|
Dear ,
In honor of Pride Month, we have a quote from a fellow Smithie to share --
"There will not be a magic day when we wake up and it's now okay to express ourselves publicly. We make that day by doing things publicly until it's simply the way things are."
Summer Tea!
Join us on Sunday, June 23rd from 2-4 PM for a classic Smithie tea time at the home of Sara Biyabani '84 in Saratoga! Gather with other local alums, current students, and incoming students to kick off the summer and get to know one another. It's a great chance to see old friends, get to know new and current students, and welcome the class of 2019 to our alum group!
Non-members who are interested in attending should RSVP to
[email protected]
. Members should RSVP to the Evite. Hope to see you there!
Smithies from the Peninsula Club and afar traveled to gather on campus for commencement and reunions this past month. Seniors celebrated and alums reconnected as the sweet sounds of a cappella floated through the air and the campus twinkled with lanterns.
|
|
| Gathering at the Ivy Day Parade |
|
|
|
|
| Marching in the parade and looking snazzy in red hats |
|
Showing off those classic blue gym suits in the parade
|
We met on May 15th to discuss "Warlight" by Michael Ondaatje. We all enjoyed this novel with its beautiful, evocative language and Dickensian characters. Its circling narrative is hard to follow and the author frustrates a reader by keeping some things as murky as the title suggests (what exactly did happen to the dad?), but we found much to discuss in the relationships, and enjoyed learning about smuggling greyhounds, the canals of London, and roof climbing.
August 21st: Movie Night! A potluck dinner starting at 5:30 PM, followed by the film Fried Green Tomatoes, based on the novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café by Fannie Flagg. The NYTimes said, "The story centers on a café in the railroad town of Whistle Stop, Ala....the core of the story is the unusual love affair" between two main female characters. It has "scores of tossed-off little hilarities" plus recipes.
September 18th: The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert. Selected by the NYTimes Book Review as one of the 10 best books of 2014. The Times review of the book says, "
In lucid prose, she examines the role of man-made climate change in causing what biologists call the sixth mass extinction - the current spasm of plant and animal loss that threatens to eliminate 20 to 50 percent of all living species on earth within this century."
October 16th: The Overstory by Richard Powers. This novel features nine central characters, each in his/her own way coming to understand that the destruction of a huge percentage of the world's forests represents "the greatest existential crisis human civilization faces: the destruction of the natural conditions necessary for our own survival." (The Atlantic)
If you're interested in joining the book club, please contact
Sally Smith '64 for more information.
Feature Article
Featuring Martha Tolles '43!
by Sally W. Smith '64
Martha Tolles '43 recently published
Love and Sabotage
, a novel set in World War II (Speaking Volumes press). Although she lives in southern California, Martha has lived on the Peninsula off and on and continues to be a dues-paying member of the Smith Club of the Peninsula (thanks, Martha!).
|
|
Author Martha Tolles '43 stands with her latest book in her home in Palo Alto home on February 21st 2019. Photo by Veronica Weber from the
Palo Alto Daily from their article. Martha is sporting a Smith scarf in the photo above.
|
Martha started writing when, as the mother of six children, she had back surgery that required a period of bed rest. Bored, she tried writing children's stories, and was able to sell them to popular children's magazines. Books followed, starting with Too Many Boys (inspired by her daughter, who had five brothers). They were very successful -more than 2 million copies were sold - and some are being reissued as e-books. Love and Sabotage is her first adult book. The story parallels her own life, with a Smithie as protagonist.
I asked Martha how Smith influenced her writing. She said, "I majored in English and I also took all the writing classes that were offered. Writing is like other skills ... it takes practice, so surely all those courses plus writing for the [Smith] newspaper for at least three years helped with future writing. I remember a course in essay writing and guess what, years after that I did write and sell some essays! So perhaps that long-ago course helped me! I always thought working on the paper must have helped me land that reporter's job on the Port Chester Daily Item, right out of Smith, even though it was during the war years. So I would say Smith furthered my career a lot!"
In regard to the new book, she said, "I think I wrote about a Smithie because I wanted to show how educated girls of that type could now get what were once men's jobs. The changing role of women was quite fascinating and dramatic. Her housemate, Grace, also a Smithie and slightly older, was maybe modeled after Betty Friedan in my unconscious mind. Betty was the editor of Scan [the Smith newspaper] when I was there and much admired."
She added,
"I feel I've always been involved with Smith one way or the other. I was thrilled to have Smith accept my papers for the library collection and now it is even digitized and available on the internet."
In an interesting side note, the book club was reading Code Girls at the time I was corresponding with Martha about this article. The book is about the women who worked during World War II to break the German and Japanese military codes. Many codebreakers were recruited from the Seven Sisters and, starting in 1942, there was a training program at Smith. I asked Martha if she remembered this program. In response, she said that she was chosen to participate in it! She said, "Our group of Waves-to-be met in a room and practiced working on scrambled sentences which had to be unscrambled. Back at my room I had to practice more, then be sure to tear up the work sheets before throwing them away. I was thrilled to be asked and astounded at the large salary I would receive, and I would be helping the war effort." However, she was planning to marry and to go with her husband as he trained to be a fighter pilot, so she dropped out of the program. "So I passed up the snazzy uniform and chance to be stationed in Washington."
Stay tuned for more Smithie events and news next month! If anyone is interested in volunteering with the club, please feel free to reach out to
[email protected]! Thanks!
Samantha Li '09
Newsletter Editor
|
