changes that we become accustomed to and gradually weave into our perception of the world around us.

But when a cataclysmic force shatters that world, the impact is total disorientation. In the case of New Orleans, it meant that we asked ourselves and one another, “What will become of brass bands, crawfish boils, and shotgun houses? Will there ever be another Mardi Gras, a place to get red beans and rice on Mondays? What will happen to our landmarks like St. Louis Cathedral and above-ground cemeteries? Will we ride the streetcars again or make a 2 a.m. visit to Café du Monde for coffee and beignets? Will we ever see our friends/ neighbors/family again?”

It has taken a while, but today we have some of the answers. Somehow, the music tradition managed to re-establish itself. A nonprofit called Sweet Stephanie Bruno ’74 is a lifelong New Orleanian and freelance writer who contributes weekly to the city’s newspaper, the Times-Picayune. A keen interest in her city’s historic neighborhoods and houses has also inspired her work on historic-preservation projects, including the restoration of more than two dozen distressed historic houses.

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Home New Orleans sprang up to help musicians with their essential needs after the storm. Habitat for Humanity, with the backing of native son Harry Connick, Jr., established the “Musicians’ Village,” a concentration of affordable homes aimed at providing housing for displaced artists. Bars like Vaughn’s— seen on HBO’s Treme—and Le Bon Temps Roule came back to life, offering venues for those like Soul Rebels Brass Band and Kermit Ruffins to perform.

Preservation Hall managed to reopen in the French Quarter, employing traditional New Orleans jazz musicians. Even in the darkest hours, these standard-bearers of New Orleans culture never lacked an audience.

At restaurants and cafés, paper plates were a strategy for getting businesses up and running The will to come home despite a lack of staff. Limited menus? Who cared galvanized people, who as long as you were able to get out of your house persevered even when they and connect with others, hear their stories? “How’d understood that the you make out?” people would say to each other community they left might and then listen respectfully and offer comfort. not be the community One by one, favorite eateries returned.

Neighborhood places like Franky & Johnny’s, they returned to.

Lil Dizzy’s, and Mandina’s came back, joined by upscale places like Galatoire’s, Antoine’s, and, at long last, Commander’s Palace. With contractors, insurance adjusters, government hands, and locals hungry for good food and a distraction from the frustration and cares of rebuilding, the restaurants that found a way to open were packed all the time.

I thought that if a restaurant hadn’t reopened two or three years after Katrina, that meant it would never come back. I was wrong. Just a few months ago, Katie’s returned to its longtime home in Mid-City and the cheers of devoted fans. Professionals who study statistics tell us that there are more restaurants open in New Orleans now than there were before the storm, even though our population is at just 80 percent of its prestorm level.

The shotgun houses, streetcar lines, historic cemeteries, and landmarks all made it, too. Some revived faster than others: I remember that life in my neighborhood didn’t feel right until the St. Charles Avenue streetcar line was fully restored to service in June 2008. It was a happy development to have to warn my son to look out for streetcars when driving across the avenue and to hear the familiar sound of the metal wheels of the Perley Thomas cars on the tracks when all else is silent in the still of the night.

RICHARD HOWARD

Our city council and new mayor understand that the voices that spoke out to pull the city back from the brink poststorm can never again be silenced.

‘Citizen participation’ is no longer a buzzword; it’s a reality.

Rampant demolition was a threat early on, as teams swarmed neighborhoods en masse, affixing red tags to homes and buildings that were candidates for demolition. I was working at the Preservation Resource Center at the time, and I recall visiting our target neighborhood, Holy Cross, and seeing nothing but a sea of red wherever I looked.

At the same time, the Bring New Orleans Back Commission was meeting to determine a strategy to help the city get back on its feet. “Shrink the footprint” was the conclusion, and New Orleanians, at home and displaced, awakened one morning to see a map in the Times-Picayune showing some neighborhoods covered by now-infamous green dots, designating proposed park land where homes and neighborhoods had once stood.

Although planners and recovery teams had done an earnest job, they neglected to consider a critical factor in re-imagining the city: its people.

They quickly learned that our citizens weren’t going to be told they couldn’t come home. The roar was deafening, and before long the red tags and green dots vanished. In their place, construction permits appeared as

families drew on their resources—a savings account, a cousin who was a plumber—to clean up, recondition, and reoccupy their homes and neighborhoods.

Everyone faced a challenge of one kind or another trying to get back home.

If you had a health issue, you couldn’t return for a long time, because the city’s health-services infrastructure had been ruined by floodwaters. Worse, doctors and other medical personnel were forced to leave town if they were to continue earning a living. If you had school-age kids, you had to stay wherever you landed, until schools reopened in New Orleans.

If your home flooded but you didn’t have flood insurance because you didn’t live in the flood-zone, you couldn’t afford to return and repair your home without personal financial resources. It wouldn’t be until early 2007 that the Road Home grant program would be functioning and providing some assistance for repairs. (The program also offered buyouts, but only about 20 percent of eligible applicants chose that route.)

But the will to come home galvanized people, and they persevered even when they understood that the community they left might not be the community they returned to. It wasn’t long before those who returned began working with neighbors to help others return. Neighborhood groups and associations, most notably in Broadmoor, gradually moved into the leadership vacuum left by elected officials. Neighbors helped neighbors, and hundreds of thousands of volunteers answered their calls for help. The volunteers, without whom New Orleans may have perished, are coming still.

The way we do certain things now has changed, and for the better.

Our public-education system has been radically revamped and relies now largely on charter schools to educate our youth. Though there are issues to be addressed (open enrollment versus selective, one educational approach versus another), the movement shows tremendous potential and encouraging preliminary results. For the first time in 50 years, you’ll hear the city’s wealthier residents talking about sending their children to a public charter school instead of a private or parochial school.

Our city council and new mayor, Mitch Landrieu, understand that the voices that spoke out to pull the city back from the brink poststorm can never again be silenced. “Citizen participation” is no longer a buzzword; it’s a reality. The blogosphere is active and new investigative journalism sites like the Lens have established themselves and now keep a watchful eye on city contracts and public issues. A new police chief is in place (a mayoral and civic priority), and the culture that allowed corrupt police officers to remain on the force is being dismantled, piece by piece.

Big industry names like Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin may be disappearing from the city’s business roster as their operations conclude, but the entrepreneurial culture in New Orleans is burgeoning. Magazine Street testifies to the city’s diverse retail mix, which relies more on locally owned stores than on big-box operations. A new arts district has arisen in the St. Claude Avenue area, and galleries are featuring works by the unknowns, as well as the established.

Our neighborhoods are home to dozens of coffeehouses but not

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The New Normal When Hurricane Katrina hit five years ago, Wellesley women were quite literally in the eye of the storm or impacted by its aftermath. Now four of them, ranging from the classes of 1950 to 2005, reflect on the epic event and how it has shaped their lives.

ALICE BLANEY HOLMES ’50

RICHARD HOWARD

BAY ST. LOUIS, MISS.

‘Professionals who study

statistics tell us that Starbucks; ours are mostly individually owned and operated. Farmers’ markets and arts markets there are more restaurants abound, whereas there were only a handful before the open in New Orleans storm. And the green industry—thanks largely to the now than there were international nonprofit Global Green—has gained a before the storm, even foothold in our city and influenced how people are though our population rebuilding and furnishing their homes. is at just 80 percent of We aren’t “there” yet, and I hope we never think we are. Plenty of families are still displaced, its pre-storm level.’ prevented from returning by financial, medical, or educational issues. More than a few of the neighborhoods flooded by floodwall and levee collapses are barely hanging on, their occupancy rates hovering below 50 percent. As our new mayor has revealed to us, we have far greater infrastructure needs than we have funds to support.

Though change has begun, our school and criminal-justice systems remain works in progress. Even the Saints winning the Super Bowl doesn’t change those fundamental truths, and it shouldn’t.

The funniest and truest quote I ever heard about interior design was this: “A house is not a pot roast. It is never done. Rather, it is continually evolving.”

I’ve used that unattributed quote a million times, and it holds true for my city, now and in the future.

The fact is, like it or not, change found us. We may have been a bit too stagnant before the storm, too inured in the old ways of doing things, too overwhelmed by seemingly intransigent problems to effect change. The harder some pushed for change, the deafer the system seemed to be.

No, New Orleans will never be the same. But if you ask me, that’s a good thing.

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A

LICE BLANEY HOLMES ’50 rode out Hurricane Katrina with her husband on the second floor of their Bay St. Louis home. The storm surge reached 28 feet in the waterfront community, inundating her neighborhood with 10 feet of water. Yet Holmes and her husband wasted no time in repairing, and they reoccupied their refurbished house within six months of the hurricane.

“We had to hurry,” Holmes comments. “We only have so long to live.”

Today, she says, the town has indeed changed, but some of the changes are ones she welcomes.

“Half of the houses were washed away, and there was nothing left,” she says. “There is still a lot of decimation because the only people who were able to return were those that could afford to say, ‘I don’t care if it floats away again.’”

On the plus side, two new middle schools opened recently, and student enrollment is 75 percent of what it was prestorm.

