Tuesday was the first truly cold day of fall - you know when your nose and ears start to hurt just walking outside that it must be quite "brisk," as they say! But it was my day to explore my favorite haunts around campus - I was determined that the cold wasn't going to stop me (but it might have encouraged me to jump from building to building as I made my way across campus...)
One of my favorite places on campus was actually Abbey Chapel. I didn't attend services there, but it's one of those old churches that has a sense of calm to it, it was always very appealing and welcoming, particularly during the stress of finals. I actually don't think I went in there until I joined the choir my sophomore year and we had several performances - after that it held on to almost a sense of awe, the stone walls seem to perpetually echo with the rumble of the organ even when you know the building is empty. I stayed for a while in the Interfaith Sanctuary, which runs along side of the main chapel, and just sat. Didn't plan my next travel stop. Didn't write about anything. Just sat. It was exactly what I needed. (and I love that that's exactly what the space is for!)
When I started at Mt. Holyoke I kept hearing people rave about "Chef Jeff Cookies" (the title was so engrained that you never talked about them only as cookies, they were ChefJeffCookies). Different from the regular cookies that you sometimes saw on the dessert table at dinner, a ChefJeffCookie was something you bought at the coffee shop in the campus center, a massive cookie the size of your hand with a warm, gooey center that reminded you of sneaking spoonfuls of cookie dough when you were a kid helping Mom bake. I soon realized that Chef Jeff was an actual person (who knew?), much beloved by students for his cookie and general food magic. Through some kind of scandal and insult that was never fully explained to someone as out of the loop as me, he left the college and took the name of his cookies with him! Today you can still buy a very large, delicious slightly gooey-centered cookie from the coffee shop, but they are tragically titled "Cafe Gourmet Cookies". Despite that, I still bought one for lunch (I'm seeing a theme of desserts as lunches developing when I come back to South Hadley...) and enjoyed the heck out of the crisp cookie edges and the soft chocolatey center of my chocolate chunk ChefJeffCookie. ;) And took a photo of the MERT office upstairs while I was at it (the campus EMT squad, where I spent many an evening).
I had texted Doug earlier and he said he was still over in Auxiliary Services, so I went down the back steps past the language building to say hello. I met Doug at my very first crew race my freshman year. You tend to miss a lot of the details at your first race when everything is so new and overwhelming, like the name of the guy driving the bus, but after I fell in the river (!) when we were landing at the beach I soon became acquainted with the kind man who everyone assured me would be happy to take me back to the bus and let me on so that I could change into dry clothes. Lo and behold, Doug was very nice to the poor shivering novice and even let Krystal and me huddle down in the storage bay where we had access to all the food ;) As time went on I came to realize that not only was he the bus driver, he was also our biggest fan and made sure he was our driver to every event (a pretty big spirit of dedication when most of our events involved leaving campus at 6am). Ever ready with a smile, a hug, and a fascinating story about the history of Mount Holyoke or the places we were visiting, Doug was a huge part of my time at MHC, I can't even imagine it without him. When my Dad moved out to Albany and started coming to some of the races they quickly became good friends, and it was such a gift when he spoke at Dad's funeral.
Doug suggested lunch at the Yarde House across the street, so off we went. I asked how he came to be at MHC and he told me that his childhood dream was to be a Grayhound bus driver, so after working in logistics and supply for a number of tech companies around Boston he finally went and got his commercial license in Springfield. Through a co-worker who also worked part time for the MHC public safety, he got this job and worked partially as driver, partially as dispatch for Public Safety. Now that three of the area colleges have combined their campus police operations, he's happily driving full time and acting as the unofficial MHC photographer at sporting events, class field trips, and campus events like convocation. He and his wife Joanne (who is the beloved UMass "Omelete Lady") spend so much time editing photos now that they cancelled their TV service almost 2 years ago and haven't missed it.
