More Fangirlish Gushing about Art

Last weekend was a wonderful chance to get off campus. There was an art show I’d been meaning to see at the Guggenheim by James Turrell. The show has been getting quite a bit of press and because I’m studying contemporary art history I like to pretend that I have a totally legitimate professional reason to take weekends in New York when it suits me. Mostly, though, I feel so so lucky that I have such a great geographical situation. Being able to steal away to see some of the most exciting art going on anywhere is an amazing blessing.

My view from the long, long line.

My view from the long, long line. 

After waiting in a long, long line at the entrance of the Gugie and paying the (in my humble opinion) slightly excessive entrance fee, I walked into the main room of the Guggenheim. I had never been to that part of the Guggenheim (the first time I went, in the spring, they were constructing this very show and the rotunda was closed off). Usually, or so I’m told, it’s like walking into an enormous light-filled corkscrew. Turrell transformed it into a brightly colorful, soothing, undulating space that was absolutely jam-packed with people, especially on its closing weekend. The ceiling was an installation with a series of concentric ovals with LED lights installed in them. It’s hard to explain in words and we weren’t allowed to take photos, but there’s a nice video up on the website here.

One of my favorite things about the piece was watching people react to it. There was padding in the middle of the floor so people could lie down and look at it without craning their necks. I waited around until a spot opened up and squeezed in where I could, snuggling up to a couple anonymous fellow art lovers. This aspect of the show was just wonderful. There’s some gleeful delight in watching New Yorkers break their own rules, but I guess if there’s any institution that takes priority over unwritten New York Norms such as “don’t lie on the ground” and “don’t cuddle with strangers”, it’s the hottest new installation on Museum Mile. I happened to be on the ground next to a few middle-aged men who were chatting with each other. The man whose elbow was grazing my head said calmly, “I’ve been here for four hours. It gets harder and harder to leave.” I wonder if he ever made it out of there.

The big piece itself, Aten Reign, was just incredible. It was at once suspenseful and soothing. It was like looking into the eye of a reptilian deity. It was like the stained glass window of the Jetsons’ cathedral. It was the God the Father to to Morton Feldman’s Holy Ghost and Mark Rothko’s Jesus Christ. It was sort of a synthetic version of what would happen if the aurora borealis had a baby with one hundred sunsets. It’s hard for me to describe it without invoking some kind of celestial metaphor, but I think that’s hard to resist with any piece using light as a medium. There’s just something divine, something sublime, something epic about it.

A Question

I recently got an anonymous message on my tumblr. Because it is a query that I expect lots of people are having right now, I thought I’d share the question (edited very slightly for discretion) and my answer.

this is what Bryn Mawr feels like, you just might love it

this is what Bryn Mawr feels like, you just might love it

Anonymous asker:

How would you describe Bryn Mawr and what has been your experience there? I’m looking into both Bryn Mawr and another college so I’m trying to learn more about the schools from those attending. Thank you for your time. (:

Me:

I have had a really fantastic experience with Bryn Mawr overall. I’ll try to refrain from gushing, but let me just say that choosing Bryn Mawr is one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself.

Of course it’s not for everyone, but here are some things that you can expect:
– a lot of really cool people whose day planners are bursting with interesting things that they care about a lot. Lots of students who care about everything, which might be a reflection of the liberal arts vibe. Each of the classes I’m taking this semester is in a different department. I’m also involved in the leadership of three different clubs and have five jobs (all with scant hours, though, so the amount of time I spend at work is pretty reasonable). I’m not trying to paint myself as especially busy/involved— this is pretty normal for a Mawrtyr

– people talking about school all the time. The workload tends to be pretty serious and on top of that, most people really care both about what they’re studying out of intellectual curiosity and because people tend to take high academic performance pretty seriously

– that said, it’s not necessarily an environment I would call competitive. It’s pretty taboo to share grades, and there’s no sense of other students as threats— most people push themselves pretty hard but not against anyone else

– professors who want to be teaching. You might find this at Hollins (Google tells me it’s also a small liberal arts college), but for Bryn Mawr professors the undergraduate students are definitely not an afterthought like they might be at a university that’s more research/graduate school focused

– smaller classes with more focus on discussion. I’ve never taken a class where you can skip class and get the same information from studying the textbook or slides that the professor posts online

– a lot of people who want to talk about feminism and other issues of gender and sexuality all the time, though we could definitely stand to have more dialogue on other issues such as race, ability and especially class. Being an elite liberal arts institution, it’s assumed (and is often the case) that students are pretty privileged educationally and economically. People are always up for a discussion, but if it’s about something other than feminism you might have to bring it up.

