Endless Summer and the Deadly Ebola Virus

       

Sunset at Welfleet

        Welfleet, Cape Cod is our summer refuge for at least two weeks of the year. The tradition started when my first child was born.  Last year, everyone from the family was everywhere else and it was the first time in a long time that we did not descend on the Cape for our summer break.

        Cape Cod brings back memories of long, lazy, leisurely, and stress-free days on the beach, family time cooking together, watching the sun set, taking long walks while enjoying the quaint cottage houses, visiting Uncle Tim’s Bridge, convincing myself to go for early morning runs especially on the beach, gallery-hopping, gazing at paintings to get inspirations to awake the muse in me to get on with my own, browsing the old book stores and curio shops, catching the fleas in the flea market, playing mini-golf and watching a late movie at the Welfleet drive-in, probably one of the few drive-ins left in Massachusetts.  

        Our stay in Welfleet is not complete without having ice cream at the Nice Cream Stop and of course the beaches.  The narrow neck at Welfleet enables us to visit both the ocean and the bay beaches; they have their own unique charms and character.  The ocean beach has wide beaches with the dangerously steep and high sandy hills suffering from onslaughts of continued erosion.  The ocean waves when caught right on a boogie board buoyed one for a long joyful ride towards shore.  However the water tends to be a lot icier than the bay water.  The bay beach has a fluttering of waves on a windy day, calmer and less turbulent than the ocean, and during low tides, the mud flat teaming with creatures stretches out far into the ocean.   We schlepped our way with our flip-flops which more often than not got stuck in the tenacious mud, making a sucking and slurping noise as we tried to pull them out.

At the Ocean Beach

        This year we went to the Cape at the end of June.  Most other happenings occur in July and August and so we missed Shakespeare’s at Mayo Beach.  However while as transient  visitors, the warm, bright, sunny days may very well lure us to thinking that Cape Cod summer is endless, winter is but a distant memory and a season long forgotten, but the permanent residents know better than to be deceived;  Old Man Winter will always be around the corner to take his rightful place and perhaps then he will impress on any visitor who chances to be there that there is indeed an interminable harsh cold freeze to replace the seemingly endless summer.

        But for the moment we are there, time is at a stand- still for us.  We dream of a beautiful endless summer in Cape Cod, basking in the warm glow of the sun. Best of all in the middle of the silent cool summer night, one could enjoy the Milky Way.

The Cape House

        In the middle of our stay at Cape Cod, an e-mail request came from Medical Teams International for volunteers to travel to Liberia to respond to the Ebola outbreak. I volunteered but was not sent right away. When two American healthcare workers became seriously ill with Ebola, MTI recalled the only volunteer they sent for his safety and security. There had been demonstrations outside the hospital where patients with Ebola were being treated.  The Ministry of Health of Liberia has also temporarily suspended the use of volunteers from outside Liberia.  My summer may seem endless and happy in contrast to the people affected by the virus, their nightmare continues and this horrifying and deadly virus is making their days eternally endless and dark.  

        If and when MTI begins calling for volunteers again, I will have no hesitation to respond.

Wellesley College Reunion



Corinthian Columns from Old College Hall



Paramecium Pond

The sun shone brightly on our reunion weekend at Wellesley College welcoming returning alumnae from the 5^th to the 75^th reunion years.  The campus was festive with the colors of purple, yellow, green, red, and Wellesley blue, in the forms of balloons, banners, and streamers. But even without those it was as beautiful and lovely as I remember it; lush green lawn and a rich variety of trees dotted the rolling landscape. Every corner held a breathtaking surprise, lily pad in the Paramecium Pond where ducklings and goslings swam under the protective guidance of their parents, Severance Hill with its old oak tree spreading its arms hugging the slope, the valley of rhododendrons in front of the library, Tower Court lording over the highest part of the campus with the old Corinthian columns guarding the steps leading to it, the Green Hall Tower in the academic Quad all anchored down by the expansive and peaceful Lake Waban.  The bells of Green Hall played “Simple Gifts”.  I visited my room on the fourth floor of Tower Court overlooking the lake for old time’s sake. 

Tower Court West

My Old Room

Reunion brought us together to renew our friendship and reconnect with old acquaintances.  Over 2,000 alumnae returned, seventy countries were represented, with another 1,000 guests.  Madeleine Albright of class of 1959 gave her talk on “Read My Pins” where her hundreds of pins are on display at the Davis Museum and Hillary Clinton, class of 1969, made a cameo appearance. As the President of the College, Kim Bottomly, rightly said, two-thirds of the Woman Secretaries of State were on the campus.  Stepsinging, a tradition which began at the dedication of the Houghton Memorial Chapel in 1899, brought us together to sing in the chapel for there were too many of us to fit onto the steps of the chapel.  The singing was interspersed with rousing class cheers.  It was fun to look at our pictures of college years and see how much we have changed, our youthful and expectant fresh faces at the end of college ready to face the wide wide world.





Legenda: My College Year Book Picture

  

Reunion Dinner-Our Asian Connection, American and Foreign

The highlight of our reunion was the Sunday parade when we all wore white bearing our class banner.  The parade started with the oldest reunion class of 1939, culminating in the youngest reunion class of 2009.  The four oldest attendees rode on vintage cars cheered on by the other classes lining the route.  My class color is purple and as each class passed, we cheered,

1974 Wellesley Rah!

1974 Wellesley,

Purple Passion

Is our fashion.

1974 Wellesley!

Class of 1939

My Purple Class 

When it was our turn to join in the parade we were cheered on by the younger reunion classes until we reached Alumnae Hall.  It was all great fun.