Infrastructure improvements are humming, a community garden has sprung up, and the upgraded library now serves as a community meeting place.

“It’s taken us five years to get back to normal,” Holmes observes, “or what’s going to be normal from now on.”

FIRST PERSON

AMELIA LEVIN KENT ’05

NEW ORLEANS

CLINTON, LA.

LEEING KATRINA, Sheila Berniard Burns ’74 (below) and her husband, Ronnie, landed first in Houston, then in Gonzales, La., near Baton Rouge. And though their absence was intended to be short-term, it took two years for the couple to return to their home in New Orleans East.

“We couldn’t operate our courier business out of New Orleans, so we set up shop in Baton Rouge,” Burns says. “It’s a good thing that we were as close to it as we were, because I ended up needing to be hospitalized for a medical condition.”

Because New Orleans’ entire health-care infrastructure— not to mention its supply of doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel—had been wiped out by the storm, it was a literal lifesaver that Burns was staying near Baton Rouge instead.

Once she was well, Burns concentrated on repairing the family home, while her husband focused on rebuilding their business and reopening the New Orleans office.

“We’re at about 80 percent in our neighborhood now,” she says, “People have too much invested in this neighborhood and the city just to walk away.”

H

URRICANE KATRINA’S winds laid waste to her family’s farm and nursery north of Lake Pontchartrain, leading Amelia Levin Kent ’05 to spend months working to restore order and clear debris and downed trees.

“Once we cleaned up and were able to regain a sense of normalcy, we’ve done nothing but move forward,” she reports.

And though she says that the cattle operation has emerged from the storm without damage, the tree farm and plant nursery have not fared as well.

“The damage the timber property sustained was severe,” she says.

“We’ve done everything we can to salvage, clean up, and replant the tree farm, and now it’s simply a waiting game. As for the nursery, most of our business is directed to the New Orleans and Mississippi Gulf Coast areas, and the demand simply is not what it was pre-Katrina.”

Katrina wasn’t the only challenge for the nursery business.

“We experienced the same slowdowns due to the recession that everyone else did, and our phones nearly stopped ringing through the duration of the [BP] oil spill,” she says. “The nursery has found its postKatrina normalcy, but it is not the same as it was before the storm.”

KATHLEEN STEVENS ’05 NEW ORLEANS

A

RICHARD HOWARD

F

SHEILA BERNIARD BURNS ’74

NATIVE OF POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y., Kathleen Stevens chose to move to New Orleans during its most challenging era to make a contribution to the citizen-led effort to transform the city’s public-school system. When she arrived in 2008, she worked for the nonprofit New Schools for New Orleans before accepting a position in 2009 at the Ninth Ward’s ARISE Academy, a charter school for children in pre-K through second grade.

“We are a college-preparatory elementary school, working to give all of our students the skills they need to succeed in high school and college,” Stevens says.

“This is especially important in a city that has one of the lowest high-school graduation rates in the country.”

To infuse the children with the vision of a college education, college banners and other school paraphernalia hang from the walls of the school, and classrooms are named for teachers’ alma maters.

“That means that my second-grade classroom is no longer known by its room number, but as Wellesley College,” Stevens says.

Now in her second year at ARISE, Stevens aims to engage members of the local Wellesley Club to bring new resources to her classroom and students.

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Humans are inflicting dramatic and long-lasting damage upon the world’s ocean. Massive oil spills taint widespread ecosystems, and overfishing depletes once abundant waters.

Ice caps are melting, and coral reefs are crumbling.

Our actions test the resiliency of our seas. Ocean expert Deborah Cramer ’73 writes that the longer we wait, the more difficult the challenges become.

Penned jack in a fish farm off Hawaii ©David Fleetham, SeaPics.com, from Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World

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Sea

Changes

By Deborah Cramer ’73

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T

Kemp’s ridley hatchlings on the beach at Rancho Nuevo, Mexico ©Bill Curtsinger, National Geographic Image Collection, from Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World

his past summer, a blowout on BP’s Gulf of Mexico Macondo oil well triggered one of the largest oil spills in human history.

Oil poured from the well for approximately three months, but the legacy of the spill may endure for years and decades to come.

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Kemp’s ridleys are among the world’s most endangered sea turtles. They live in the Gulf and nest onshore, in the sands where they were born. The Deepwater Horizon spill, occurring during the 2010 nesting season, may have jeopardized more than 40 years of hard work bringing this turtle back from the edge of extinction. In 1985, fewer than 250 Kemp’s ridleys nested at

their primary nesting beach at Rancho Nuevo, Mexico. On land, their eggs were prized as aphrodisiacs and their meat considered a delicacy. In the water, many died in fishing nets. The designation of Rancho Nuevo as a protected sanctuary, increased regulation of shrimpers, and required use of turtle-safe shrimping gear (among other safeguards) boosted the 2009 nesting

population at Rancho Nuevo and nearby beaches to 8,000 turtles.

The oil spill may undermine this hardwon and precarious recovery. Satellite tracking showed adult sea turtles, hungry after nesting, swimming to their feeding grounds at the mouth of the Mississippi River, near Grand Isle and the Chandeleur Islands, in areas tainted with oil. Later in the summer, thousands of hatchlings returned to the sea.

Their chances of survival, already low, were further reduced if they were forced to swim through patches of oily gel, or if they fed on shrimp and crabs inhabiting sargassum weed clotted with oil. Their fate will not be known for at least 10 years when they begin to reach sexual maturity and return to nest. With the recovery of the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle steady but far from assured, a lost season matters. Kemp’s ridleys have lived in the sea for some three million years. Now, through our carelessness, their fate hangs in the balance.

How much the Deepwater Horizon spill will alter the Gulf of Mexico and its inhabitants is a story still unfolding. Only time will tell how many tarpon, blue crab, shrimp, and critically endangered bluefin-tuna larvae were lost in the slick. Louisiana’s coastal marshes are nurseries for some of the country’s most valuable fisheries, including the famous Louisiana oyster. These marshes are rapidly disappearing. Dams and levees along the Mississippi starve the delta of sediment, and thousands of miles of oil-company canals contribute to further erosion. Louisiana’s coast is turning to water: Each year an area the size of my home city, Gloucester, Mass., falls into the sea. Whether oil reaching the marsh grass seeped into its roots, killing the grass and potentially accelerating the erosion, is still unknown.

The lasting impact of the Ixtoc 1 oil spill in 1979 in the Bay of Campeche, off Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, one of the planet’s largest oil spills, still isn’t fully understood. Researchers returning to the site this past summer found, on the one hand, fishermen describing devastated fisheries

that flourished within two to three years, and on the other, areas where mangroves have not regenerated, where oysters have not grown back, and where the oil still glistens.

The Deepwater Horizon spill constitutes a huge test of the resiliency of Gulf of Mexico ecosystems, one of the most biologically diverse areas in the entire world.

Despite the summer’s seeming 24-hour

Lake Itasca, the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Minnesota ©Fred Mayer, Getty Images, from Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World

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A melting iceberg in Tracy Arm Fjord, southeast Alaska ©Chris Huss, from Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World

media coverage of oil gushing from the BP well, the experiment unleashed from the spill is not the only one taking place in the Gulf. A much larger experiment, testing the resiliency of the entire ocean, is ongoing. Unlike the spill, it has yet to be capped; at this point, the experiment has no end date. Not as immediately visible as the oil spill, its results will be more dramatic, widespread, and long-lasting.

All of us are participating, and the results are beginning to appear throughout the world’s ocean: at the far reaches of the Earth in the Arctic; in tropical coral reefs; at the foundation of marine food webs; in coastal estuaries; and in the open ocean, far from the sight of land. The results will touch all of us, whether we live inland or along the coast.

A WARMER PLANET

Albatross feeding on fish heads and bycatch left by deep-sea trawler in the Tasman Sea off Australia ©Splashdown Direct, from Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World

Restructuring life in the ocean, whether through pollution or global warming, closes a frontier, cuts us off from resources that could help us.

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WARMING THE EARTH through fossil-fuel emissions is one piece of this experiment.

For 400 years, European explorers tried to find a shortcut to Asia through the Arctic.

Stymied by the thick ice, their frustrated efforts often ended in death, mutiny, and starvation: On one return trip, sailors were reduced to eating candle grease. In 1906, Roald Amundsen, after spending two winters locked in the ice, finally made it through the Northwest Passage. In September 2009, two German container ships easily transited the Arctic. This momentous—if little remarked— occasion briefly opened the Northern Sea Route to commercial traffic. Commercial shippers are increasingly looking north: The Arctic route from Rotterdam in the Netherlands to Yokohama, Japan, cuts more than 4,000 miles from the trip through the Suez Canal.

Someday soon, the Sannikova Strait may become as familiar a name as Suez.

Some scientists now anticipate that by 2030, there will be an ice-free passage through the Arctic Ocean in the summer months.

The ramifications are enormous. Melting ice poses challenges and opportunities for

Caribbean mangrove ©Tim Laman National Geographic Image Collection, from Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World

indigenous peoples who have made their lives on the ice for centuries: Salmon, cod, and pollock are already moving north as the ice retreats, while ice-dependent polar bears, walrus, seals, and narwhal are becoming increasingly threatened. Multiyear sea ice, 10 feet thick or more, that once provided a reliable highway for Inuit hunters, is giving way to thin, unstable ice that appears and disappears annually, putting pressure on a way of life that sustained the Inuit for centuries.

