NOVEMBER 2020 | ANNUAL COOKIE EVENT AND MORE!
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Watch your inbox!
Members will receive a proactive evite to club events.
If you're not a member you can easily sign up at
https://www.peninsulasmithclubca.org/join-renew/membership.
Sunday, December 6, 2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
ANNUAL COOKIE EVENT (VIRTUAL AND REIMAGINED)
This year's annual cookie exchange is taking a different approach. While we cannot safely gather together in person, there's no reason we can't celebrate the season with camaraderie and treats virtually! This year we are going to gather via Zoom and decorate our own gingerbread houses!
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Do you need to become a member to join us? Nope!
- Do you have to be ready to decorate a gingerbread house in order to enjoy this virtual gathering? Again, nope!
BUT, if you are going to decorate a gingerbread house while we gather virtually, you have a little prep work to do before the event! Below you will find links to all kinds of resources for getting your gingerbread house together before we dial in and decorate. There are pre-baked & pre-built kits, pre-baked & build-it-yourself kits, ideas for making a gingerbread house out of graham crackers, and -- for the intrepid bakers out there -- a DIY video for building a gingerbread house from scratch (**start early**). Of course there are a lot of additional options out there, but these links are an easy way to get started. We hope to see you (virtually) at our annual cookie event!
Pre-baked, pre-built
Pre-baked, build-it-yourself
Making a gingerbread house out of graham crackers
Making a gingerbread house from scratch
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If you're thinking, Starting with a pre-made kit is way too easy and practically cheating. I want to make a gingerbread house from scratch!, well, here's a 12-minute DIY video to make a gingerbread house like your great-grandma did, and it only takes 3 DAYS. Get started. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaQ_66o75YI
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Do you have to be a member to join in the fun? Heck, no. But your membership helps us fund social, cultural, and educational programs for the 600+ alumnae living on the Peninsula and the local Smithies who are currently attending the College virtually during COVID, and recruits prospective students through college fairs, book awards, candidate parties, high school visits, and interviews. We do not receive any funding from the College and rely 100% on members’ dues and donations to fund our activities. If you want to get in on the fun without being a member, reach out to us at thepeninsulaclub@gmail.com.
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STAY APPRISED OF MORE UPCOMING EVENTS |
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Follow us on social media to stay up to date on our [currently virtual] gatherings.
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STUDENT CARE PACKAGES DELIVERED, NOVEMBER 22-29
On Sunday, November 22, Smith College Club of the Peninsula Student Care Packages Co-Coordinators Christine Hoffman '14 and Trang Le '20 recruited Alix Davie '08, Marylou Cronin '88, and Eugenia Yee '16 to help distribute this semester's student care packages. Any remaining care packages will be distributed over the Thanksgiving weekend. This semester our co-coordinators made personalized bookmarks for each student, and put together ingredients for a "cookie-in-a-jar" that the students can use to make warm cookies at home and feel the love. Other members of the club gathered in the early afternoon to hand-deliver each package all up and down the Peninsula Bay Area!
If you were not from the Peninsula Bay Area during your time at Smith, you may not know that our club makes sure that our local Smithies get care packages from "home" that make all their housemates extremely jealous, and we are not going to let a little thing like a pandemic stop us from this wonderful tradition.
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RECAP: VIRTUAL SCAVENGER HUNT, NOVEMBER 21
On Saturday, November 21, a few Smithie warriors gathered via Zoom to throw down in a highly competitive virtual scavenger hunt from our individual homes. It was clear from the beginning that these women came to win as they rearranged their laptops, desktops, and tablets to ensure the optimal placement for fast retrieval of whatever items game master Amy Gardner '92 requested. Four rounds, each containing five items, were presented. Contestants had 60 seconds to produce each item after it was announced.
After three rounds of search-seizure-and-return-to-the-camera, every contestant was in the running to claim victory, with a margin of a single point between all of them. Hearts were racing as the game master contrived a twist to the final round: each contestant would wager her accumulated points against her success in the final round, and the final five objects would have to be gathered at one time within a three-minute time limit. Some competitors were already risk-averse after earlier failures in the "can of pumpkin" or the "letter with a stamp and a postmark" challenge. Others were only slightly more confident in their wagers. No one went "all in", but the bravest (and youngest) challenger bet a record 12 of her 17 accumulated points and came out victorious! Congratulations to Allison Brand '24, a shiny new first-year at Smith who was left a little breathless and befuddled over all the excitement of her first ever Smith College Club of the Peninsula event. Allison will receive a gift card to Jamba Juice in addition to her bragging rights and moral high ground.
Marylou Cronin '88 came in second after an impressive display of yoga skills, bending down and whipping off her own shoes in the "house slipper" challenge, eking out classmate Nisha Thatte-Potter '88 by a fraction of a second in that particular challenge. Third place goes to Christine Hoffman '14 who is sure that she would have crushed all comers if there had been more challenges like "diapers" and "baby toys".
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The book club meets at 7:00 p.m., generally on the third Wednesday of each month.
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NOVEMBER 2020
Nine of us, meeting on Wednesday the 18th, found plenty to talk about in Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward. We found this suspenseful book difficult to read at times but appreciated what it shows us: four motherless siblings who are hurt but coping, resourceful, and tightly bound to one another; a different view of Hurricane Katrina, in rural Mississippi; a community in poverty that has not become degraded or defeated. We agreed with some reviewers who found the sheer quantity of metaphors and similes excessive but we admired the many times they were spot-on. The group had differing interpretations of several passages, which made for a good discussion.