After bidding a fond farewell to Doug, I went over to the library. I walked in to the atrium and even though I was expecting it, I was immediately in awe of the Chihuly sculpture, a gift in the name of the class of 1937. The library atrium was one of the reasons I chose this school, for the admittedly crazy reason that there was something immediately reminiscent of Harry Potter (other people said they thought the same thing, it's not just me!) I was concerned when I didn't see the class flags hanging where they used to, but then saw the signs saying they were being repaired and would be re-hung soon. The sculpture is sitting in the formerly empty Italian well - I remember wondering why there was an empty well in the middle of the atrium when I first arrived but it proved useful for filling with balloons during finals ;) I'm sad that it can't be used by students any more, but it does make a very dramatic and beautiful addition.
I went to go to my favorite place - the Cutter stacks in the basement - and found it to now be restricted access! :( I was really disappointed but got lucky when a student reshelving down there got on to the elevator and generously let me be all nostalgic and poke around. Thank you Binni! It's an entire basement full of all the old books - my first find down there was an entire shelf of old medical books. Childhood maladies of the 1800's? Yes please! When you step off the elevator you're immediately hit with the smell of old book, you just want to open one and stick your nose in it (or at least I do). The shelves are the old archival rolling ones, so you can turn the handle on one and it rolls all the rest in the line out of the way. They've got all kinds of random things down there - the Hexaglot Bible, with 6 languages printed side by side 3 columns to a page, microbiology and arabic medicine from the 40s in French, 30 volumes on the trials of war criminals, etc. I can't believe it's restricted now, hardly anyone ever went down there anyway.
I stopped in the atrium to talk to Jeanne for a while, then darted across the quad to Clapp (the science building that contains Hooker auditorium) to take photos with the megatherium. I couldn't remember where anyone's offices were but eventually stumbled my way to Gary Gillis, my Biomechanics professor and the man whose lab I worked in my senior year. It felt like such a treat to catch up with all the things he's been up to, his twins are 5 now! He's been working with the National Science Foundation reviewing grant requests for the past year, he's not teaching currently but will be next year. He said that he's still doing his research on toad landing muscle activity patterns that we were working on when I was there, which was kind of neat for me. The sugar gliders are tragically gone, his former grad student came back from overseas and took them to Texas, now the lab is the domain of all things slimy and scaly without the cranky chittering bundles of big-eyed cuteness to break up the cold-blooded critter parade.
The trunk of the copper beech
The original plans for the library involved cutting it down, but the students raised enough money to change the plans so that the building went around it and the tree was saved
The science buildings
Interfaith Sanctuary
MERT office
With Doug!
Clapp
Abbey Chapel
The library
Chihuly in the library atrium
The Reading Room has always made me think of an upside down viking ship, for some reason
The coolest, scariest little creaky elevator in the library
The rolling shelves in the Cutter stacks
That's right, you can learn about Arabic medicine from 100 years ago, in French
A page from the first archived edition of the MH News, from 1917
The story of the Megatherium
When I first saw this I didn't believe such a creature could ever exist
Part of the "dead animal hallway" in the basement of Clapp
The horse
All those cabinets are full of animals and shells and skeletons, all the way down the windowless basement hallway, just to make it a little more creepy at night
Did you know that ferns have male and female ends? One of the few things that stuck with me from Ecology - that ferns have spiral shaped sperm
Having this clearly labelled overhead is somehow not at all comforting
The garden and the greenhouse
Doug drove me up towards Kayleigh's house to save me from the winter wind ;)
Great photo with Doug! Nice haircut. I could spend hours at that basement inspecting bone specimens. It reminds me of my paleontology and physical anthropology classes when I was in college. What a wonderful campus!
ReplyDeleteHi There! This is Chef Jeff. Someone pointed out this article and I thought it could use a bit of claification: the name "Chef Jeff Cookies" was an informal name given to the cookies I created and sold at Blanchard Cafe by the awesome students at MHC. I never took any name with me when I left. Dining Services was free to use it. I created the cookies for the students and as far as I am concerned, it belongs to them. Thanks for listening!
DeleteHello! It feels a bit like being visited by a celebrity - I'm not sure what path my blog took to get to you but I'm rather impressed, I thought only a handful of friends and family members were reading to keep up with my whereabouts as I travel :) Thank you very much for clarifying - clearly this is a good example of how big rumors can grow on such a small campus! And thank you for all of the delicious cookies over the years - they're always a must-have item whenever I find myself anywhere near South Hadley.
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