In a quickly warming Arctic, Greenland

is turning green: Pine trees are growing, sheep are getting fatter, and farmers are cultivating broccoli and potatoes. The warmth may give birth to a new nation. As the coastline opens, Greenlanders hope that oil and mineral exploration will bolster their economy, enabling them to achieve independence from Denmark.

The Arctic is becoming an increasingly busy place, and as the ice melts, the balance of world power is tipping north. Russia, already a world leader in gas and oil

production, is strengthening its position in the 21st century, spending billions of dollars building pipelines, platforms, and icebreaking supertankers to open large natural-gas and oil fields in the Barents Sea. Ironically, developing the Arctic’s potential oil and gas reserves will continue to warm the planet, melt even more ice, and set off long-term and, what many scientists argue, catastrophic changes in the ocean— changes that will have major repercussions on land.

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We, a single species, whose tenure is but a brief moment in the great span of Earth’s history, have now grown strong enough to alter the chemistry and temperature of sea water, restructure marine food webs, and decide the fate of entire species.

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THE IMPACT OF INCREASED CO2

Crabeater seals on an iceberg, Antarctica ©Paul Nicklen, National Geographic Image Collection, from Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World (Top right) Butterfly fish on Kiritimati reef in the Pacific’s Line Islands ©Zafer Kizilkaya, Images and Stories, from Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World

OVER THREE MONTHS, Deepwater Horizon released almost 5 million barrels of oil into the sea. Every day, we in the United States burn the equivalent of four Deepwater Horizon spills, and the world, 20. Atmospheric carbon-dioxide emissions—from human fossil-fuel consumption, agriculture, and burning of the rain forest—have raised the average temperature in the United States 2 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 50 years.

Across the world, the 1980s was the warmest decade on record until the 1990s, and the first decade of the 21st century looks as if it will surpass the record of the 1990s.

Atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentrations, up 35 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, are on track to double or triple by the end of the 21st century.

The ocean, absorbing 90 percent of the increased heat and approximately onethird of the increased carbon dioxide from human fossil-fuel emissions, is feeling the effect. Unseen by those of us standing at the edge of the sea, looking out into the opaque water, these rapid increases are taking a toll.

The sea’s acidity, up 30 percent since the Industrial Revolution, is on a path to increase

150 percent by the end of the century—a rate unseen for hundreds of thousands of years.

The calcium carbonate shells of sea animals will not withstand the increasingly corrosive water. Already, coral growth is declining on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef; oyster larvae are dying in Pacific Northwest hatcheries; and tiny foraminifera at the base of cold-water marine food webs are growing lighter. Coral reefs, second only to tropical rain forests in diversity of species, represent 25 percent of the ocean’s diversity. Scientists warn that if our carbon-dioxide emissions continue at present rates, coral reefs, already declining, will likely turn to rubble.

Losing our coral reefs means losing multimillion-dollar tourist economies and fisheries, and one of our most important sources of new drugs. Some 700 species of venomous cone snail inhabit coral reefs and mangrove swamps: Few of their toxins have been characterized, but already one has been proved a potent and nonaddictive pain reliever, a thousand times stronger than morphine. Compounds from reef-inhabiting brown tube sponges show promise fighting antibiotic-resistant staph infections now on the rise in hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, and locker rooms.

Elsewhere in many parts of the ocean,

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A diver in a blue hole (underwater cave or sink hole) in Palau ©David Doubilet, from Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World

rising sea surface temperatures are increasingly associated with steep declines in the productivity of marine phytoplankton. These small microscopic marine plants floating in the waves form the base of almost every marine food web—feeding directly or indirectly clams and mussels, lobster and oysters, cod and haddock, tuna and whales. They nurture the sea as we know it. They are also responsible for half the planet’s photosynthesis: The oxygen in every other breath we take is produced by tiny marine organisms that most of us can neither see nor name.

We are now living in a new geologic age—increasingly called the Anthropocene, the age of humans. We, a single species, whose tenure is but a brief moment in the great span of Earth’s history, have now grown strong enough to alter the chemistry and temperature of sea water, restructure marine food webs, and decide the fate of entire species. Now, there is no place in the sea untouched by us, whether it be through global warming, overfishing, or pollution.

FEELING THE IMPACT NO MATTER WHERE WE LIVE, we are now

The sea is our lifeline, and now we hold its life-giving waters in our hands.

The choices we are making today will be felt for generations to come.

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feeling the impact of our great strength.

The losses will touch us personally. I live on a salt marsh on the Gulf of Maine, at the edge of what were once some of the ocean’s most productive waters. Through the years, these waters have been fished out. I have watched the disappearance and restoration of scallops, to sizes and weights previously unimagined by scientists, and the decline of cod and bluefin tuna. I am now watching what cod remain, the remnants of a fishery that supported the Massachusetts economy ever since the first settlers arrived, move into colder waters. At the bridge near my house, I watch the rising sea and storm tides that with increasing frequency spill over the creek and flood the road, rendering it impassable.

Mangrove, Belize ©Tim Laman, Getty Images, from Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World (Below) Marine diatoms (photoplankton, single-celled organisms) © Dr. Dennis Kunkel, Visuals Unlimited, from Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World

My children live in the Midwest. Each year, the Great Lakes, supporting 33 million people, are replenished by the sea, with water carried 1,000 miles in moisture-laden winds and storms from the Gulf of Mexico and adjacent Atlantic. Now, a warming Earth is decreasing the lakes’ winter ice cover, warming the water, and increasing the evaporation rate. One daughter had difficulty getting to work last summer, the roads closed from flash flooding caused by the increased storm intensity—the result of a warmer atmosphere holding more water. Our other daughter, camping on Lake Superior, swam in record warm water usually prohibitively cold. Warmer lakes are pleasant

for swimmers, but over the longer term increasing temperature and dropping water levels will reshape the Great Lakes landscape and economy.

When I was in college, I vacationed at a Wellesley friend’s home on Chesapeake Bay, where today increasingly acidic waters threaten the already challenging restoration of the oysters for whom the bay is named.

Rising sea levels there flood islands where farmers once tilled their fields and bay watermen fished for blue crab. Far away at the poles, the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass far more quickly than scientists had anticipated. If they collapse completely, Washington, D.C., will be

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Baa Atoll in the Maldives, an island nation threatened by rising sea waters ©Sakis Papadopoulos, Getty Images, from Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World

1980

2007

LOSS OF SUMMER ICE IN THE ARCTIC: In September 1980, sea ice covered 3.03 million

square miles; in September 2007, 1.65 million square miles. ©Collins Bartholomew Ltd, from Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World

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inundated. To slow and perhaps stop the rising sea, the acidification and warming of the ocean, and the devastating losses that will accompany an additional 2 degrees Fahrenheit warming, humans living in industrialized nations need to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050, according to the Presidential Climate Action Project. The longer we wait, the more difficult this challenge will be.

To the casual observer, nitrogen, like carbon dioxide, is invisible. Unseen by us, humans have increased Earth’s available nitrogen by 100 percent. Whenever I visit the Chesapeake, I see beauty, but it’s deceptive: The nation’s largest estuary is an estuary at

Orcas in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica ©Norbert Wu, Minden Pictures, from Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World

risk. Each summer, nitrogen-rich runoff from agricultural fields and industrial animal farms, power-plant and automobile emissions, sewage plants and septic systems, creates an oxygen-deprived dead zone where marine animals have difficulty breathing. This year a similar dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, created there annually by nutrient rich Mississippi River water and unrelated to the spill, grew to the size of New Jersey. Across the United States, more than two-thirds of assessed estuaries show moderate to high levels of this eutrophication.

RESOURCES FROM THE SEA Restructuring life in the ocean, whether through pollution or global warming, closes a frontier, cuts us off from resources that could help us. The mother of one of my Wellesley friends has dementia. Watching my friend struggle with the progression of her mother’s illness is wrenching. The Nobel prize-winning discovery of a fluorescent protein makes it possible to track the disease as it alters the brain, leading to better understanding of this devastating condition.

The source of the fluorescent protein is an ocean jellyfish. A number of my classmates face breast cancer. As I prepare this article for submission, a new and more hopeful drug for metastatic breast cancer, derived from a sea sponge, is being announced.

The earth has experienced five great extinctions in the last 500 million years.

Now, through overfishing, destruction of habitat, global warming, and pollution, we are inaugurating the sixth. Biologist E.O. Wilson anticipates that 25 percent of Earth’s plant and animal species will be threatened with extinction in the next 50 years and 50 percent by 2100, a loss

unseen since the demise of the dinosaurs.

The sea is our lifeline, and now we hold its life-giving waters in our hands. The choices we are making today will be felt for generations to come. We are a species blessed with language and awareness, knowledge and ingenuity, and a great capacity for imagination. We can still choose to restore the sea and the earth to health, to leave a planet hospitable to our children and grandchildren, but the hour is late and time is running short.

