barnard grrls

i am not a good enough feminist.

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 16:07:00 -0400

Upcoming exhibition at CONCRETE UTOPIA, Brooklyn-based project space founded by Barnard Grrls Melanie Kress and Rosie DuPont.

Students outside of Hemlock Cabin, Barnard Camp (Holly House), ...

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 13:12:08 -0400

Students outside of Hemlock Cabin, Barnard Camp (Holly House), c.1948-1950. Photograph by Charlotte Portraits. Courtesy of the Barnard College Archives.

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Doris Laudre ’44 splitting wood in the snow at Barnard Camp...

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 11:35:00 -0400

Doris Laudre ’44 splitting wood in the snow at Barnard Camp (Holly House), 1942. Photograph by Westchester Photo Service. Courtesy of the Barnard College Archives.

From 1933 until around 1991, Barnard operated Holly House, a rustic retreat (er, “camp”) in Croton-on-Hudson. Originally it was a way for Barnard’s Athletic Association to offer an outdoorsy phys ed option, but it became a popular escape for citified students who wanted to roll up their sleeves and play country girl for a weekend (for a few dollars).

Camp offered a welcome return to simple, rustic life. A modest cabin furnished simply with just a meager cookstove, a few comfy sofas, and a large fireplace was the only escape from winter’s chill. The building slept 15-20 students in two bunk rooms, each heated with a small stove; braver souls could also elect to doze on a screened sleeping porch. All amenities were acquired outside and required a little elbow grease—students pumped their own water, cooked food over a fire pit, bathed in the lake or with primitive showers, and used outhouses connected only to refuse pits. Three small campsites constructed by students—“Eagle’s Nest,” “Hemlock” and “Red Oaks”—provided extra space to cook, relax, and dispose of waste.

—Abbey Ozanich ‘11, “Into the Wild: Barnard Camp”

By the ’60s, however, writes Ozanich, few students were interested in chopping wood, and camp use dwindled. Quoting the Barnard College Camp Report 1961-62, Ozanich discovers one reason: “Apparently few are interested in spending a weekend of group living with girls, especially when there are chores and some discomfort.” And, clearly must have been all that Beat poetry they were reading in coffeehouses that was compelling them to stay put in the city on the weekends.

Will they ever revive the Camp Barnard concept, what with locavorism and farmer chic being all the rage these days?

“On Drug Freakouts,” from the 1970 Barnard...

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 10:52:49 -0400

“On Drug Freakouts,” from the 1970 Barnard “reorientation” booklet, page 13. Courtesy of the Barnard College Archives.

Janna Levin ‘88, theoretical physicist. Author of A Madman...

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 16:49:07 -0400

Janna Levin ‘88, theoretical physicist. Author of A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines. Above, her appearance on The Colbert Report, August 24, 2006.

Laurie Anderson ‘69, “TV Lunch”

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 15:11:32 -0400

Laurie Anderson ‘69, “TV Lunch”

Laurie Anderson ‘69, musician, inventor of experimental...

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 15:07:24 -0400

Laurie Anderson ‘69, musician, inventor of experimental electronic instruments, “audio drag” performer. Photographed in 1978.

—Joyce Johnson ‘55, writer. Excerpt from Minor...

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 16:05:07 -0400

—Joyce Johnson ‘55, writer. Excerpt from Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir

Wine is so strange and potent a thing that it has been used in...

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 11:12:00 -0400

Wine is so strange and potent a thing that it has been used in the central ritual of religion in one place and time, and attacked by a virago with a hatchet in another. There is only one thing in the world that is capable of stirring and altering men’s minds to the same extent, and that is the coherent expression of thought. That is man’s chief miracle, unique to man. There is no ‘explanation’ whatever of the fact that I can make arbitrary sounds which will lead a total stranger to think my own thought. It is sheer magic that I should be able to hold a one-sided conversation by means of black marks on paper with an unknown person half-way across the world. Talking, broadcasting, writing, and printing are all quite literally forms of thought transference, and it is the ability and eagerness to transfer and receive the contents of the mind that is almost alone responsible for human civilization.

• • •

Type well used is invisible as type, just as the perfect talking voice is the unnoticed vehicle for the transmission of words, ideas.

