2017 Cora’s Graduation and Our Home Coming

Cora’s Graduation and Our Home Coming May 18—24, 2017

A journal by Susan Hanes of a trip to Lewisburg, PA and Williamstown, MA with George Leonard from May 18-24, 2017. Photos (c) Susan Hanes.

Cover: The Clark Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA

Cora’s Graduation and Our Home Coming May 18–24, 2017 The occasion of attending Cora Climo’s graduation from Bucknell University became a nostalgic drive east, as we returned to Williamstown to see the new Sawyer Library at Williams College and crossed into Canada for a visit to Colchester, where Jake spent summers with his family.

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Thursday, May 18

to Cleveland, OH

We left Chicago at 7:40 am, avoiding the heaviest rush hour traffic as we drove out of town on the Skyway. Reaching Cleveland by 2:00, we checked into the Glidden House and went to the Cleveland Museum of Art, where we spent the afternoon enjoying the art of India, China, the Pacific Northwest, and Mesoamerica, all places that we have visited over the years that we have been together. Just before closing time, we returned to the Glidden House for Happy Hour, ordering pizza and salads from Trentina, the restaurant next door, which was conveniently delivered to us at the bar. An early night followed, as we are adjusting to the time change after our return from China, just three days ago.

Cleveland Museum of Art 2

India

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China

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Pacific Northwest

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Mesoamerica

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Friday, May 19

to Lewisburg, PA

It was good to be able to sleep a little later; our only deadline was making it to breakfast while it was still being served. By 9:30, we were on the road, heading east on I-80. On a whim, we got off at the exit to “Historic Victorian Bellefonte” to take a look.

We found a peaceful town of 6,000 that has produced five Pennsylvania governors. The town features examples of Victorian architecture as well as a natural spring, from which the town gets its name.

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Bellefonte 8

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We stopped at State College and drove through the campus of Penn State University. Founded in 1855, the school has an enrollment of more than 46,000 students. We drove past the stadium, home of Nittany Lions football, and numerous other impressive sports facilities. After a significant detour around closed campus roads, we found the well-known Berkey Creamery.

Opened in 1865 as part of the School of Food Sciences, the creamery uses approximately 4.5 million pounds of milk annually, half of which comes from a 225-cow herd at the University's Dairy Production Research Center. The creamery sells 750,000 hand-dipped ice cream cones a year. As we ate our 14.5% butterfat treats at a table in the corner, we watched the long line of ice cream lovers snaking through the store.

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It was about an hour’s drive more to Lewisburg and Bucknell University, where we will be attending the graduation of George’s oldest granddaughter, Cora Climo. As we were checking into the Hampton Inn, Cora’s mom, Gillian, arrived. At 5:00 we picked up Steve and the girls and met Hillary Leonard at Reba & Pancho’s, a Lewisburg favorite for parents to take their kids (Cora said that the price point was a bit high for the average student budget). Besides the famous French fries with green sauce, we shared traditional Mexican dishes and a couple of bottles of wine. As we drove back, Cora directed Jake around the Bucknell campus, pointing out classroom buildings, sports fields, and the places she’s called home over the past four years.

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Saturday, May 20

Lewisburg, PA

Unfortunately, we woke up to a cold and rainy morning in Lewisburg; I felt sorry for all the people who had made picnic plans on this day before graduation. We met Gillian, Hillary and the girls at Pronto Provisions for sandwiches and looked into the shops that line Market Street; Jake did his best to be a good sport. Before returning to the hotel, Jake and I drove around the campus again, as I wanted to take some pictures. People were starting to gather for receptions at the various academic departments. Tomorrow’s grads were posing for pictures with the Bison statue and other Bucknell icons. At 5:00, we met in the yard behind Cora’s apartment on 7th Street for a cookout for her soccer teammates and their families and other friends she’s made at college. The party broke up at 8:30 as the seniors gathered at the quad for a repeat of the candle-lighting ceremony they’d participated in when they were freshmen.

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Sunday, May 21

to Poughkeepsie, NY

It was an overcast, chilly morning for Bucknell’s 167th Graduation Ceremony, but at least, the rain was gone. Gillian went over early to Malesardi Quadrangle to save seats for the girls and Steve, Hillary, and Jake and me. Coincidentally, it was four years to the day since Cora’s high school graduation on May 21, 2013, when we gathered in the bleachers at Naperville North to celebrate her achievements. At Bucknell, Cora is a true student athlete, graduating with academic honors. She was a four-year starter, playing midfield on the Bucknell women’s soccer team. She scored the winning goal in the final of the Patriot League tournament and was voted MVP. The commencement speech was delivered by CNN anchor Fareed Zakaria, who emphasized that "the whole purpose of the liberal arts has been to hear people out, to listen to opposing views." He added, "I don't want you to turn your back to people. I want you to turn your face, your mind. Debate with them.

Argue with them." Zakaria, author of In Defense of a Liberal Education, has long been a proponent of this approach. He noted that particularly on college campuses, protesters are increasingly seeking to silence voices they don't agree with by mounting attacks on the freedom of speech that is so fundamental to the liberal arts, saying that such attacks "strike [him] as fundamentally illiberal, if not un-American.” In our present polarized political atmosphere, his words struck a chord.The reading of the names of the almost 900 graduates was just short of excruciating, but at 1:30, the benediction was given and the 2017 graduates marched out to make their mark on the world. After embraces were exchanged and photos taken, Jake and I got on the road, driving as far as Poughkeepsie for the night. We had dinner at Crew, a local farm to table restaurant owned by award-winning chef Thomas Kacherski.