Deborah Cramer ’73, a visiting scholar at MIT’s Earth System Initiative, is the author of two natural histories of the sea, Great Waters: An Atlantic Passage and Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World, the companion book to the Sant Ocean Hall at the National Museum of Natural History. She lives on a salt marsh at the edge of the sea in Gloucester, Mass.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

To explore some of the many ways the sea is our lifeline, visit http://www.seaaroundyou.com, an interactive website put together

by Deborah Cramer and artist Matthew Belanger, working with scientists, teachers, and photographers.

For an introductory slide show to Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World, visit http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-videos/ smithsonian-ocean-our-water-our-world/.

To learn more about Cramer’s work, visit http://www.deborahcramer.com.

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The Way to Be Empty I Sun Young Kang University of the Arts, Philadelphia 26 cm.

Number 7 of 10 copies

Artists’ books meld word, image, color, and texture into a hybrid form— books as art. Wellesley’s dynamic collection, housed at the Clapp Library, addresses issues of gender, race, politics, science, and religion, challenging our sense of what books can do and be.

UN

BOOKS BOUND

By Francie Latour

Photographs by Justin Knight

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WE KNOW some things about books and art: for example, that works of art generally hang on walls, and literary works generally sit on shelves. We know the feeling of being stirred by a Van Gogh or immersed in Toni Morrison. And we know how different those two experiences can be.

What, then, to make of artists’ books?

Not art books, which sit on coffee tables. Or books about art, which students carry in backpacks. Artists’ books are something else entirely, and many things at once. They are books as art, whose hybrid form and emotional power have made them a force in contemporary art. And among the colleges and universities collecting these art objects, Wellesley is at the cutting edge: Under Special Collections Librarian Ruth Rogers and her predecessors, the College has built an absorbing, dynamic collection of artists’ books that speak to the liberal-arts curriculum. With about 1,500 works, and particularly strong selections that address race, gender, politics, literature, and the Holocaust, it’s a collection of wide-ranging aesthetics and serious intellectual punch.

Born in the artistic experimentation of the 1960s, contemporary artists’ books have come into their own as a distinct art genre. These works deliver far more than the sum of their many integrated parts: Artists’ books are meant to be viewed and read, opened and touched. They reawaken us to all that makes books sacred—their intimacy, their universality, their transporting power. But they also puncture, and sometimes even explode, our sense of what books can do and be.

“Artists’ books force us to see and comprehend their meaning not through one dimension, such as text, but through the sum of all their elements: form, materials, color, texture, and words,” says Rogers. To fully

appreciate them, she says, there is only one requirement: “You must suspend your expectation that a book is a narrative text with a beginning and end, bound securely between two covers.”

The value of contemporary artists’ books across the curriculum has only begun to be tapped, Rogers says. Currently, about a Living With Others Carl T. Heyward half-dozen courses draw on the collection, from religion to 1987 comparative literature to art history, as well as Wellesley’s Carl T. Heyward, publisher, writing program and the book-arts program. Rogers hopes San Francisco 21 cm. to expand the collection’s reach to Africana studies, women’s Unique altered book and gender studies, and political science, among others.

Religion Professor Barbara Geller, who teaches a course on the Holocaust, has seen dozens of her students silenced and chilled by these new avenues of expression. “It’s a transformative educational moment for them,” she says, “and I think it’s both about the degree to which they’re responding to the subject matter as well as the forms of the books themselves. Each time you return to them, you uncover another layer of complexity.”

Few college or university collections can match the richness or depth of Wellesley’s, says Betty Bright, an independent curator and leading voice on artists’ books who founded the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. “Wellesley is one of a handful of institutions that have built a stellar reputation in the field of the book arts,” says Bright. “A number of the books are just stunning in the quality of their execution and in the inventiveness of their construction.”

As the following books suggest, the potential of artists’s books for interdisciplinary learning is rich and deep. “These are living, tactile, usable treasures by living artists and writers,” says Rogers. “They communicate.”

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Ghost Poems for the Living Paulette Myers-Rich/William Shakespeare 2005 Traffic Street Press, St. Paul, Minn.

28 cm.

26 copies the poetry of a man regarded as the greatest writer in the English language? How to reorder words considered to be immortal, and bring new art into being?

Tomes upon tomes have been devoted to William Shakespeare, his pentameter interpreted and reinterpreted by scholars through the ages. Paulette Myers-Rich enters this terrain armed with nothing more than a medium-format camera, handmade flax paper, and 13 Shakespeare sonnets on mortality and middle age. The result is a stirring meditation on loss and renewal: With quatrains vanishing into free verse and images of flowers that seem to curl into vapor, Ghost Poems for the Living is a haunting whisper to the Bard across the ages.

In 13 pairings, Myers-Rich presents the original sonnet and an image of nature in decay. These photographs are image poems—seed pods and blades, leaves and sheaths twisting in pure shadow and light.

Turn the page, and two ghostly images appear: the photograph again, now with positive reversed to negative, and fragments of free verse excavated from the previous page. In Sonnet 73—one of Shakespeare’s most famous, where metaphors of autumn and dying fires abound—Myers-Rich finds a poem inside the poem: “behold/yellow leaves/shake against the cold,/twilight/fadeth/ black night/seals/such fire/on the ashes.”

HOW DO YOU ALTER

To read Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73 in its entirety, visit http://www.poets.org/ viewmedia.php/prmMID/15844.

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Sanctus Sonorensis Philip Zimmermann 2009 Spaceheater Editions, Tucson, Ariz.

21 cm.

Edition of 1,000 copies SANCTUS SONORENSIS is a book of prayer. Like ancient religious texts, its power lies in the way it quiets and centers us: through illuminated text, through its weight and gilded edges, through chanted repetition.

But this missal speaks to a modern-day American flock—a country divided over the immigrants crossing our borders, and exhausted by the screaming debate that defines immigration politics.

In the Catholic mass, the Sanctus is a hymn sung with solemn voices. Sanctus carries that hymn into Arizona’s Sonora The desert sky: Desert, a place where thousands slip through searching for (above) ‘blessed are opportunity, and thousands die searching. Zimmermann’s the day laborers.’ work shows us nothing of what happens on that treacherous ground. Instead, it opens to hypnotic images of desert sky that progress from dawn to dusk. Each passing hour fills the page with limitless blue expanse, with clouds stretched over sun, with stray lightning or scattering birds—then, with sheets of mournful, gathering darkness. Each sky carries its own beatitude:

blessed are the pool boys. blessed are the pecan gatherers. blessed are the office-cleaners, blessed are the shepherds. blessed are the garbage men. blessed are the domestic workers.

“I have always liked repeated, or almost chanted, texts,” Zimmermann says. Quoting a fellow book artist, he says, “Ritualized language can be an effort to make slow change through repetition. It can be both an effort to change, and a way to deal with the fact that change may not come.”

To read more about Philip Zimmermann, go to http://philipzimmermann.blogspot.com/.

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Out of the Sky Werner Pfeiffer 2006 Pear Whistle Press, Red Hook, N.Y. 34 cm. closed; 161 cm. assembled Number 12 of 52 copies THE POWER OF THE ARTIST’S BOOK lies in the way it joins content with form; the experience of the object not only echoes the text’s meaning, but deepens it. In imagining a book about Sept. 11, New York artist Werner Pfeiffer realized he could only build it in one way: up. Out of the Sky is that rare object that fuses printmaking, sculpture, poetry, and history. A monument and a vessel, it requires us to physically construct and collapse two towers in order to read it.

Pfeiffer watched the actual towers burn from a Brooklyn rooftop. His piece began with sketches of what he witnessed—bodies in free fall as victims leaped to their deaths.

A chaos of limbs evoking Picasso’s Guernica, the woodcuts open into cubes that stack over inner support structures. As the towers rise, so do the victims’ names, in letterpress type alternately bolded and unbolded to echo the corrugated steel of the World Trade Center.

Once built, the twin towers can be deconstructed and folded back into the recessed metal cavities of the accompanying handmade box.

As a child in World War II Germany, Pfeiffer’s house was bombed, forcing his family into the basement as the upper stories caved in. Pfeiffer’s accompanying booklet speaks to those triggered memories and our collective need to heal, “to probe for guiding spiritual markers within ourselves.”

To view a video of Pfeiffer discussing Out of the Sky, visit http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=bh9ovBzCYYw.

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Billy Rabbit: An American Adaptation Ann Tyler 2007 Ann Tyler, publisher, Chicago 39 cm.

Number 3 of 50 copies THERE’S A REASON little kids find lift-the-flap books so captivating. The play between words, pictures, and peek-a-boo makes children active participants in a fairy-tale world—not just watching and listening, but moving the story along.

In Billy Rabbit: An American Adaptation, Ann Tyler pulls us into a distinctly American once-upon-a-time, a tale of hide and seek marked by mob ritual and harrowing violence: the lynching. Weaving together an English children’s story about a rabbit stealing a turnip with accounts of lynchings from US newspapers, Tyler injects ferocious cruelty and suffocating doom into a genre normally reserved for singsong innocence. The device for her cautionary tale couldn’t be more apt: In Billy Rabbit, we not only turn the pages, we hold and lift the well-used instruments. The hammer, the saws, the butcher’s knife, the pitchfork.

