Wellesley college campuses still closed to visitors for now

March 25, 2021 by Deborah Brown 2 Comments

It’s been over a year since Babson College, Wellesley College, and MassBay have closed their campuses to all but students and employees of the schools due to the pandemic, and there is no sign of the ban being lifted anytime soon. Perhaps thinking back to last March, when cars lined up along routes 16 and 135 and unloaded piles of people who flocked to the Wellesley College campus, a rep contacted us with this message: “We are trying to get the word out to folks that the Wellesley campus is still closed to the public right now due to the pandemic—that includes folks walking to campus and then walking on campus, even outside. We know with the lovely spring weather and the state opening up some regulations that folks are very eager to get out, but this policy hasn’t changed and we are really hoping that folks can respect this for the time being.”

Lake Waban boardwalk, Wellesley, Summer 2016 — Lake Waban boardwalk, 2016. The popular walking path is closed off to those outside the Wellesley College community due to the pandemic.

This Wellesley College closure includes the 2.5 mile walking path around Lake Waban, a very special spot where Wellesley residents are itching to return. The entire lake is surrounded by private property, some owned by Wellesley College, some by the Hunnewell family.

We checked in with Babson and MassBay representatives, who echoed the plan to proceed with a cautious approach. MassBay, which this year is celebrating its 60th anniversary (albeit quietly), is delivering most of its learning online, with very limited academic activities taking place on its Wellesley campus. Babson, too, is waiting to welcome neighbors back to enjoy campus when it is “safe to do so.”

No word yet on when this all might change. Policies are likely to be revisited as vaccination rates rise and the pandemic slows down.

Wellesley College presents Grammy-nominated artist JP Saxe

March 15, 2021 by admin Leave a Comment

Wellesley College, JP Saxe Join Wellesley College on Thur., March 18 at 8:30pm for an exclusive concert followed by a Q&A with Grammy nominated artist JP Saxe. All proceeds raised via this Zoom event will go towards UNICEF’s Sustainable Development Goals to fight gender inequality. JP Saxe is a Canadian artist best known for his hit song, “If The World Was Ending,” featuring Julia Michaels. He is currently working on a new album, and has a recently released single with Maren Morris titled, “Line by Line.”

DATE: March 18, 2021

TIME: 8:30pm

Tickets are $10. REGISTER HERE.

Virtual Authors on Stage event set for Dec. 8

December 1, 2020 by admin Leave a Comment

The annual Wellesley College Alumnae of Boston/Authors on Stage event, which highlights the works of current authors, goes virtual this year via Zoom on Dec. 8 from 10:30-11:30am.

The event is free of charge, but reservations are required.

For questions: [email protected] or (781) 489-5339

Featured authors and books:

Maggie Doherty (The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s)

Five of the first fellowship recipients at the newly-founded Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study—poets Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin, painter Barbara Swan, sculptor Marianna Pineda, and writer Tillie Olsen—called themselves “the Equivalents” and went on to shape the course of feminism. Maggie Doherty is a literary scholar and historian based at Harvard.

Helen Fremont (The Escape Artist)

This memoir begins with the author discovering that her father has disinherited her. The Escape Artist is the story of a family inextricably bound through secrets and loss, and the profound effects of the Holocaust. Helen Fremont, a Wellesley graduate, writes fiction and non-fiction, and is a public defender in Boston.

Emily Nemens (The Cactus League: A Novel)

This debut novel is a character-driven odyssey through the world of baseball. Jason Goodyear – an outfielder enduring the hot Arizona desert during spring training – is handsome and famous, but nonetheless coming apart at the seams. Emily Nemens
is editor of The Paris Review.

My giant Wellesley regret: Never picnicking high above Paintshop Pond

September 24, 2020 by Bob Brown 7 Comments

I’ve run by the spot dozens, maybe hundreds, of times over the years along the Boston Marathon course in Wellesley and have often thought to myself: I really should picnic there some time.

Not that I picnic often. But when I do, I like it to be a little different.

And different this would have been, overlooking the once notoriously contaminated Paintshop Pond, which sits between Lake Waban and Morses Pond just south of Rte. 135.

Someone plopped a picnic table atop the dam some years ago that would put you at a safe distance from any lingering junk swirling around the pond. An excellent story map about the pond from Jessica Ostfeld, Wellesley College ’20, refers to “a lovely picnic spot up at the northern end of the Pond” that I assume refers to this most distinct and carefree piece of patio furniture. A few years back we included the table in a roundup of top Wellesley picnic spots, alongside those at Town Hall and various other Wellesley public spaces.

But alas, the Paintshop Pond table is no longer there. New wooden stairs are, along with a shiny new “No trespassing” sign that warns all to steer clear.

As if losing another Rte. 135 running route landmark, “Coney” the sidewalk Catalpa tree, wasn’t a big enough blow.

wellesley paintshop pond picnic table — Picnic table overlooking Paintshop Pond near Wellesley College campus (photo from 2015).

Getting to the bottom of this

I’ll confess that my first thought when I saw the picnic table was gone was that Wellesley College’s fun police had confiscated it and put up the sign.

But apologies to that crew. It turns out this is actually Wellesley Department of Public Works/Water Department land.

“The Park & Tree Division recently installed those steps to make access to the dam a bit safer for our folks that need to get down there for inspections,” says Wellesley DPW Director Dave Cohen.

The Wellesley DPW, however, isn’t taking credit for the picnic table’s demise.

