The Class of ’67 is pleased to announce that we now have a class Web site, available through the Bryn Mawr College site. (Go to http://www.brynmawr.edu and click Alumnae/i > Classes > 1967). Class Web Mistress Susan Ames (sames@astro.uni-bonn.de) has designed a site that is easy to use. Susan welcomes comments and pictures. The site is one of the first developments to celebrate our 40th Reunion in 2007.

In addition to creating our Web site, Susan traveled (in April) to the Open University at Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, for the annual British National Astronomy meeting. June found her at Padova University for a conference on supernovae, near where Galileo observed the last supernova visible to the naked eye exactly 400 years ago! A month later, she visited the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris for a week-long colloquium on cosmology.

Class President, Penny Milbouer, who also had a hand in the Web site’s creation, adopted an Australian Blue Heeler in 2003 and a new kitten last May. “Hank is a brilliant canine, we think, and Truffles is certifiably cute.”

The “Challenging Women” brochure that arrived this spring identified some remarkable members of “the remarkable Class of 1967”—Beverly Lange, Alma Lee Carpenter, and an anonymous one of you—whose combined gifts to the College last year totaled $872,500. Wow!

Barbara Feinsilber Kanegsberg recently established a non-profit organization, Surface Quality Resource Center, whose charter involves education and outreach both to industry and to communities impacted by industrial activities. SQRC develops practical, environmentally-preferred processes and welcomes ideas for worthwhile projects and programs. Barbara and her husband, Ed, have two children: David is a photographer and a Rhode Island School of Design graduate; Deborah has an MSW from Smith and is studying to be a birth doula.

Jeanne Lance and husband David Fleming spent part of last July on the East Coast. Jeanne’s niece Kathleen Lance will be attending Elon University in North Carolina this fall. Jeanne and Dave had a lovely day with Anna (Hartmann) Wexler and her husband Joe Wexler on Martha’s Vineyard. Anna and Joe’s son Jonah is a senior at Brookline (Mass.) High School, where he plays basketball and saxophone. Jeanne and Dave also had dinner with Kathy Sborovy Janowitz and husband Jim Janowitz (Haverford ’67) and Penny Small in New York City. All seem well, though the aches and pains of growing older preoccupy them more these days. Jeanne is now working four days a week at UC Santa Cruz, due to state budget cuts. She loves the extra day off—but has yet to adjust her spending accordingly!

Barbara Johnston just read the report “Reinventing Aging: Baby Boomers and Civic Engagement,” published by the Harvard School of Public Health-MetLife Foundation Initiative on Retirement and Civic Engagement, and rates it excellent. A quotation from a summary of the report’s highlights provides food for thought: Compared to their parents’ generation, the so-called “Greatest Generation”, boomers have done less by every measure of civic engagement, including rates of voting and joining community groups.

Here’s news from Ronnie Scharfman to counter that finding. The world feels very precarious. We are rejoicing and tearing up as we help plan the wedding of our first son, Ethan, a playwright, to Rachel Axler, another playwright, on Labor Day week-end. Wasn’t I myself just at Bryn Mawr yesterday? How can I have a son getting married already? Life’s time is indeed flying. Besides the comfort and joy of family and friends (many from Bryn Mawr), I have found deeply satisfying moments in exploring personal, rather than academic writing. (I’ve been teaching for 25 years and no longer feel any urgency about my “career.”) Some of the writing is spiritual—“contemporary midrash”—telling stories to fill the gaps in biblical narrative that intrigue me, in a group with a wonderful feminist poet from Rutgers, Alicia Ostriker. It is wildly creative, and so much fun! The warmth and support of community is a meaningful by-product.
I would be a happy woman if the world were not so terrifying, if I were sure the current administration, its cynicism, its injustices, its dangerous lies, would be toppled in November. I know that would not solve the world’s horrors, but it would be a start. I work in my small ways to support Kerry, to imagine and encourage understanding and a peaceful solution to the violence of the Middle-East conflict. I recently discovered that Paula Pace (BMC ’64) is the mediator for a Dialogue Project group that meets in Manhattan. I’m a participant in the group in Riverdale. Jews and Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims meet to listen, compassionately, reflectively, to each other’s side. We can’t move any mountains, but it is very profound, and it keeps a tiny flame of hope alive.

Taffy Brecht Everts
’67 Class Editor