In the original 1912 story (also in Wellesley’s collection), the rabbit is rescued by his mother. But lynchings don’t make for happy endings, a fact that makes Tyler’s decision to end her book with lines excerpted from the original version all the more chilling. “When Billy didn’t come home by dusk, Mrs. Bunny began to get anxious, so she took down a lantern and walking-stick and set out to find him. ‘And I heard somebody say that rabbits were in season, too,’ she thought with a sigh.”

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Le 6 Avril, 1944 Jacques Fournier/Edward Hillel 1999 Éditions Roselin, Montréal 17 by 25 by 10 cm. (box) Number 41 of 44 copies BOOK ARTISTS CONSCIOUSLY SEEK to push the boundaries of the book form. At the same time, their craft reminds us of the book’s essential place and symbolic power in human civilization. In considering the Holocaust, a collaborative work by Jacques Fournier and Edward Hillel takes our understanding of what a book should be to its outer limits. One of the most viewed books in the collection, it has the effect of stopping students in their tracks when they encounter it.

The subject of Le 6 Avril, 1944 is the deportation and gassing of 44 children from the village of Izieu, France. We lift a box lid in the unmistakable, Nazi-era yellow of the cloth patch Jews were ordered to wear to mark them in public.

What we find inside suggests a haunting, electric presence floating in empty space: the stamped names and ages of the victims, entombed but also rising from a village hillside depicted along the box’s reflective inner walls.

But is it a book? Fournier, a bookbinder by trade, chose to line his work with a heavy, lead bottom, intensifying its coffinlike feel. Ruth Rogers, head of Special Collections, says Le 6 Avril meets one of her essential criteria for artists’ books, works that “reinforce the liberalarts curriculum by saying something that can’t be said in any other medium.”

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Femmes Fatales Maureen Cummins 2001 Maureen Cummins, publisher, High Falls, N.Y. 29 cm.

Number 24 of 50 copies

IT’S THE KIND OF TREASURE you’d find in your grandmother’s attic: vintage photographs of women from another time, bound in a Victorian-era album with a brass clasp and gilded pages. But the alluring women of Femmes Fatales signify something much darker than their sepia tones suggest: Their titles, spelled out in gold lettering, all refer to torture and execution devices through the ages. The Ropemaker’s Daughter, a nickname for a noose. The Lady of the Carousel, moniker for the guillotine. Yellow Mama, otherwise known as the electric chair.

Maureen Cummins is as much an archival historian as she is a book artist. Her award-winning works, many of which are in Wellesley’s collection, illuminate matters of gender, race, and power by going to the source. Cummins’ The Business Is Suffering quietly chronicles the woes of a Virginia slave-trading firm in decline, as revealed in a collection of business correspondence. The playful Anatomy of Insanity uses century-old psychiatric records from McLean Hospital to disturbing effect: While men at the legendary Boston-area psychiatric hospital were found insane for a wide variety of reasons, women were found insane mostly due to their own biology—menstruation, lactation, menopause, desire. Cummins offers up these histories with a gorgeous sense of aesthetics, inviting us to make connections while carefully avoiding telling us what to think.

To view more of Cummins’ work, go to http://www.maureencummins.com/.

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26° 57.3´ N, 142° 16.8´ E Veronika Schäpers 2007 Schäpers, Tokyo 46 cm.

Number 3 of 44 copies of being at sea, in search of an underwater creature? Herman Melville used every literary device in his arsenal to put us on a ship deck with a wandering sailor, voyaging to capture a whale. In Veronika Schäpers’ diaphanous book, the artist uses her own tools—color, texture, and even sound— to interpret the ocean’s mysteries and the discovery of another mythic monster: the giant squid, captured on film in its natural habitat for the first time in 2004 near Japan.

The book’s elongated form evokes the traditional nautical log; its title represents the coordinates where the giant squid was found. But it’s Schäpers’ stunningly delicate printing and inking techniques that submerge us.

The vintage, translucent paper on which she sets her text—poetry, line-drawn maps, and nautical data from the 2004 voyage—recreates the rush of ocean waves as we turn the pages. Carefully folded to leave narrow openings that evoke both the horizon and the lens of an underwater camera, the pages reveal inner layers of partially visible text and shifts of luminous color, from blurred blues and grays to the black of the ocean floor.

Schäpers, a German native who lives in Japan, has seen her work enter collections such as New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Within Wellesley’s collection, 26° 57.3´ N, 142° 16.8´ E offers a meditation uniquely suited for the liberal arts—an exploration of myth and marine biology, of high art and rigorous science.

CAN A BOOK RECREATE THE EXPERIENCE

To see more artists’ books in the collection, go to http://www. wellesley.edu/Library/SpecColl/ rrbooklet/intro.html or http:// web.wellesley.edu/web/Dept/LT/ Collections/SpecColl/bkarts.psml.

Francie Latour is an associate editor of Wellesley magazine.

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LARGE LESSONS FROM SMALL BEINGS

IT WAS THEIR IDEA. “Lynn, can we do a lemonade stand?”

my kitchen pad: “Free Fresh Lemon-aid,” she wrote in brightly colored pens, clearly a child of the concertaid era. “Yum Yum. Fresh and Cold.” Never mind the fine

My three granddaughters were with me at the beach—Sammy, who is 11; her sister, Riley, 8; and their

print at the edge that read, “ABC News Lynn Sherr.”

By Lynn Sherr ’63

cousin Tessa, 6. Oops: 11½, 8¾, and 6 5/12. As a grandmother,

When I got back, we all got to work, pouring water into

I’ve learned many things from these kids, first and foremost that

thermoses containing the powder—regular and pink—and load-

you never undercut their actual ages. They’ve also taught me the joy

ing up a Styrofoam container with ice cubes. We had paper cups

of unconditional love, the unimaginably satisfying tug of a tiny hand,

for our customers, napkins too. And a tablecloth for propriety. I loaded

and the right way to leap off the bridge in Super Mario. Big lessons for such

it all into my car, along with a little table and a beach chair for myself, and

little people. The good news is, the courses just keep on coming.

off we went. Four females in search of their fortune. Or at least a good time.

But our buoyant spirits took a momentary dive when we parked the car. Settled into the sand, right at the place I’d staked out in my mind,

FREE LEMONADE

T

was . . . another lemonade stand! Sammy saw it first and ran to tell me, the disappointment clouding her face. “What do we do now?” she wailed.

his summer’s eye-opener started just that casually. They asked and I agreed. Then we did the logistics: I would get the lemonade

fixings and provide the table; they would do the selling. So far, so good.

But where?

“Let’s do it down at the stop sign,” they suggested, indicating a site about a quarter-mile away. “No good,” I countered. My road is a dead end, with only eight houses.

Slim pickings at best. We considered another intersection, and another. But I worried that the good folks of East Hampton, N.Y., wouldn’t stop their cars, even for three irresistible little salesgirls. Suddenly the light bulb lit. “How about the beach?”

I volunteered. “Everyone is thirsty, and there’s nothing to buy.”

“Yes!” they chorused.

The girls’ parents were eyeing me with amusement. I’m sure they thought I underestimated the challenge. But I was game. Especially when I heard the rest of the arrangements.

“We’ll pay you back for the lemonade supplies out of what we get,” the girls offered, unasked. Very responsible, I thought. But would it earn out? “OK,” I said, cautiously. “How much will we charge?” The answer, from Sammy and Riley, blew me away. “Oh, it’s free,” they said. Short pause. “But we have a tip jar.”

“No worries,” I announced. “Follow me.” At which point, the four of us marched directly past the interlopers, carrying our goods. “Hello,” I said, smiling but cool. “We’re your competition.” Then we turned the corner and

‘Free Fresh Lemon-aid,’ she wrote in brightly colored pens, clearly a child of the concert-aid era.

‘Yum Yum. Fresh and Cold.’

Never mind the fine print at the edge that read, ‘ABC News Lynn Sherr.’

set up on another patch of beach.

Location, location, location. That’s what the realtors say, and we were positioned right where thirsty beachgoers could find us. But I’d add three other tips for the lemonade business: a tasty product, smart price points, and an energetic sales force. One that will melt your heart. The girls saturated the territory, shouting out their merchandise so even the jellyfish could hear, then doling it out with grown-up grace.

“Free lemonade?” customers would ask, incredulous.

“Free?”

“Yup,” said Sammy or Riley or Tessa. Then she’d reach out, hold up the cup with its own hand-drawn sign reading “TIPS,” and say, “We have a tip jar.” Did I mention that she was smiling?

The reactions ranged from stunned disbelief to pure amusement to knowing appreciation. One young Wall Streeter laughed and said, “Very contemporary marketing.” Then he dropped a few dollars in the jar. I’d warned the girls that many sunbathers would

Bingo. Thanks to the counsel of one of their

have no money at all—the beach was a wallet-

friends’ dads—a savvy salesman who had organized

free zone. But time after time, customers were

an earlier lemonade stand with them—my grandkids had

so enchanted, they drank their lemonade, went

entered the world of modern marketing. Would it work?

to their cars, and came back five minutes later

I headed to the supermarket while Riley made the sign, using notepaper from

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to contribute.