– you might feel like you’re in a cult sometimes. There are traditions that have been accused of having illuminati ties and the community feels like being wrapped in a huge blanket: mostly warm, snuggly, and comforting, but occasionally a tiny bit suffocating. If you are hoping to be invisible/aloof from most of campus and just do your own thing, that might be harder at Bryn Mawr.

– the years are well-integrated but also have a strong sense of identity. You’ll have a class color (I assume you’re going to be a frosh in the fall, which means your class color will be red), a class song, et cetera, and there are some things only seniors are allowed to do. There aren’t any frosh-only dorms and most people live on campus all four years so you’ll get lots of interaction with upperclasspeople

– everyone LOVES frosh. Expect older classes to be, like, cooing and pinching your cheeks

– it’s pretty common for people to be a little obsessed with Bryn Mawr, probably because it’s such an intense/distinctive community.

Like I said, I LOVE it here, good luck on your decision!

 

And on that note, I hope that anyone who is thinking of attending Bryn Mawr feels free to contact me with questions about my experiences. Best wishes to anyone and everyone making that big scary fun decision.

Happy Easter!

a heavenly host

a heavenly host

Every morning at 6:50 am, my friend Meagan calls me to wake me up. About half an hour later, I pick her and two other friends up at Rhoads and we all go to breakfast together. This is a treasured ritual and my day always goes better when I start it off nicely, but in January the mornings were especially rough. I would wake up to darkness, turn on my lamp to find my clothes, and wonder what I was doing awake in the blackness. The ground was covered in patches of snow and I would walk the path from Brecon to Rhoads gingerly, hoping not to slip on ice and gazing grumpily at the ice-encrusted duck pond. If you had told me then that before I knew it rain and sometimes even sunshine would replace the snow and that the ground would be covered in crocuses rather than muddy snow, I don’t think I would have believed you deep down.

This week, I was walking around campus when I saw what felt to me like a miracle. A few daffodils, which have been teasing me for weeks with their tender green shoots, were starting to blossom. This bright yellow, the color of a farm-fresh egg yolk, is absent during the winter and seeing it was a welcome change. It was an important reminder to me of something that I think is very relevant on Easter: sometimes it’s cold and dark and we forget that the color yellow even exists, and those times seem to stretch in front of us endlessly. But always, inevitably, the days get longer, we start to go outside with bare legs, and the daffodils show their faces again.

Happy International Women’s Day!

Patti Smith, Because the Night

Today is an amazing reminder of how far women have come on our society and societies around the world and of how far we still have to go. In honor of International Women’s Day, I’m posting an interview I was part of with Patti Smith. Smith is an amazing role model of subversive art practices and working in male-dominated fields and her writing and music are inspiring and empowering. I feel so lucky to be part of a community that prioritizes women and gives me the opportunity to be exposed to amazing feminist role models like  Smith.

Legendary rock star Patti Smith was awarded Bryn Mawr’s Katharine Hepburn Medal a few weeks ago on February 7th. As part of her visit to campus, Smith graced the student body with her onstage presence, singing, answering questions, and reading excerpts from her memoir, Just Kids. After her impressive, honest, and accessible concert, Smith paid myself (Ingrid Asplund), Maddy Court, *Bi-College News* reporter, Julie Mazziotta, and a student photographer, Prianna Pathak, the honor of sitting down with us to answer a few burning questions. We joined her in a dressing room in Goodhart around a fruit platter and she told us what was on her mind regarding New York, cheesesteaks, and leaving a legacy of good work.

MC: So, I read just kids this summer and I’m a big fan and parts of it read as an ode to New York City but a New York City that for my generation doesn’t really exist, New York isn’t really an accessible place now. What advice do you have for young people trying to build their own creative communities?