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Malesardi Quadrangle Bucknell University

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Monday, May 22 to Williamstown, MA Leaving Poughkeepsie, we proceeded north on Route 9, following the Wine Route along the Hudson River through Duchess County, NY. We passed a number of colleges, including Vassar and Maris. In Hyde Park, we detoured through the impressive campus of the Culinary Institute of America.

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FDR Home

Vanderbilt Estate

St. James 1844 FDR’s Church

We turned off at the FDR National Historic Site and the Vanderbilt Estate, with views high over the Hudson River, before continuing on back roads to Rheinbeck.

At Hudson, we found a vibrant town with a number of high-end shops; Jake encouraged me to go into a dress shop on the corner where I found an imaginative Japanese blouse. The Taconic Highway brought us to Pittsfield; we then followed Route 2 to Williamstown.

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Millionaire’s View of the Hudson River

We drove through the Williams campus, where Jake noted a number of new building projects, including a huge addition to the science quad. We drove out to Mount Hope to see the new homes that have gone up in that area. After checking into the Williams Inn, we walked along the commercial area of Spring Street to the Williams Art Museum, dodging the rain that had been threatening all day. On the main floor of the museum, representative pieces from the permanent collection were arranged by accession number, giving the viewer the opportunity to classify art in a new way. We also saw several imaginative student exhibitions.

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Artist Unknown. View of Williams College, 1847 29

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Farley-Lamb Field 32

Hopkins Hall

Hopkins Observatory, 1838 (oldest observatory in the US)

Thompson Memorial Chapel 33

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Schapiro Hall 35

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Stetson and Sawyer Libraries 37

Later, we sat over wine at the bar at The Log, a wood-paneled building on Spring Street that serves as the Alumni House. We moved on to the Purple Pub for another round before ending up at the Blue Mango, a Thai restaurant, located a little further up Spring Street.

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Sawyer Library 40

Tuesday, May 23

to Niagara Falls, ON

The Williams Inn offered a nice breakfast buffet, of which we took full advantage. By 9:00, we were at the door of Williams’s magnificent new Sawyer Library, the research and academic hub of the campus.

Surrounded by stunning views of the Berkshire Mountains, the library features flexible, interactive work environments that incorporate the original Stetson Library, the Chapin Library of Rare Books, and the college archives. The library juxtaposes the oldest and rarest books with state-of-the-art technology and digital collections to provide students with an inspiring study environment. We explored each floor and visited the rare book collection, which had an exhibit, “Celebrating 200 Years of Geology at Williams,” sponsored by the Department of Geosciences.

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Celebrating 200 Years of Geology at Williams

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Chapin Rare Books Library 45

Across campus. we visited the Clark Museum of Art. Jake wanted to see the Clark Center, the most recent addition to multi-building art museum campus, designed by Tadao Ando in 2014. This addition increased the gallery and exhibition space by 11,000 square feet. We spent several hours at the Clark, revisiting paintings familiar to us and discovering new ones, particularly works by Constable and Martin in the newly acquired Manton Collection of British Art. We also visited their museum shop where I bought a necklace that compliments the Japanese blouse that I purchased yesterday. By 1:00, we were on the road to Troy, picking up the New York State Thruway west to Buffalo.

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We turned north, crossing the Canadian border at Niagara Falls, where we spent the night. This being pre-season, we got a room for a very reasonable rate at the Hilton, which bills itself as the closest hotel to the falls. We had dinner at The Watermark, located on the 33rd floor, directly overlooking the falls. In spite of the inevitable touches of tourist kitsch that surround them, Niagara Falls are a wonder, and we spent the evening watching as the sun set and changing colored lights illuminated the water.

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Niagara Falls

Wednesday, May 24

to Chicago

We returned to The Watermark restaurant this morning but decided against indulging in their buffet breakfast. We settled for another view of the Falls, shrouded in the morning mists. Heading west along the Queen Elizabeth Way we passed lush vineyards, encountering some of the rain that keeps them that way. We then turned south and west, driving 250 miles along small roads that took us by well-tended farmlands and massive greenhouses. At Harrow we had a late lunch (early dinner) at Dock 21 on King Street, where we both enjoyed fresh Lake Erie perch. Five miles south we stopped at Colchester, a village of 900 located on Lake Erie and founded in 1792 by loyalists fleeing the American colonies. Jake’s maternal grandfather, Ernest Brown, built a cottage on the Lake in the 1920s and Jake’s parents vacationed at the cottage, only 40 miles from Detroit, for one or two weeks in the summer until Jake was in his early teens. Jake recalls playing tennis for several years at the court of Paul Martin Sr, then foreign minister of Canada, and spending time with his son, Paul Martin Jr, subsequently the 21st Prime Minister of Canada.

The Brown cottage is now a tepid blue and partially used as a small engine repair shop. The former orchard on the property is now strewn with rusty lawnmowers.

The Martin tennis court is muddy ground boasting only a few line marker straps. We visited the cemetery on the bluff above the harbor where we found gravestones dating to 1793. We also visited the former one-room school house where Jake was enrolled for two months when he was six and the Historic Christ Church, a site on the Underground Railroad whose graveyard includes many former slaves.

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Ernest Brown’s Cottage 56

Paul Martin Tennis Court

School House 57

Colchester Cemetery

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Historic Christ Church

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Eventually, we continued west, crossing back into the United States over the Ambassador Bridge at Windsor and battled rain and traffic the final 300 miles to Chicago. We arrived home around midnight, a very full day.

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A journal by Susan Hanes of a trip to Lewisburg, PA and Williamstown, MA with George Leonard from May 21-24, 2017.

Photos (c) Susan Hanes.

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