A few people apologized that they had

nothing to contribute; the girls shrugged blithely and gave them drinks anyway. They even took some icy cups to the lifeguards high on their stands, for which a big “Thank you!” was tip enough. At one point, when Riley screamed out, “Free lemonade! Homemade lemonade!” she looked at me hesitantly. Was it OK to call it “homemade” since it came from a mix? “No problem,” I concluded after a moment’s concern. “We made it at home. And anyway, we added some fresh lemons.” Riley embellished the pitch: “Free fresh homemade lemonade!”

We even were visited by the competition—over and over and over. Sammy worried that they were trying to put us out of business. I suggested that our lemonade tasted better than theirs, a theory proved out when they packed up and went home first.

We lasted an hour and a half, until the lemonade and

Excitedly, she nudged me away, turned back to the beginning and, prohibiting my help, read all 12 pages out loud, unassisted, at which point she raised her tiny fist into the air and shouted triumphantly, ‘I did it!’

It was the first book she had read by herself, a gargantuan achievement reflected in the look of pure ecstasy on her impish face.

to diminish. “And where’s my giant yoga ball that you like to roll around?” He pointed inside. His face started returning to normal. “Shall we go inside and play?” The first traces of a smile returned. He raced for the door. Tessa stood up and took my hand. “Let’s go feed the fish,” she said.

I CAN DO THIS

O

n a soft, golden evening several summers ago, Sammy, then 5½ (I can learn), was getting ready

for bed. At the end of a day spent swimming and running, I sat down to read her a new book, simple enough, I thought, that she might be able to follow along. Halfway through she interrupted and said, “Wait, I can read that word.” Then another. Then another. Excitedly, she nudged me away, turned back to the beginning and, prohibiting my help, read

the ice ran out. Total take: almost $45. I’d spent about $20 but gave the girls a discount, so they wound up with $10 each. Not a bad

all 12 pages out loud, unassisted, at which point she raised her tiny fist into the

profit for giving something away. Mine was even bigger: a chance to see

air and shouted triumphantly, “I did it!” It was the first book she had read by

the girls in action, putting their stamp on our world. It was quality time with

herself, a gargantuan achievement reflected in the look of pure ecstasy on her

the future.

impish face. That I had been her audience was a thrill beyond compare; that I had learned a lesson was unmistakable: The best thing I can do for them is let them do it themselves.

M

PATIENCE UNDER PRESSURE

y fourth grandchild is a boy—Tyler, who turns 4 this month— and while I bear nothing but unmitigated love for his giggly,

curious, playful soul, he can be, shall we say, trying. One morning this summer his parents went off jogging, leaving me to care for Tyler and his big sister, Tessa. It was a routine that Tessa and I had grown to cherish—our time together, alone, since Tyler always accompanied his parents, pushed in the jogging stroller. But on this day he announced that he wanted to stay

T

ORANGE NAIL POLISH

he morning after the lemonade stand, the girls raced into my bedroom.

“Lynn, will you take us to the store

so we can spend our money?”

So off we went to help boost the

back with us, so we decided to give it a try. For 20 seconds, it seemed like

economy. But I worried that they would need

a good idea. “Bye bye!” he shouted merrily as we stood in the garage and

more than their small purses held; fretted that the

the runners sped off. Then he turned to me. 15 . . . 14 . . . 13 . . . his smile

glitter of fancy packaging would lead them to

started to fade. 9 . . . 8 . . . 7 . . . His lips started to quiver. I talked fast,

buy something they’d later hate. I confess I embarked on our

tried to sweep him inside. 3 . . . 2 . . . 1. The dam burst. Tyler erupted into

shop-op with more than touch of concern.

full howl, crying “Mama! Mama! Papa!” You get the picture. I thought fast,

Wrong again. Despite a number of distractions, they bypassed the

trying to figure out if I could get into the car and kidnap the joggers. I asked

electronics counter, scooted past the stuffed toys and wound up in cosmet-

Tyler if he wanted to go feed the fish in the pond. I reached to pick him up.

ics. Even there, they were discerning. “Too expensive,” ruled Tessa about

Nada. The noise was ear-piercing; his misery, heartbreaking. And I still had an

one brand of nail polish, carefully putting it back on the shelf. “Too boring,”

hour to go. The word “panic” comes to mind. Then I turned to Tessa. Calmly,

she pronounced another. Finally each of the girls settled on a bottle or two

with no sense of anxiety, she had lowered her little bottom onto a concrete

of polish (with change to spare) and spent the rest of the rainy morning

block and sat down. Quiet as a mouse, patient as a parent, just waiting. Did

neatly painting it on. Sammy’s was orange—brilliant neon orange, like a

she know something I didn’t? Apparently. A few seconds later, I tried again.

Florida nightclub sign. And she was still using it a month later.

“Tyler, don’t you have some trucks inside?” “Yes,” he snuffled, the tears starting

Me? I don’t polish my fingernails. Except for when the kids do it for me. That, I am told reliably, is one of the things grandmas are for. I don’t

Former ABC News correspondent Lynn Sherr ’63 is now reporting for a variety of platforms, including More magazine, the Daily Beast website, and public radio where she is a frequent guest host of The Takeaway.

It never occurred to her as a Wellesley student that she’d one day be writing—proudly—about her grandchildren for the alumnae magazine.

know about that, but I do understand how it works from the other side. I used to think the best thing about having grandkids was the single word, “Here,” as in, “Here, take her back. I’m done.” Now I know that the best thing about having grandkids is the single word, “Yes.” As in, “Yes, we can do that.” Or yes, I want to make you happy.

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YOUR ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

NEWS AND INFORMATION FROM THE WORLDWIDE NETWORK OF THE WELLESLEY COLLEGE ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION

A New Way To Connect: Alumnae Groups TIME WAS, IF YOU WEREN’T ACTIVE IN CLASS or

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The 40th-anniversary celebration of Ethos in 2008

we’re trying to do,” says Kerns, “is reach out to those groups and say, ‘We can help you. Come over to our umbrella.’” She says the Alumnae Association helps groups to reach out to more alumnae and expand, and also assists with the technology and communication infrastructure needed to support groups.

One of the objectives, says Kerns, is to extend the Alumnae Association’s engagement with alumnae who have lost touch with the College. Take Cynthia Hawkins DeBose ’81, for example: “I felt pretty disenfranchised and disaffected while I was at Wellesley,” she says. “Now, 25 years out, I would like to reconnect and make friends with people I didn’t know, whether they were in my class or not.” She’s an enthusiastic new member of WAAD. To learn more about joining or forming a group that suits your interest, please contact wgroups@alum. wellesley.edu or call 781–283–2310.

—Jennifer McFarland Flint

AFFINITY GROUPS: Wellesley Alumnae of African Descent Wellesley Latina Alumnae Network Wellesley Spectrum Alumnae (LGBTQ) SHARED INTEREST GROUPS: Wellesley Alumnae Affected by Autism Spectrum Disorders Wellesley Alumnae in the Military Wellesley Lawyers Network WZLY Alumnae—in development POTENTIAL GROUPS: Wellesley MBAs Wellesley Women in Entertainment Wellesley Women in Medicine Network Wellesley Alumnae in the Peace Corps Wellesley Hoopies (alumnae who worked in the Hoop or want to be affiliated with the Hoop) JUSTIN KNIGHT

club activities, your only formal channel to Wellesley might be this magazine. No longer: The Alumnae Association is helping launch a collection of groups centered around shared interests, purpose, or affinities such as ethnicity or sexual orientation. These self-directed groups operate at all different levels—from online discussion forums to formal organizations with boards and programming supported by the Alumnae Association.

Although the concept has been proposed many times over the years, the 40th anniversary of Ethos in 2008 provided the spark that lit the fire. Karen Williamson ’69, a founder of Ethos who was then a WCAA board member, says the event brought many alumnae to campus. The obvious question became: “How do we continue the bonds that we’re creating here, across geography and age?” The group was ripe for moving ahead, she says, and the Alumnae Association embraced the idea and put its support—and a dedicated staff person, Senior Assistant Director Karen Duncan Kerns ’97—behind the effort.

Several groups are in the works (see the list at right), but Wellesley Alumnae of African Descent (WAAD) is the first to become operational. “This will allow us to share all the benefits of For more information, visit http:// being Wellesley web.wellesley.edu/bluenog/portal/ Alumnae/Groups/AffinityGroups or alums from the e-mail wgroups@alum.wellesley.edu. unique flavor of the African-American experience,” says Williamson.

Other shared-interest groups have been operating independently—take the Wellesley Lawyers Network, for example, whose participants formerly were connecting through a non-Wellesley e-mail list. “What

This magazine is published quarterly by the Wellesley College Alumnae Association, an autonomous corporate body, independent of the College. The Association is dedicated to connecting alumnae to the College and to each other.

WCAA BOARD OF DIRECTORS:

JOHN MOTTERN

President Karen Gentleman ’77

IT’S IN THE BAG DURING THE 2010 ALUMNAE PARADE, the insignia of the class of

drawn to artisan Janet Kamene. “I knew when I laid eyes on her. . . .