PS: One is just to go where you can afford. When I went to new york city I really wanted to be in Philadelphia, I didn’t really want to go to New York City, but I couldn’t afford to live in Philadelphia in 1967, there wasn’t any work, it was cheaper to live in New York City back then and I was able to get a job. Probably now I would go somewhere and start a new community…it doesn’t matter where you go…the whole city of Detroit, you could inhabit. I think part of it is finding affordable space so that you can be able to commit to your work, especially if your work requires space. You know in New York City, my band, we don’t have a practice space. We used to have a practice space in the 70’s, we don’t have one anymore because now all of the practice and rehearsal spaces are galleries and things, so if people want to study dance or do big paintings they need to find a space, you know, like abandoned factories… it doesn’t seem as glamorous but I didn’t go to New York City because I thought it was glamorous, I went there to find work. … I think the main thing is to remember what you want to do. If you’re focused on work it won’t matter in the end what you do: build a community of people who are all focused on work. If you’re looking to network or move up in the celebrity ladder or be a pop star or something, obviously you want to be where that action is. An artist can go anywhere or be anywhere. So you just have to find places that are artist-friendly and remember that it’s the people that make an area exciting. You know, CBGBs before all those bands started playing there and television and the Ramones and all the different bands that were the dead boys and all the people that were playing CBGBs, before it was that it was an empty country western bar that nobody went to. No one noticed it, it didn’t have any excitement or energy attached to it. It was the people that went there. They infused it with energy and made it special. So you can do that anywhere you want, it doesn’t matter where it is. It wasn’t because it was in the Bowery in New York City in that particular building, it was because of the people that found this place that nobody wanted and made it their own.

JM: What kinds of obstacles did you encounter when you broke into the art scene, do you think those obstacles still exist for people who are graduating from Bryn Mawr today?

PS: Well, I didn’t break into the art scene… I mean, I don’t know, to me, I wasn’t concerned with obstacles, breaking into any scene, you know, some scenes I broke in really easily, I don’t know why, I was just accepted, other ones I was marginalized from. For me, my main concern was my work. My obstacles were that I just didn’t have the tools I needed for my work or I wasn’t quite ready to do the work that I envisioned or I would be struggling with a poem or something… you know, breaking into the art world, it’s a social world, it’s not so important to break into the art world when you’re just developing your ideas and your work, unless you’re… you know, our present culture it’s a little different than my culture. My culture was really work-based. And now you have a whole different… because of the internet, you have pressure to do things… to make it, because of the evolution of celebrity status, I mean, when I was younger, the celebrities, were, like, movie stars, the ideas of people trying to be poet celebrities, that was considered kind of square. So you just have to know what you want. There’s nothing wrong with any of it. If you want to become a pop star, that’s hard work, you go the pop star route. If you wanna be a poet you might have a rough go because that’s a tough gig, being a poet, but the main obstacles are the ones of your own process, those are the obstacles to really be concerned about, the rest is just climbing a ladder.

MC: There have been documentaries made about you, this is a lifetime achievement award, but in your own words what do you want your legacy to be as an artist and a person?

PS: To put it simply, just that I did good work. In the end, that’s what’s going to endure. Peoples’ stories are interesting, their pictures are interesting, I love seeing pictures of Arthur Rumbo, I love looking at pictures of Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix, but really in the end, why I love them isn’t just their face, it’s that because they did great work, and that’s the most important thing and I would like people to say, “She did good work” and I would be happy.

JM: You talked a lot about Philadelphia and your connection to the city. Could you talk about your connection to Philly?

PS: Well I was born in Chicago but we moved to Philadelphia when I was three or four and I remember, I lived there ‘til I was about ten, eleven, and we moved to South Jersey We lived in sort of these tenements in German Town, they don’t exist anymore, they demolished them. So we lived in this apartment and there was a big field that we all played in. I loved Philadelphia. I loved its history,  I was proud to be from the Philadelphia area, because the *Declaration of Independence* was signed here, because Thomas Paine wrote *Common Sense* here, you know I always felt very proud to be in this city of Brotherly Love, a progressive city, a place of revolution, and it’s just a great city, it has one of the greatest art museums in the world, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is one of the most wonderful museums housing, you know, the most important masterpiece of Marcel Duchamp, and so much other great work. It’s just the architecture and the history. I’ve always loved Philadelphia and I saw my first art movies here, I saw my first Fellini movie here,  my first Bergman movie, and my first art, my first Picasso in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I saw jazz on Broadway, off Broadway, Peps and the Showboat, I saw John Coltrane, Nina Simone, I mean, it’s the greatest,  most exciting city, I’ve always loved Philly. … and, of course,  the cheesesteaks are really good here. I always laugh when, like, in New York, they try to make cheesesteaks and I’m like, sorry, you’re a great city,  but you don’t know how to make a cheesesteak.

Brynterviews: My Hellee Anna K.