Please note that traditionally we do not meet during the month of December.
UPCOMING IN JANUARY 2020
For January, we chose a combination: the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Remember that we get a discount at keplers.com, and you You can also order at bookshop.org, which supports local, independent bookstores. To join us, head over to our book club page on the website and sign up! We will send you the Zoom link proactively.
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SMITHIE SPOTLIGHT
This month our member spotlight falls on Sally Smith class of '64! Sally currently lives in San Mateo and has led the Smith College Club of the Peninsula Book Club since 2010.
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Graduation Year: 1964
House: Lawrence House
Major: Sociology
Fondest memories of Smith: Most of my memories of Smith center on my Lawrence House friends. I lived in Lawrence all four years as did most of the women from my year. We were, and remain, a very close-knit group. We have stayed in touch and, while life has moved us around the globe, we have never entirely lost touch with any member of our group. We still get together in groups of twos and threes when we can, and we make an effort to get to reunions. In 2019 at our most recent reunion, eight of us gathered for the weekend and one more joined us for the afternoon.
Studying at Smith: I followed my interests at Smith, not thinking ahead to a career or even a focused education. I majored in sociology because the classes seemed the most interesting, and also took a wide variety of other classes. I treated my time at Smith like continuing studies—any class that looked like fun, I took, including studio art, conversational French, and poetry writing.
Playing at Smith: The summer between my junior and senior years I went to Europe with a friend. In Rome, we spent a week with some Italians. One problem: they spoke no English! I bridged the gap by attempting to say French words in Italian... and it worked surprisingly well! When I returned to Smith, I audited Introduction to Italian for one semester in order to solidify the underpinnings of the language, and I continue to enjoy studying Italian.
My senior year I had a boyfriend from UMass who played the banjo. I spent a lot of time listening to him and his friends—one of whom was Taj Mahal—playing bluegrass and folk music, which became a lifelong interest.
After Smith: My senior year, in the short time between final exams and graduation, I went to New York City to interview for jobs. I had very little experience and couldn’t type the 50 words per minute that was the usual requirement for a young woman breaking into the workforce at that time. But nonetheless I landed a job as a receptionist at Woman's Day magazine. While my parents were aghast that my prized Smith degree was being employed to answer phones, I was able to leverage that entry-level job into becoming a proofreader at the magazine with 6 months. A year and a half later, I was promoted to copy editor. During those years I moved from a room at a women's residence run by a church, to sharing an apartment in Flushing with a friend from high school, to my own place in Manhattan. It wasn't big or in a fashionable area of the city, but I began to feel I was truly launched.
I spent 7 years at Woman's Day before moving to Newsweek, first as a copyeditor and later as an editorial production manager, making sure that the magazine closed on time every week. I moved to the west side of Manhattan and gained a backyard. I planted a minuscule lawn for sunning and grew tomatoes—the beginning of a lifetime of gardening that served me well later in my career.
Some skiing, camping and river-rafting vacations took me to the western United States, and I began to feel it was time for a change, much as I loved New York. I flew to Denver, rented a car, and spent 3 weeks driving through Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Washington, Oregon and California. Portland and San Francisco both seemed marvelous, but San Francisco could provide more promising job prospects, so, with no job and no specific plans, I moved there in 1981. My savings provided a small financial cushion to rely on while I figured out my future. A Newsweek contact led to a part-time contract position managing book projects at Ortho Books, a division of Ortho Chemicals. I slowly moved to full-time and then to an employee position. In addition to working in Ortho’s main areas of gardening and home improvement books, I oversaw a line of about 30 cookbooks and ran a quarterly travel magazine.
Ortho Chemicals was acquired by Monsanto, which, in its wisdom, chose to close down the books department in 1997. I freelanced at first, but when I approached Sunset magazine for work, the editor recognized my experience in the magazine’s four main areas—home improvement, cooking, gardening, and travel—and hired me as Articles Editor. I worked for the magazine for about 6 years, then transitioned to Sunset Books, managing projects similar to those at Ortho.
When Sunset closed their books division in 2008, they provided a nice severance package that included career counseling. I was found to be suited to two jobs: 1. speech therapist, and 2. teacher of English as a second language (ESL). Becoming a speech therapist seemed too major an undertaking for a woman at retirement age, but the ESL option intrigued me. I found a certification program, and in 2010 began a new career as an ESL instructor. I’ve taught classes in several schools; currently I tutor one-on-one, and I’ve had a marvelous range of students, from a Korean 5-year-old to an Iranian great-grandmother. It’s been very satisfying and, in this time of isolation, meeting virtually with students every day has both kept me occupied and given me plenty of social contact.
Hobbies and other good stuff: I've always gardened, ever since that first little plot of land back in New York. I like to do hand crafts and just finished knitting four Christmas stockings for my nephew and his family. And I love to read. I have been the Book Club Coordinator for the Smith College Club of the Peninsula since 2010. If you want to join us, please sign up on the website at https://www.peninsulasmithclubca.org/book-club. We meet every month (except December) and it's a great way to stay involved with the club. My love of books led me to the Friends of the Menlo Park Library, where I’ve been on the board for some 5 years. COVID-19 has shut us down, and I miss it terribly.
Usually I like to travel with Jim, my partner of 20 years, but the pandemic has coincided with our long-awaited permit to remodel our kitchen in San Mateo, so we’re homebound with a purpose. I look forward to both a beautiful, bigger kitchen and a chance to visit Italy again.
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