1965 stood out. Not just because the blue, green, and white kiondo

She just is a most amazing businesswoman and leader,” Stamp says.

bags were so beautiful, but because of the story of how they made it to College Road from rural Ukambani, Kenya.

Impressed with Kamene’s samples, Stamp put in an order for the bags and returned in March 2010 to oversee the completion of

Patricia Stamp ’65, who was a founding member of both the

the contract. Some 40 women worked together to make the

women’s studies and African studies programs at York University in

kiondo bags—and now they are hoping to form a women’s center

Toronto, had the kiondo bags in mind as an insignia since her class’s

where they can gather to weave, socialize, and share knowledge.

last reunion, in 2005. (The class has previously used insignia from

One of Stamp’s former students at York, Willy Mutunga, the Ford

craftspeople overseas, including a bead necklace from Nepal and

Foundation’s East Africa director for social justice and women’s

a silk scarf from Thailand.) Stamp had been collecting kiondo bags

rights and development, met with the women that spring and is

since she traveled to Kenya in the 1960s to do research on local

interested in supporting the group’s plans. For more information

government there. In 2007, she went to Kenya on her last sabbatical

about how to organize class insignia working with women in the

before she retired from York, and while she was there, she requested

developing world, e-mail Stamp at pstamp@yorku.ca.

samples of kiondo bags from several groups. She was immediately

—Lisa Scanlon ’99

Treasurer/Secretary Debra Drew DeVaughn ’74 Martha Goldberg Aronson ’89 Anne Crary Berger ’91, chair of alumnae admissions representatives Katherine Collins ’90 Aniella Gonzalez ’93 Karen Capriles Hodges ’62 Georgia Murphy Johnson ’75 Suzanne Lebold ’85 Willajeanne McLean ’77 Inyeai Ororokuma ’79 Paulina Ponce de Le´ on Barid´ o ’05 Shelley Sweet ’68 Mei-Mei Tuan ’88 Sandra Yeager ’86, chair of annual giving Ex officiis: Susan Challenger ’76 Alice M. Hummer Katherine Stone Kaufmann ’67 Alumnae Trustees: Linda Cozby Wertheimer ’65 Nami Park ’85 Ruth Chang ’81 Sandra Polk Guthman ’65 Shelly Anand ’08 ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION SENIOR STAFF:

Executive Director Susan Challenger ’76 Director of Alumnae Events Heather Tromblee Director of Alumnae Groups Susan Lohin Director of Alumnae Technology and Communications Michelle Gillett ’95 Alumnae Office Financial Administrator Greg Jong CLUB NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

THE SEOUL WELLESLEY CLUB turned out in force in August to welcome Assistant Professor Sun-Hee Lee of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and celebrate the exchange agreement sealed between Wellesley and Scranton College of Ewha Womens University. Seated in the front row, from left: Min-ah Hong ’92, Hunmin Kim ’80, Lee, Hyung-min Chung ’75, Jennifer Chang ’87 (nee Becky Chang). Middle row, from left: Victoria

Kim ’04, Jennifer Chun ’10, Jane Jungmi Huh ’05, Hee Soo Chung ’13, Jee Eun Karin Nam ’06, Joo Young Kim ’14, So Hyun Park ’11, So Yeun Lee ’14, Jean Lee ’13, Min Paik ’06. Back row, from left: Jenny Kim ’09, Wonhee Lee ’07, Yoonjei Dong ’10, Julia Ryoo ’14, Seoyeon Park ’14.

The Alumnae Calendar of events appears on page 85.

To read Wellesley magazine online, visit http://issuu.com/wellesley.

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ON THE ROAD with the Friends of Horticulture

CENTER FOR WORK & SERVICE

NEED HELP WITH YOUR CAREER TRANSITIONS? Today’s job search is a two-track train with online resources and interpersonal connections: > ACCESS MyCWS for exclusive online career resources, Photo: Rebecca Saunders ’61

Secrets of

SICHUAN A Journey to Jiuzhaigou

counseling appointments, and our databases, http://www.wellesley. edu/cws/mycws.html. > CONNECT with other alumnae through the W Network for career

information and advice, http://www.wellesley.edu/alum/wnetwork.

(Remember to update your own profile and networking preferences so you can share your experience as well.)

The CWS and the Alumnae Association: working together to provide a full spectrum of career resources throughout your lifetime as a Wellesley alumna.

May 14–29, 2011 This unique expedition to explore the flora, fauna, and culture of the Western Sichuan Province, China, is cosponsored by Wellesley College Friends of Horticulture and New England Wild Flower Society, and will be led by Ted Elliman, experienced leader of botanical forays into China.

Wild mountain nature reserves will be the focus of our journey, with visits to Tangjiahe and Wanglang Nature Reserves, both home to spectacular wildflowers and wild panda. A major highlight of our trip is a two-day visit to Jiuzhaigou National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site of incomparable beauty.

To view a downloadable brochure with a detailed itinerary, see the Friends of Horticulture’s website, www.wellesley.edu/WCFH. To receive information by mail, call the Friends office at 781-283-3094 or e-mail horticulture@wellesley.edu.

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Honor with

Books A GIFT THAT CAN BE OPENED AGAIN AND AGAIN ~ Honor a Graduate ~ Celebrate a Birthday or Anniversary ~ Recognize a Special Occasion ~ Remember a Classmate

WELLESLEY COLLEGE H AND-PAINTED ENAMEL BOX PORCELAIN TRAY Two special gifts, available exclusively from the Chicago Wellesley Club.

Enamel Box: 2 in. x 13/8 in. $175, plus tax and shipping. Includes your custom inscription.

Porcelain Tray: 3¾ in. x 5 in. $40, plus tax and shipping.

For each $100 gift to Honor with Books, the Library will place a bookplate bearing the name of the person you are honoring, as well as your name, in a newly published book.

To request information regarding Friends of Wellesley College Library Call 781-283-2872 or visit www.wellesley.edu/Library/Friends

Order online: www.glazeware.com/wellesley To pay by check, contact hkmarshall@alum. wellesley.edu or call 847-322-1545.

Proceeds benefit Chicago Wellesley Club Scholarship Fund.

LETTERS (Continued from page 3)

prove that we can indeed be the catalysts of changes so needed.

Thank you, thank you, from all the world to everyone involved from the first kernel of the idea to, as Louisa Kasdon ’72 said as she closed her article, “. . . 1,600 Wellesley women with the potential to help lead the world.

Quite a club.” We can’t wait for you to get out there and make the difference you’ve so eloquently embraced.

I couldn’t be more proud.

Judy Martin ’82 Tucson, Ariz.

GREENHOUSE BEAUTY

(Continued from page 49)

The Alumnae Association announces the following events for 2010 and 2011. Unless otherwise noted, events take place at the College. For more information, call the Alumnae Office at 781-283-2331.

NOVEMBER

20 President Bottomly speaking to Baltimore Wellesley Club. For more information, call Susan Lohin, director of alumnae groups, at 781-283-2330 or check http://www.wellesley.edu/Alum/presidentialtour.

2011 9 President Bottomly speaking to Miami Wellesley Club. For more information, call Susan Lohin, director of alumnae groups, at 781-283-2330 or check http://www.wellesley.edu/Alum/presidentialtour.

FEBRUARY

9 President Bottomly speaking to Santa Barbara Wellesley Club. For more information, call Susan Lohin, director of alumnae groups, at 781-283-2330 or check http://www.wellesley.edu/ Alum/presidentialtour.

11 President Bottomly speaking to Wellesley College Club of San Diego. For more information, call Susan Lohin, director of alumnae groups, at 781-283-2330 or check http://www.wellesley.edu/ Alum/presidentialtour.

SHELF LIFE (Continued from page 19)

the mean-girl culture of Condé Nast, publisher of House & Garden. Browning soon slips into depression, especially as it becomes clear that consulting work and freelance writing are the only options open to her. She frets about her grown and gone sons. She putters.

Wisely, Browning decides to sell the big, beautiful house she spent years getting just right, suffering the indignity of a real-estate agent telling her that people prefer media rooms to her copious bookshelves. Thankfully, she can withdraw to Rhode Island and her charmingly eccentric coastal home (only one bedroom for the children, a library you enter by walking through a bathroom), where she takes up piano and learns to cook.

With all her new free time, Browning notices that the married man she’s been in love with for years has no intention of divorcing his wife—and more importantly, he’s a cad. Her friends have been telling her this for years, and she ponders why someone as smart and together as she is would become involved with such a dashing but shallow person. To punctuate this, Browning tells the reader about an incident when the man sent back furniture she had bought him, and about the time he had his gardener spray weed killer on the mint she had planted for him. Yet, she still loves him.

Toward the end of the book, Browning experiences a serious health crisis, an event that transcends her circumstances and gets her out of her funk. She says a permanent good-bye to the cad and starts appreciating her new life.