I met Anna K. when I was a customs person in Rockefeller. She lived on the hall below mine and quickly became really good friends with a lot of my frosh, and then with me. I love to embroider, so Anna asked me once if I would embroider the word “FEMINIST” on to her favorite pair of underwear. Sometime before Hell Week, I got home from class and was hanging out in Rock when Anna strolled upstairs wearing a trench coat. She said, “I have a question!” and threw her trench coat open to reveal her underwear, which she was wearing Superman-style over a pair of tights and had embroidered with “WILL YOU BE MY HELLER?”. Obviously I said yes and if you walk by my door in Brecon you will see said hot pink embroidered underwear pinned to my corkboard. Anna and I sat down together for a little interview on Wednesday over some delicious Haffner foods.

Posing with a copy of the publication we both write for.

Ingrid A: How did you come to be a Bryn Mawr student?

Anna K: I really didn’t want to go to Bryn Mawr at first. It was the first school I visited and I complained the whole drive about how I didn’t want to go to a “girl’s school” but once we got there, my mom insisted that I take the tour. The tour guide was like, “This is the lantern we’ll give you! Look at this beautiful room in Merion where you get to live! Here are the cloisters!” and nothing quite lived up to it after that.

IA: What is something you love about Bryn Mawr?

AK: It’s hard to pick one thing… I really like teas. I like that we have hall gatherings, dorm gatherings, and customs group gatherings. They’re a nice thing to come home to.

IA: What is something you would change about Bryn Mawr?

AK: Sometimes the community is so tight and so supportive that it doesn’t teach us how to be part of the real world—college is supposed to be a transition to the real world, sometimes I’m worried that Bryn Mawr isn’t doing that.

IA: Is there anything you’ve learned at Bryn Mawr that you didn’t expect to learn?

AK: All I can think of is that there’s a lot more chemistry than I thought there was.

IA: Chemistry as in the academic subject, not a spark of attraction?

AK: Yes.

IA: How else is Bryn Mawr, or college in general, different from your expectations?

AK: It’s a lot more intense. The hard parts are harder but the good parts are even better. Everything is five times more extreme than it was back home.

IA: What is your favorite thing you had to do during Hell Week?

AK: I don’t think it was a particular thing so much as the fact that many of my classes were kind of on hold and I got to spend a lot of time with you and Chloe*. I enjoyed the time in between my tasks when they were recognized. Being anassed for the first time was really cool.

*Anna’s other heller

IA: I feel like frosh are told over and over again how great Hell Week will be. How was that for you?

AK: I didn’t think I would enjoy it as much as people said I would, but I definitely did. It was such a great, special opportunity.

IA: Tell me about how it felt to be in a position where you had to choose a Heller/Hellers?

AK: I felt very indecisive mostly because I ended up overthinking it…. I definitely regret not asking both of my Hellers sooner.

IA: How does that compare to being in a more passive position, waiting to see if someone wants you to hell them?

AK: It’s really stressful. Hell Week and traditions are some of the reasons why I came to Bryn Mawr so not being a Heller would feel like I was missing out a lot.

IA: Is it weird not to hear people cooing over your future Hell Week experiences when you tell them your class year, as I’m sure they did when you were a frosh? How is that?

AK: It’s definitely weird, but it’s also fun to be excited for the frosh. It’s been really cool to go through traditions from a new perspective.

Real talk: There are at least 3 people in this photo. We just like to cuddle, ok?

Thank you

Something I am especially thankful for today is communities, especially the communities I have the privilege of being a part of. I think this is always a big theme of Thanksgiving, because Thanksgiving is so much about coming together and being with the family. Traveling from Bryn Mawr to my hometown in Utah for Thanksgiving break is sadly not something I can do, but some family friends of mine are living in DC. They are from my hometown, and their daughters are some of my best high school friends. During my teenage years, I kept a toothbrush at their house for convenience because I slept over there so frequently. Their dad is on sabbatical in DC and the girls are doing internships right now. It has been so nice to do Thanksgiving with people from my hometown, and being with them has made me so thankful for the community I was raised in– one that is nurturing and close-knit in such a way that even visiting family friends far, far away from where we all met feels like stepping into a portal back to Utah. In the neighborhood we all grew up in together, taking care of one another was a top common priority and that has reflected in such a wonderful and hospitable way during my visit.