—Beatrice L. Warde ‘20 (?), typographer, calligrapher, writer, historian. Excerpt from The Crystal Goblet, or Printing Should Be Invisible.

"Poem About My Rights" by June Jordan

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 15:47:00 -0400

Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear my head about this poem about why I can’t go out without changing my clothes my shoes my body posture my gender identity my age my status as a woman alone in the evening/ alone on the streets/alone not being the point/ the point being that I can’t do what I want to do with my own body because I am the wrong sex the wrong age the wrong skin and suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/ or far into the woods and I wanted to go there by myself thinking about God/or thinking about children or thinking about the world/all of it disclosed by the stars and the silence: I could not go and I could not think and I could not stay there alone as I need to be alone because I can’t do what I want to do with my own body and who in the hell set things up like this
and in France they say if the guy penetrates but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me and if after stabbing him if after screams if after begging the bastard and if even after smashing a hammer to his head if even after that if he and his buddies fuck me after that then I consented and there was no rape because finally you understand finally they fucked me over because I was wrong I was wrong again to be me being me where I was/wrong to be who I am which is exactly like South Africa penetrating into Namibia penetrating into Angola and does that mean I mean how do you know if Pretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like the proof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blackland and if after Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabwe and if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even to self-immolation of the villages and if after that we lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will they claim my consent: Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people of the wrong skin on the wrong continent and what in the hell is everybody being reasonable about and according to the Times this week back in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problem and the problem was a man named Nkrumah so they killed him and before that it was Patrice Lumumba and before that it was my father on the campus of my Ivy League school and my father afraid to walk into the cafeteria because he said he was wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong gender identity and he was paying my tuition and before that it was my father saying I was wrong saying that I should have been a boy because he wanted one/a boy and that I should have been lighter skinned and that I should have had straighter hair and that I should not be so boy crazy but instead I should just be one/a boy and before that it was my mother pleading plastic surgery for my nose and braces for my teeth and telling me to let the books loose to let them loose in other words I am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A. and the problems of South Africa and the problems of Exxon Corporation and the problems of white America in general and the problems of the teachers and the preachers and the F.B.I. and the social workers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am very familiar with the problems because the problems turn out to be me I am the history of rape I am the history of the rejection of who I am I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of myself I am the history of battery assault and limitless armies against whatever I want to do with my mind and my body and my soul and whether it’s about walking out at night or whether it’s about the love that I feel or whether it’s about the sanctity of my vagina or the sanctity of my national boundaries or the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctity of each and every desire that I know from my personal and idiosyncratic and indisputably single and singular heart I have been raped be- cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic the wrong sartorial I I have been the meaning of rape I have been the problem everyone seeks to eliminate by forced penetration with or without the evidence of slime and/ but let this be unmistakable this poem is not consent I do not consent to my mother to my father to the teachers to the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in cars I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name My name is my own my own my own and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this but I can tell you that from now on my resistance my simple and daily and nightly self-determination may very well cost you your life
—June Jordan ‘55, Poem About My Rights

Twyla Tharp ‘63, photographed by Richard Avedon

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 15:27:01 -0400

Twyla Tharp ‘63, photographed by Richard Avedon

The lovely Melissa Seley alerted me to the existence of ...

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 14:01:53 -0400

The lovely Melissa Seley alerted me to the existence of sarahlawrencegirls.tumblr.com, where I subsequently found an incredible photo of Rahm Emanuel, Sarah Lawrence ‘81, in a unitard. Apparently, he studied ballet as a kid and turned down a scholarship to the Joffrey Ballet school to attend Sarah Lawrence, no stranger to dance programs itself.

I joked to her that I’d start barnardgirls.tumblr.com if I could find a photo of Martha Stewart in a leotard.

Well, guess what Melissa found:

Martha Stewart, Chanel model circa 1960

I know Barnard and Sarah Lawrence are Sisters and all (of “Seven” fame), but it felt more Barnard to name the blog “barnardgrrls.tumblr.com” and just call it an homage to a ’90s rock movement that happened to be of particular importance when I matriculated in 1996.

Stay tuned for more Barnard Grrls of all eras, in all mediums.

And you can send submissions of your favorite Barnard Grrls to: barnardgrrls (at) gmail (dot) com—literary mentions, photos, science journal articles, tweets…