UPCOMING EVENTS IN NOVEMBER
Hike: Pulgas Ridge Open Space Preserve
Saturday, November 13, 2021
8:30 AM - 1:00 PM

We’re meeting at Pulgas Ridge off 280 for an intermediate hike. This approximately 3.6 mile loop near Redwood City features beautiful wild flowers and is rated as moderate. Parking is available. Get more details and directions at https://www.openspace.org/preserves/pulgas-ridge. Pack a lunch or bring a few snacks.

Members will receive a proactive evite with details.
All local Smith alums and their family members are welcome to join the fun.
Tea Date with a Smithie!
Sign-ups available through November 15, 2021

This is a new event format where you can go on a "blind date" with another Peninsula Bay Area Smithie! Click here to sign up before November 15. After you've signed up for a tea date via the Google form, every month you will receive the contact details for your tea date. The two if you agree upon a day and time that works for your tea date, and then meet up and have a wonderful time getting to know each other! You can even keep it anonymous until you meet up -- it’s all up to you!

Please be sure to schedule your tea date for that month - as you will receive a new tea date partner next month. If you want to be extra helpful to the organizers, send us a photo or a note. We'd love to know how the meetup went and new content for our website and newsletter!

On the fence? Here's a review from a Smithie who went on a tea date in October:
"On Saturday my Smithie Tea Date came over for a garden tea date at my house. We had a grand time sipping tea and eating cookies. We sipped a vanilla french tea and a rooibos from polka dotted teapots and got to know each other. We chatted by a warm fire about everything from world religion, to love stories, to parenting, and applied math. So fun!"
Care Package Assembly (a micro-volunteer event)
Sunday, November 21, 2021
4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Steve Carli Park, 1045 Los Padres Boulevard, Santa Clara, CA, 95050 (map)

To support our Peninsula Bay Area Smith students during their finals on campus, we will be sending metal pencil tins with a highlighter, pencil, pencil sharpener along with a typed calligraphy note reading "Smithies are so sharp!".

We need a little help in assembling the care packages, and is is a great opportunity just to get together and hang out. This “micro-volunteer event” will last around one hour, and not more than 1.5 hours maximum.
STAY APPRISED OF MORE UPCOMING EVENTS
Follow us on social media to stay up to date on our virtual and in-person gatherings.

SUGGEST A GROUP EVENT
As opportunities to gather in person emerge, we're always looking for new ways to meet up and connect. If you have great ideas for group events, there's a new way to make those suggestions: Go to our website under the Events tab, or just click here, and you will be presented with a Google form to guide you through your event suggestion. Please complete the form, including as much information as you can. After you submit the form, someone from the club's events team will contact you.
PENINSULA BOOK CLUB
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If you are interested in attending our meetings or getting on the mailing list, please contact the Book Club Coordinator Sally Smith '64 via email or by filling out the form on our website at https://www.peninsulasmithclubca.org/book-club.

The book club meets at 7:00 p.m., generally on the third Wednesday of each month.
OCTOBER 2021
A group of seven met on Wednesday, October 20, to discuss Adrienne Miller’s memoir “In the World of Men.” The title refers to her appointment, at age 25, to be the literary editor of Esquire magazine in 1997; about half of the book—to most of us, the less interesting half—describes her experiences negotiating this male-dominated environment, where she endured the varied levels of sexism that most women are familiar with. The remaining half of the book is about her intense, intimate, but destructive, relationship with the fabled David Foster Wallace, a flawed (to put it mildly) genius. We were impressed with Miller’s precocious self-confidence, knowledge, and accomplishments, and to some extent her writing, but felt the book was uneven and would have benefitted from more rigorous editing.
 
UPCOMING IN NOVEMBER 2021
Wednesday, November 17: “The Optimist’s Daughter” by Eudora Welty. It’s available at Kepler’s and can also be ordered online at keplers.com. Remember that we get a discount at Kepler's. 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!

Following our tradition there will be no book club meeting in December, and our book in January will be a classic (TBD).
A MOUNTAIN DAY CELEBRATORY HIKE
On Sunday, October 9th we gathered to celebrate Mountain Day with an easy out-and-back hike on the Schilling Lake Trail located above the town of Woodside in the Thornewood Preserve. And extra special thanks to Donna Dong ‘13 (and her husband Will) and Indira Deonandan ‘08 for providing delicious sandwiches and drinks after our stroll through the woods. We had so much fun that we're planning another hike in November, but this one will be a bit more strenuous and Donna will definitely need different shoes. See details above and on our website at https://www.peninsulasmithclubca.org/upcoming-events/hike.
Celebrating Mountain Day 2021 at the Schilling Lake Trail.
EVENT OPPORTUNITIES FROM SMITH JUST FOR YOU
Smith is offering lots of online events for alums this month, including special webinars designed just for us. Check below for details on what’s coming up.
November 9, 2021
10:00 AM California, 1:00 PM Northampton

Presented by Jessica Bacal, author of The Rejection that Changed My Life and director of Smith’s reflective and integrative practices and of the Narratives Project
 
Rejections don’t go on your resume, but they’re part of every successful career. Join us for an empowering and empathic conversation with author Jessica Bacal and three alums—Ally Einbinder ’10, Ileana Jimenez ’97 and Chelsea Sunday Kline ’07 (all featured in Bacal’s book)—who will discuss how they coped with rejection and used it as a catalyst for professional growth. Co-sponsored with the Smith College Business Network.
November 11, 2021
4:00 PM California, 7:00 PM Northampton

Presented by Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College

Join Chet'la Sebree for a discussion of technique. Sebree’s Field Study is a genre-defying poetry collection that employs tweets, quotations from Black visionaries and other prose fragments.
November 12, 2021
2:00 PM California, 5:00 PM Northampton

Presented by Kate Sonders Solomon ’00, cooking instructor

Join Solomon for another fun cooking class, with a recipe that uses stuffing as the basis for delicious croquettes. We’ll send the vegetarian, nut-free ingredients list so that you can cook along during the instruction, and end your Friday with fabulous food and conversation. Family and friends are welcome.
November 16, 2021
4:00 PM California, 7:00 PM Northampton

Presented by Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College

Hear from two poets who use multimedia and formal innovations in their poetry. Nguyen’s debut collection, Ghost Of, was a finalist for the National Book Award and L.A. Times Book Prize. Stone is the author of four books, including a collection of poetry comics. 
BIG NEWS FROM SMITH:

Smith will eliminate loans from its undergraduate
financial aid packages and replace them with with institutional grants.
We hope you have had the chance to read President McCartney's announcement about an exciting new financial aid initiative launching in the fall of 2022. Smith will eliminate loans from its undergraduate financial aid packages and replace them with institutional grants.
Incoming low-income students will receive one-time "start-up grants" of $1,000 to help students with expenses associated with the beginning of their college experience. 

We hope you had the chance to read Smith College President McCartney's announcement about the new financial aid initiative launching in the fall of 2022.

  • Smith will eliminate loans from its undergraduate financial aid packages and replace them with with institutional grants.
  • Incoming low-income students will receive one-time start-up grants of $1,000 to help with the expenses associated with beginning a college experience.

This financial investment reaffirms the college's commitment to making a Smith education available to all qualified students regardless of family resources. For admission officers (and for this Club, as a group of people who represent Smith to prospective students) this is great news to share.

Smith tells us that the College will continue to meet 100% of every student's demonstrated need for all four years of college and is one of only a handful of liberal arts colleges to eliminate loans from financial aid packages for all students.

You may find this FAQ page helpful as you engage with prospective students.