I think something that made Bryn Mawr so attractive to me is that I recognized something about my hometown and family in the campus culture. Over and over, Mawrters told me, “My favorite thing about Bryn Mawr is the community.” I crave being nurtured and having someone to nurture, and it seemed like Bryn Mawr was a place where that could be a part of my life. In my years here, I have been so thankful for that aspect of my experience. Leaving my family, where I was sort of a junior mother to my little siblings and where my parents and big sister took care of me, as well as leaving my hometown where being a good neighbor was an important virtue, has been hard. College is a time of independence, which can be wonderfully liberating but also isolating. I am deeply, deeply grateful that I get to develop this independence in a community that proactively combats that isolation through customs groups, hell families, small classes, and numerous other opportunities for mentorship and community.

Finally, I’m reposting a family recipe that I made today for the first time. It was a big legacy to live up to, but it felt like an important rite of passage:

being a good little housewife, I guess

Wendy’s Basic Roll Dough

4 c. very warm water
3 T. yeast
1 T. salt
1/2 c. sugar
1 c. melted butter
4 eggs
1 c. powdered milk
12-14 c. flour

add: water, salt, sugar, and butter in mixer.  add three cups of flour, yeast, eggs, and powdered milk.  add three more cups of flour, scrap around sides and mix well.  add the remaining flour, being careful not to add too much flour.  the dough should be very sticky.  oil a large bowl and let the dough rise in the bowl ’til double.  divide into four portions and roll into a rectangle on OILED, not floured, counter.  cut with a pizza cutter into triangles.  roll from the widest part up to the tip for crescent rolls.  place rolls on greased roll pan, cover and let rise until doubled.  

bake at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes or just until golden brown.

Brynterviews: My Heller Lillie

Probably my favorite thing about Hell Week was the opportunity to become part of a Hell Family. I loved being able to straightforwardly ask someone I looked up to become a part of my life, and that that relationship came with a built-in kinship structure. Lillie is a senior political science major and sociology minor. She and I sat down for a little interview about Bryn Mawr and Hell Week.

Me and Lillie during trials.

Ingrid Asplund: How did you come to be a Bryn Mawr student?

Lillie C: I wanted to go to school in the city so I was looking at schools in the city, and my family wanted me to look at Bryn Mawr and Haverford because they’re Quaker. I wanted to go to school where people were serious about doing work, because that’s what motivated me in high school, so Bryn Mawr was my top choice.

IA: What is something you love about Bryn Mawr?

LC: Right now, I like my dean and more generally that at Bryn Mawr people care about your learning and are not just trying to put you through school. I have Carpal Tunnel right now and I feel like my dean and professors have been very understanding of that.

IA: What would you change about Bryn Mawr?

LC: I think the social life at Bryn Mawr needs to change, and I think group housing could fix that. It would be easier for some people to socialize that way.

IA: As a senior, what do you think Bryn Mawr has given you that you will take into post-graduate life.

LC: Bryn Mawr has made me a better writer.

IA: What was your favorite thing you had to do during Hell Week?

LC: Putting up goofy posters, because I got to bond with my Hell sister and it felt fun and harmless.

IA: What was it like helling multiple people?

LC: It took more prep than I realized. Making a schedule is hard. But it was good to get to know other people and co-helling got me in touch with other Hell families which was great.

IA: Tell me about what it was like to transition from Hell Week freshman year to Hell Week as an upperclasswoman.

LC: It was more fun to be a heller, definitely, because you know what is going on. Being a grand-heller is easier but you’re not as involved.

The time right after Hell Week is the best your first week. Before Hell Week I was a little bit embarrassed to carry my red tote bag that signified my class year around but after Hell Week I felt proud to be a freshman because everyone had communicated how much they love us.

IA: What was something unexpected about Hell Week?

LC: I’m pretty sensitive to how other people are feeling, and I always want to fix hard situations for other people, especially when I’m in a position where I feel like I have responsibility for them. It was hard when you were so sad when Hell Week was over because I wanted to make sure everyone was having a great time.

IA: Is there anything you wish you had done differently when you were being helled?

LC: Do more at the beginning—go all out in the beginning, get some rest on the weekend. I didn’t get that Hell Week was all about loving freshmen.

IA: Any final words?

LC: I love traditions. They’re part of why I came to Bryn Mawr.

Dali Parton

Happy Halloween on Wednesday, everyone! Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday, mostly because I love getting dressed so any event centered around putting together an elaborate outfit is an event I love. I also love all the millions of options on Halloween. You can, as my sister did, simply part your hair on the other side and go as das Unheimliche, or you can be as elaborate as this guy. I took something of a middle road and combined all my favorite things: puns, art history, country queens, and fake facial hair. I was Dali Parton!