Not everyone is going to relate to the low-key, comfortable version of unemployment Browning describes,

ALUMNAE CALENDAR

JANUARY

ESTHER PULLMAN

I enjoyed the article on the Margaret C. Ferguson Greenhouses (Where Science Takes Root,” winter ’10), especially the beautiful photos. As a student, I was a regular visitor to the greenhouses; touring the various houses was like taking a mini-vacation. Now I live about 40 minutes’ drive from campus, and I’m no longer able to take a weekly walk through glass-enclosed jungles and desert habitats. Still, I try to plan a stop whenever an errand or event takes me near Wellesley.

Just one footnote to the article: The greenhouses have been an inspiration to artists, Wellesley-affiliated and otherwise. One is my friend, Cambridge photographer Esther Pullman (Smith College ’64, Yale School of Art ’67), whose gorgeous greenhouse triptych photographs were initially inspired by visits to the Ferguson Greenhouses. Her work has been exhibited at various Boston and New York galleries, as well as Regis College, the College of the Atlantic, and the Danforth Museum. The Wellesley greenhouses have a presence in the art world, too. I am attaching one of Esther’s photographs (with her permission) for use in the magazine.

Annette LaMond ’71 Cambridge, Mass.

but reading her memoir is akin to having lunch with a witty and well-heeled friend who isn’t quite aware how good she has it. Most of her problems aren’t as bad as she thinks they are, but she’s a fun companion with whom to spend an afternoon.

Melissa Nurczynski ’94 lives in Philadelphia and teaches writing at Kutztown University. Her work has appeared in Newsweek, Budget Travel, US Airways Magazine, and Philadelphia Style.

FRESH INK (Continued from page 19)

Anne Leslie Saunders ’72—A Travel Guide to World War II Sites in Italy: Museums, Monuments, and Battlegrounds, CreateSpace, Scotts Valley, Calif.

Constance Hoenk Shapiro ’69—When You’re Not Expecting: An Infertility Survival Guide, John Wiley & Sons, Publishers, Hoboken, N.J.

17

Alumnae Achievement Awards

17–18 WCAA board of directors meetings MARCH

12 President Bottomly speaking to Wellesley in the North Carolina Piedmont Club. For more information, call Susan Lohin, director of alumnae groups, at 781-283-2330 or check http://www.wellesley.edu/Alum/presidentialtour.

13 President Bottomly speaking to Atlanta Wellesley Club. For more information, call Susan Lohin, director of alumnae groups, at 781-283-2330 or check http://www.wellesley.edu/ Alum/presidentialtour.

APRIL

1 President Bottomly speaking to Indianapolis Wellesley Club. For more information, call Susan Lohin, director of alumnae groups, at 781-283-2330 or check http://www.wellesley.edu/Alum/presidentialtour.

MAY

Patricia Werhane (Patricia Hogue Werhane ’57), Scott Kelley, Laura Hartman, and Dennis Moberg—Alleviating Poverty Through Profitable Partnerships: Globalization, Markets, and Economic Well-Being, Routledge, New York

1 President Bottomly speaking to Wellesleyin-Westchester. For more information, call Susan Lohin, director of alumnae groups, at 781-283-2330 or check http://www.wellesley.edu/ Alum/presidentialtour.

Pamela Robertson Wojcik ’86—The Apartment Plot: Urban Living in American Film and Popular Culture, 1945 to

JUNE

1975, Duke University Press, Durham, N.C.

3–5 Reunion for classes ending in 1s and 6s, and CE/DS

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M

y favorite way to contribute to the College is to purchase a deferredpayment charitable gift annuity. I missed a great opportunity when I received a lump-sum payment on leaving a previous job. After paying a huge federal and state tax bill, I learned my lesson. Some years later, when I sold a rental property that had been depreciated for about 12 years, I invested the capital gain in a gift annuity with Wellesley. I avoided a large part of the capital-gains tax and secured an excellent lifetime income source for my retirement. Since I have included a bequest to Wellesley in my will, I consider the gift annuity as a down payment on that bequest.

Virginia McConn Oversby ’65 Walnut Creek, Calif.

Virginia McConn Oversby ’65 has created four deferred-payment charitable gift annuities to supplement her retirement income and ultimately support Wellesley’s Nordic Region Scholarship Fund.

After majoring in geology at Wellesley and earning her Ph.D. in geochemistry at Columbia, Virginia has lived and worked in Australia, California, and Sweden. Although Virginia and her husband, Lars, have recently retired to California, they return to Sweden often to visit with family and friends.

For a financial proposal tailored to your circumstances, please contact Patricia Galindo, Office of Planned Giving, 800.253.8916 or pg@wellesley.edu.

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Office for Resources

Isn’t there someone you want to honor?

Go to wellesley.edu/honor.

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END NOTE

Girl Meets Dog: A Love Story—Eventually S A CHILD, I begged my parents for a pet. I even adopted a rather sickly box turtle named Sammy, but he became so visibly depressed that I soon released him back into the wild after a farewell ceremony in my backyard. Nothing warmblooded stayed long as a pet in the Johns house.

Having never developed the tender human-tocanine bonds I assumed every normal child had experienced, I worried I might be weird inside. The lack of puppy contact during childhood, I thought, would have the same effect on me as that of a baby who was not held enough in its infancy.

But then came Bama, a 1½-year-old, 15-pound rat terrier who was deaf. His picture on a dog rescue website captured my heart. Bama was found near Tuscaloosa, Ala., the home of the University of Alabama Crimson Tide, and the caption on his online profile read, “Put me in, coach!” He was a little white dog with sad but somehow eager eyes. The fact that he was deaf was comical because his enormous bat ears, standing straight up on his head, looked as though they could pick up distant shortwave radio signals.

I called the Humane Society with butterflies in my stomach. Yes, he still needed a home. He had won my heart.

But when we first met, Bama exhibited the aloofness of a teenager.

Standing there in his turtleneck sweater, he eyed me suspiciously for awhile before jumping up on a table to get a better look at me. Then he sniffed loudly in my ear, licked my nose, and batted my face with a paw. From then on, I was his person. He was my dog.

Within hours of bringing him home, though, I watched the wild animal preening in my living room with a certain amount of panic. I thought about striking up some kind of small talk, but his lack of hearing made that considerably more difficult. I stared at him, wondering what sinister thoughts might be rolling around in his tiny brain. He stared back, seemingly emotionless. I turned on the television and sat down on the couch. He sprinted off, and soon I heard energetic trash munching from the kitchen.

My heart sank. Was this pet ownership?

Anna Johns ’09 currently spends her days raving about how cool decimals are to an audience of 4th-grade students in San Antonio, Texas, through Teach for America.

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My fantasy of being a dog owner involved noble canines running freely in a bucolic setting. To fulfill this dream, I took Bama to a dog park with my friend Rachel and her dog, Wally. While Wally romped joyfully with the other dogs, Bama sat at my feet like a little sociopath and refused to budge.

My dog-ownership fantasy vanished. I gave up.

Upon returning home, Bama and I snuggled up with a bone and a book, respectively, and spent several hours lying around the house. Then he started chasing a dust bunny with gusto, crouching down as if to pounce, then barking and wagging his bobbed tail frenetically. And when he was absolutely sure that I was watching, he hopped like a rabbit around his imaginary foe and growled menacingly. Satisfied that no dust bunny would dare cross him again, he bounced into my lap and curled up in a little ball.

I couldn’t help laughing. What a ferocious predator.

Since his taste for trash had been established, I decided to take him to doggy daycare before I returned to work the next day. But after his lessthan-stellar performance at the dog park, I worried that he would just sulk around moodily all day like a little James Dean. I peeled him, whimpering, off my leg to hand him to the staff. Sad puppy eyes burned into the back of my skull as I left.

That afternoon, though, a happy, exhausted dog greeted me with ecstatic kisses. The young woman at the front desk glowed with praise about what a good dog Bama was and offered him a treat (which he rejected in order to continue licking, with great interest, the back of my knee). The staff had long searched for a playmate for a sweet but bossy Pomeranian named Francine, who frequently lapsed into fits of eardrum-shattering barking.

She drove several of the other dogs crazy, but Bama, deaf to the barking, became fascinated with her luxurious fur. He snuggled up next to Francine and fell asleep while she yapped happily. Having a deaf dog wasn’t so bad at all.

In the weeks that followed, Bama and I set out to learn hand-signal commands, a process aided greatly by the fact that he would do anything for peanut butter. Half a jar and many training sessions later, he could sit, lie down, and stay. Our afternoon walks have become the best part of my day, and waking me at dawn with a tentative lick to my eyelid appears to have become the best part of his. Life without a dog clearly did not stunt my emotional development, or make me “weird inside,” but now that Bama is a fixture in my life, I can never go back to the way things were. Mess, stress, and worry aside, life is just better with my little white dog.

F.CO

A

By Anna Johns ’09

RICHARD HOWARD

The Blue crew trains on the Charles River six days a week, often starting before the sun comes up. All the training paid off: This fall, the varsity 8+ boat placed fourth out of 32 at the Head of the Charles Regatta, just behind three 2009 NCAA top-four ďŹ nishers. For more on the crew, see page 14.

KEEP IN TOUCH | KEEP INFORMED HTTP:// WWW.WELLESLEY.EDU/ALUM

10%

RICHARD HOWARD

Cert no. SW-COC-002556