Origin story

Legend has it, according to Cohen (who can’t confirm this), is that “the table was seen floating by and was plucked out of the water and enjoyed a nice stay on the ledge.”

Such a dramatic rescue story only adds to the mystique of this secluded spot.

Being the romantic fool that I am, I assumed the table would stay there forever. It’s not like the area was never used. I’d seen others who had discovered the somewhat secret waterfront location. How I now regret that I’d never put into action my dream of one day breaking out my special picnic backpack—a weirdly brilliant giveaway from a former employer—that I’d been holding on to for just the right moment.

And now, like so many dreamers before me, I must face the bitter disappointment that my picnic has been rained on.

As it turns out, the water giveth and the water taketh away.

According to Cohen, someone apparently pushed the table back into the drink recently, “probably out of COVID boredom.”

His team first removed it from the water, and then banished the table from the area rather than have to deal with future vandalism or safety issues on the ledge.

Meanwhile, I eagerly await the possible reopening of the Wellesley DPW Recycling & Disposal Facility give-and-take area. Might the picnic table turn up there?

Probably not. But I think my picnic backpack just might.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s 1998 Wellesley College speech: ‘The Supreme Court: A Place for Women’

September 19, 2020 by Bob Brown Leave a Comment

The late Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg delivered the annual Wilson Lecture at Wellesley College in 1998, and titled it “The Supreme Court: A Place for Women.” That was five years after President Bill Clinton appointed her to the court.

WILSON LECTURE“The Supreme Court: A Place for Women”Delivered by
The Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Associate Justice
The Supreme Court of the United Statesat
Wellesley College
November 13, 1998Two frontrunners are responsible for my visit this evening: Diana Chapman Walsh, Wellesley’s President, highly regarded in academic, medical and management circles, and celebrated, too, in the pages of Runner’s World, and Barbara Preiskel, a dear friend whose extraordinary service on Fortune 500 boards is surpassed by just one thing – her devotion to making opportunities to aspire and achieve genuinely open to all people.

To gain an introduction to Wellesley, I watched in the company of my Court staff, a videotape called “Hillary’s Class,” a film made by a young woman I knew in her growing up years. It is a remarkable documentary of the way things were and an aid in thinking about the way things should be.

My talk tonight centers on the same themes—the way things were, are, and will be. The setting is the place I know best nowadays; the title, The Supreme Court: A Place for Women. Let me begin with a question Justice O’Connor and I are sometimes asked. Does it make any difference that you are there? Do women judges decide cases differently by virtue of being women? As a first response, I have several times quoted, as has Justice O’Connor, the words of Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Jeanne Coyne. In her experience, Justice Coyne said, “a wise old man and a wise old woman reach the same conclusion.”

And so they do. But it is also true, I am convinced, that women, like persons of different racial groups and ethnic origins, contribute to the United States judiciary what a fine jurist, the late Alvin B. Rubin of Louisiana, described as “a distinctive

[Read more…]

How to legitimately access Wellesley’s Lake Waban path during the pandemic

August 21, 2020 by Bob Brown Leave a Comment

To be clear: We’re not suggesting you should break Wellesley College’s COVID-19 rules and venture onto the campus or Lake Waban path this summer or fall. The school needs to keep its community safe.

(Whether the college can legally restrict the public from accessing Lake Waban, technically a Great Pond, is questionable.)

But if you’re desperate to wander the campus, and in particular hit the trail around Lake Waban, there is a legit way short of forking over $76K to attend the school. Yes, we’re talking about working there.

Among the gigs that the college is hiring for:

COVID-19 in perspective: Wellesley & the 1918-19 influenza pandemic

May 13, 2020 by Bob Brown 4 Comments

The new coronavirus isn’t influenza. And I’m not an historian. But in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have been inspired to dig up a series of reports from early in the 20th century to get a sense of how the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic affected Wellesley.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, “The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe pandemic in recent history.” About 675,000 people died during the pandemic from flu (based on the H1N1 virus) in the United States, including the young and old. Some 80,000 COVID-19 deaths have been reported in the U.S. so far.

Research out of Wellesley College released in March sought to find lessons from the pandemic a century ago, which hit in 3 waves, the most severe during the fall of 1918 outside of typical flu season. They found that isolation and social distancing strategies were used to contain the virus and proved effective the earlier and longer they were implemented.

Wellesley College and the influenza pandemic

Wellesley College, which was founded in 1870, itself felt the effects of the 1918 flu (Babson College, founded in 1919, dodged it.)

Like other schools at the time, Wellesley College created makeshift infirmaries on campus to isolate and treat sick students. It also banned students from getting too close to sailors returning from World War I. A Boston Globe headline from Jan. 21, 1919 read: “WELLESLEY GIRLS BARRED FROM COMING TO BOSTON,” though a Jan. 31 headline read “Wellesley College to Break Quarantine to See Show” at the Copley Theatre.

Annual reports issued by Wellesley College’s administration cited the serious impact of the influenza pandemic on its community. The 1918-1919 report documents the situation: “The year had hardly opened when the prevailing influenza became epidemic and made many demands upon the administration of the College. Immediate adjustments were necessary to provide for the care of students who could not be accommodated at Simpson Hospital. Joslin, The Elms and Lovewell were emptied of their regular students in quick succession, and converted into temporary hospitals, while Horton House, which came into the possession of the College on October first, was filled with convalescent students within twenty-four hours.”‘

Some 255 cases were reported, and sadly, a freshman from Cincinnati “was unable to withstand the attack of influenza” and passed away.