My two influences, of course, were this lady and this gentleman.

Now for pictures!

The dress and wig took inspiration from Dolly’s wardrobe and her love of pink:

(sadly I didn’t have any lasers or a bedazzled cowboy hat)

But also with lots of inspiration from Dali, especially his most famous painting, The Persistence of Memory (or, since we’re Dollifying it, The Persistence of Mammary?)

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931Inspiration taken from this painting include a melting clock I crafted from felt:

A party of ants made of sequins (because, you know, Dolly) marching up my leg:

And some eyelashes, though I couldn’t figure out a way to incorporate a pile of skin (is that what that is? I don’t know. Surrealism, man.)

And, of course, one of Dali’s most iconic signifiers was his mustache, which he sometimes decorated with flowers:

via

But of course mine needed to be pink, and because it was artificial I wasn’t able to cultivate the same gravity-defying effect Dali’s mustache was so well-known for:

And finally, because right after my Halloween party I went right to the media lab to work on formatting the college news and some wonderful friends came to visit me even though it was late on a Saturday night:

Me, Kelly, Edie Sedgwick, and a historical getup via the 1990s.

Post-Fall Break Special: Advice for fellow vagabonds

This fall break, I went to New York, came back to Bryn Mawr for a few days, then spent the last half of the week in Boston! All good times, but I spent overall about 18 hours on a Megabus last week. I love bus systems like Megabus and Bolt Bus because they are so cheap, though they have few other redeeming qualities. The seats are medium comfortable and I have boarded plenty of buses that were up to an hour later than scheduled. However, they’re generally pretty clean and seem safe (if a little lurchy) and attract a diverse crowd that is pretty fun for people watching (a lot of college students, but lots of other people from different walks of life. My favorite are families with teenagers and parents who are middle-aged business people because everyone involved clearly feels like they are 100% too good to be sitting on their bag and waiting for a bus). In my long years as a bus traveler, I have found some behaviors make the process easier, including:

1: Get a huge scarf that you don’t mind putting on the ground and wear it. A huge scarf is highly portable and has one thousand uses. On my journey back from New York, I used my scarf to sit on when the bus was late, draped it over my shoulders when the bus got chilly, and used it alternatively as a blanket and a pillow. For extreme situations, a large scarf also makes a great tent.

2: Don’t count on the internet. They claim to have free wi-fi and outlets, but those things work around 35% of the time. It’s not terrible to be unplugged for a few hours, but it is terrible to have an assignment you’d like to email to a professor sitting uselessly on your computer while you wonder if you know anyone who would be willing to take a dictation of your paper over the phone  and turn it in for you. If you are thinking of using a laptop on a bus, be sure to charge it beforehand unless you want to spend a portion of your journey crawling among the legs of your fellow travelers looking for an outlet that works.

3: Find an advocate at every checkpoint. This is important for safety and for giving you the upper hand when your fate is to be determined by the mercy of strangers (or lack thereof!) I get lost a lot, and one of my (many) coping mechanisms is to make sure at least someone took note of me and got invested in my safety at every stopping point in my journey. Find someone who you think looks trustworthy and responsible and strike up a conversation with them– best case scenario, they watch your bags while you find a bathroom, worst case scenario, when your party asks, “Has anyone seen a short 20-year-old with brown hair? She seems to have wandered off.” Someone will be able to say, “She went that direction.”

Bee Yourself

One thing you’ll learn about me quickly is that I love bees. Bees are wonderful, magical creatures. The structure of their hives has a certain beauty and order, they are the backbone of our agricultural system, and they inspire great poetry. For these reasons and many others, I was excited to learn that Bryn Mawr had a beekeeping club when I first arrived as a frosh. I joined as soon as I found out about it and am now the president of the Beekeeping Club. We have a few hives that are about a ten minute stroll from campus at a wonderful farm. I’m thrilled to start up this season of beekeeping, here’s a photo of me as well as our secretary and web mistress, as well as the posters we made, at Fall Frolic:

When I visited DC last weekend, along with seeing some wonderful art I also got a chance to visit the White House beehives. Did y’all know about these? In association with the White House vegetable garden, there is a colony of honeybees! I like to imagine Mr. and Ms. Obama putting fresh honey into the coffee they drink every morning while gazing into each others’ beautiful eyes. Here’s a photo of the White House hives, courtesy of my friend Maggie:

Awesome!