Book group: Ever Since Darwin
Date: September 25, 2008
Time: 7:15 p.m.
The Bryn Mawr Club of Boston Book Group discussed Ever Since Darwin by Stephen Jay Gould.
September 25 2008 | Book group | No Comments »
Archive for September, 2008
Bryn Mawr at the Old Frog Pond Farm
Date: September 12, 2008
Location: Old Frog Pond Farm, Harvard, MA
Thirteen was the lucky number of Mawrtyrs and companions who visited the idyllic orchard property of Linda Hoffman ’78, sculptress and orchard mistress, on a clement Saturday, September 12th. Linda studied Fine Arts under Fritz Janshka where she expressed her love of the circus and pantomime. Today we saw this love of humor and the fantastical in Linda’s sculptures as she guided us around the property and in her atelier, guarded by a welded circus lion hanging from a catalpa tree.
A tall wooden clown-like sentry with sliding-barn-door feet indicates the mossy way to the Sculpture Path featuring larger metal and wood sculptures by Linda and others. We circled the pond enjoying the quiet woods on one side and the waterlily-edged pond on the other. A favorite piece was three 20-foot high gleaming bone-white fish “luminaries” leaping on struts dramatically reflected in the water. Another was a landing seabird formed of wooden pieces perched over a pretty pattern of scum in an eddy near the little spillway. Old saws are featured in several pieces such as the “saw-toothed crane.” The Sculpture Path with signs and maps will be open until Columbus Day from 1-5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
Linda has also produced books of photos of some of her wood-and-metal collages coupled with haiku-like poetry. She is also co-editor of Wild Apples a new Thoreau-inspired journal celebrating nature. Her sculptures have been exhibited at museums, gardens and parks throughout New England. In October, one of her tree harps will be installed at the Virginia Thurston Healing Garden in Harvard, a refuge and resource for people living with breast cancer.
For the seven years she has been in Harvard, Linda has lovingly restored the old orchard and farmhouse. Thanks to a meeting with a knowledgeable orchardist, she has created the only Pick-Your-Own organic orchard in Massachusetts. Her organic fruit is not cosmetically pristine, but the flavor is wonderful. “We have grown accustomed to perfect, unblemished apples,” says Linda, “but in Washington State where apples are grown in the desert, growers don’t have the same pressures found in New England orchards!” In recent years (since my childhood, in fact) I have seldom bitten into such a fine and crunchy MacIntosh, so unlike the leatherskinned pasty-fleshed supermarket fruit. How can I ever go back to those? Tonight will be an applesauce- and pie-fest. Maybe some crisp or pandowdy, too. Mmm.
Attendees were: Sharon Gershman ’00; Margaret Hoag ’86 with twins Joe and Mickey Valle; Sierra Laidman ’04; Jane Lifton ’76; Gwedolyn Miner ’92 with Claudia Miner and Jesse Looney; Cassandra Phillips-Sears ’04 and friend Daniel Bergey; Cornelia Robart ’61; Shubha Sunder ’05.
September 12 2008 | Outings | No Comments »