My classmates just became sexagenarians.  We have a variety of careers: teachers, financiers, lawyers, doctors, artists, researchers, scientists, mothers… Many continue to work and a few have retired and love it.  Our children are grown and are building lives of their own.  Some classmates are reveling in their grandchildren. Sadly about twenty of our classmates have passed on, one died tragically shortly after leaving college.  Some struggle with the care of aging parents or loved ones.  Our canvas which was almost blank when we left Wellesley is now filled with colors of the ups and downs of our lives, some of which were beyond our control and dictated by destiny but some were deliberately painted with our own brush strokes.  One classmate is keenly aware that she is living in a body that has an expiration date.  All of us are for that matter.  It is up to us to make all our years count and finish them well.

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.

-Jenny Joseph-

The One-Year Anniversary of the Boston Marathon Bombings

          Leading up to this one-year anniversary of the Boston Marathon Bombings, there was numerous continuous coverage on the news, reminisces of the event itself, and how the lives of the rescuers and the rescued were forever changed by it.  Boston hospitals encouraged people to leave messages on their enormous message boards in their front lobby or entrances to commemorate this tragic yet heroic day for Boston.  The blue and yellow BOSTON STRONG signs were everywhere, especially near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Boylston Street.

         The bombings touched me personally as I was one of the thousands of runners who did not complete the marathon that fateful day.  The days leading up to the anniversary, my mind was filled with thoughts of the people who have been directly affected by this event and it was difficult to escape such intrusive thoughts as the news coverage was vast and incessant.  I went to view the exhibits of the paraphernalia left by people at the makeshift memorial at Copley Square last year being displayed at the Boston Public Library with the hundreds of pairs of running shoes as the most powerful symbol of our resilience.  The exhibitors noted, “…these shoes carry three layers of meaning.  First, they are running gear, showing the wear form months of training.  Second, they are good luck charms, with many bearing pre-race decorations designed to help their owner summon the motivation to run 26.2 miles.  Finally, they are eulogies, symbolizing the complex emotions these runners felt after the bombing.”  

  

Runner Shoes

There were messages from all over the world and poems of the inevitable arrival of spring after every winter; hopes for recovery and new and exuberant life after a long hard struggle against seemingly insurmountable obstacles.  I was moved by the out-pouring of heart-felt warm wishes.

At the Finish Line

It was pouring on the day of the anniversary as though Mother Nature showed empathy for the remembrance of this day.  The wind blew fiercely as I fought against it with my umbrella walking along Boylston Street towards the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the 118^th which will take place in six days.  Many Bostonians were already lining up along the street to mark the anniversary.  

At precisely 2:49 pm, a moment of silence was observed, a silence that was shattered by the overwhelming outpouring of compassion and the display of courage and resilience of a grieving city and its people despite that tragic day.  

The 100th Anniversary of the College Hall Fire, Wellesley

College Hall

Today is the 100^th anniversary of the Great Fire that burned down the College Hall of Wellesley College which took four years to build and a mere four hours to become burned ruins.  College Hall was where many students, faculty, and staff lived, studied, worked, ate and shared their time together. But all that changed on that fateful foggy morning when the Japanese bell, gong, and crackling flames rousted sleepy residents, clad in nightgowns, kimonos and robes and some barefooted to the five-story atrium as embers and cinders rained down on them and roll calls were made.  Within ten minutes all 216 of the residents were safe and they began an orderly bucket brigade to save the treasures from the flame.  Not a soul perished.  Thanks to the tradition of the running of fire-drills in Wellesley since the 1870s and the collected calmness and presence of mind of the Wellesley girls.

Wellesley was founded in 1875 by Pauline and Henry Fowle Durant with a vision of raising women from a position of subordination through higher education to a nobler and graceful status to become “the crowned queen of the world by right of that knowledge which is power and that beauty which is truth.” By the time of the fire Wellesley was internationally known; sixty percent of its students came from outside Massachusetts.  It first international student was from Japan, Kin Kato, who spent a year at the college in 1888.  The Japanese bell which was rung during the fire was from Horinsan Rengeji or the Temple of the Lotus Flower near Tokyo and it was a comfortable symbol of her Japan home.  The news of the fire appeared on the front page of the London Times

On this anniversary, a great number of alumnae, students and faculty gathered in the Houghton Memorial Chapel to remember this occasion.  This was where the students, faculty and staff gathered after the fire to listen to President Pendleton’s inspiring speech that the students and the faculty were the college not the building. This coming from a President who in the previous evening greeted the Wellesley debate team in the atrium celebrating their victories and defeat with rival team of Mount Holyoke when she aptly said,” It is a fine thing to be enthusiastic over victory.  It is a better [thing] to learn enthusiasm from defeat.”

Despite the loss of their home, worldly possessions, irreplaceable years of academic research findings and scholarly work, Wellesley with an overwhelming outpouring of support from colleges and people all over the country rose up as a unified community with courage and resourcefulness towards a common goal: to reconstruct a new and vibrant Wellesley from the ashes and to continue the Wellesley’s legacy of staunch and heroic spirit in the belief of the strength and purpose of women’s higher education for the next generations of young Wellesley girls so they too could experience the greatness that is Wellesley, our alma mater.  We should all take this occasion to remember the loss that allowed us to show forth the true resilience of Wellesley and to celebrate its courage and conviction to continue the great experiment for higher education for women.

It makes me proud to be a Wellesley woman!

…for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:18

King James Bible