CLASS NOTES September 2010

Kitty Taylor Mizuno has taught ESL in a Camden, NJ, elementary school for the past 16 years, and doesn’t plan to stop any time soon. “I am active with my Quaker meeting, especially with racial justice and equality work. Our kids live in California and Japan, so we travel to see them when we can. Peace.”

“This summer was humid and baking in New York,” reports Ryna Appleton Segal, “But I kept cool with yoga, swimming and tutoring, hoping to join the Bryn Mawr trip to Israel this winter. Daughter Emma is teaching and enjoying it.”

In April, Susan Ames flew her plane to Glasgow for the UK’s annual National Astronomy Meeting, In May, she flew to Bayonne on the Basque coast and to Lannion on the Breton coast of France. In June, Susan attended a conference on Dark Matter at the Observatory of Paris; in July she spent a week in Blois for a conference on particle physics and cosmology and then flew to Annency and on to the University of Montpellier for another Dark Matter conference. August found Susan at the European Cosmic Ray Symposium in Turku, Finland, and finally in Perigueux, France, for a weekend visit.

Terry Newirth Hirshorn is planning to retire after one final year of teaching. “Getting into the retirement mindset, I abandoned my summer research students while Paul and I spent 2.5 weeks of the summer in Europe. The driving force was an elegant formal dinner at Hampton Court celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of a fellowship Paul received at Penn, which allowed him to study at Cambridge for 3 years. We spent the rest the week in Britain visiting the good friends he made during that time. Then we joined students in the last week of an architecture program Drexel sponsors in Rome. The students were sketching buildings every day, so I tried my hand. We were exhausted from the pace of the student syllabus, but we saw and learned a lot, and had a wonderful time.”

“My life is like a kaleidoscope held in the hands of God. As God turns the end and all the pieces of colored glass tumble over one another, my job is to let go and be still while God directs, heals, and saves,” says Anne Holland Faulkner. Husband Lev is recovering from a serious illness, and Anne is “Walking on both feet using a cane. We are calling in all our chips for rides here and there. Our first day at Hawk Lane, on the 4th of July, Lev’s daughter Natalia and son Yuriy and his girlfriend Sam joined us for a cookout on the deck. Jane (my sister) and David (Lev’s buddy and sometime carpenter) swam in Morrill Pond, as did the young’uns. I sat down the steps and got wet up to my neck! Watermelon and BBQ chicken never tasted so good!”

Each week, Mary Farrell looks forward to ballet class, and on summer days, “I look forward to my nap!” She plans to retire after the next two school years, but feels changes around her. “Right now they are tearing out my beloved slate blackboard to replace it with a nasty whiteboard and a Smartboard (which I have no idea how to use). I look forward to moving to my house in the Berkshires and hope to spend time hosting and visiting old friends from Bryn Mawr and elsewhere. I’m planning to celebrate my 65th birthday with a bang-up party, complete with jazz trio, as I’ve done every 5 years since my 50th. I can’t tell you how live music takes the sting out of aging! Happy birthday to all of you.”

Liz Freedman Russell’s attitude toward work has changed dramatically since she retired on June 1. “All my life I believed it was essential to give 110% to my responsibilities, both professional and familial. My husband used to describe me as ‘driven,’and as soon as I left my job, I turned that driven-ness to a long list of home improvement and craft projects. These became my work, and I enjoyed them immensely, but now that I’ve completed them, I find myself confronting the search for new focus. I’m consulting part time, which keeps some of the gray cells going, but I’ve turned down offers of management for large projects. I recognize that I need to start paying attention to the parts of me that always took a back seat to work. Work and responsibilities to others had been the organizing principle of my life; now I’m wrestling with what will provide meaning and purpose and direction for me in this new phase. A friend who also retired in June shared this definition of retirement: when you stop living at work and start working at living. It seems to describe my situation well. My challenge is not to shy away from the wrestling.”

BMC and Haverford alums are actively involved in community theater in the wilderness of eastern West Virginia. This year’s annual production of the Pocahontas County Drama Workshop featured Emma Eisenberg, H’ford ’09, as female lead, with the technical crew consisting of Janet Ohle Ghigo on lights and Frank Ghigo, H’ford ’66, on sound. Reports Janet, “The article in the May Bulletin about AmeriCorps volunteers was interesting to us because the little house we built for Janet’s father became inexpensive housing for VISTA workers after his death in 2003. We have enjoyed introducing these young folks to the fascinating people and places in the county, and reassuring them that West Virginia residents can be the same sort of educated professionals they left in their urban homes. Even with the spare house occupied, we still have a guest room and a spare apartment available for anyone interested in a vacation in this exceptionally beautiful corner of the Alleghenies.”

Taffy
’67 Class Editor

Taffy Brecht Everts
803 Rebecca Drive
Boulder Creek, CA 95006
831-338-4899
taffy@cruzio.com