We are coming out from underneath this pandemic that has affected our lives in so many ways since mid-March 2020. At last, children ages 5 to 11 can be vaccinated and today I heard that all adults are eligible for booster shots given six months since their second vaccination. Science has wrought yet another miracle, and I hope that enough people take advantage of the vaccine so that we can approach herd immunity. It would be wonderful if the lessons learned about mRNA technology are applied to defeating cancer in our lifetime!

Betsy Lathrop Baldwin sent word of a fun Morris House reunion in September at the home of Page Palmer in Middletown, RI. Celebrating their collective 70^th birthdays were Jane Weaver Muse, Carol Ball, Betsy Lathrop Baldwin, Ann Page Palmer, Joan Gates Hawthorne, Victoria Yablonsky, Jacqueline McEnroe Hollister, and Melinda Moody Kirby.  Happy birthday everyone!

Dorothy Chansky is enjoying a year as a guest scholar at the Penn State Humanities Institute where she is completing a book about representations of dementia on the American stage of the past century.

Barbara Adams often thinks fondly of her Smith years. She thoroughly enjoyed our Fifth Reunion in 1978, and always reads our class column in the Smith Alumnae Quarterly. Will we see you at our 50^th?

Virginia McCulloch Lau is happy to announce that she and Ron are proud grandparents of Sophia, age 2, and Chase, age 8 months. They are busy with care of these youngsters 3 days a week and trying to stay in shape by hiking, swimming, and playing golf. Ginny Zooms with sisters Mary McCulloch Baker ’69 and Nancy Patton ’71 twice a month, and hopes to attend our 50^th Reunion in May, 2023.

In September, Deborah Lynch Chrisman and Carolyne Berkeley travelled from the East Coast to visit Anne Adams Kahn in Piedmont, CA to make the best of our 70^th year. They visited the DeYoung Museum and the fabulous Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, with Anne as their ever-competent hostess and tour guide. To top it off, they spent two spectacular days in Sonoma. They laughed long and hard…old friends are extraordinary!

Carolyn Arnold’s book ­Fifty First Dates After Fifty: A Memoir was published in November.

Mary Marks took time out of her last day as a 60-something to take a shift as a hospice volunteer. Her assigned patient, mother of a prominent member of the Hospice organization, told Mary she was not needed, so Mary headed to the linen closet to do some re-organizing. Shortly, the woman changed her mind and she and Mary went outside to see and feel the glories offered by October in Virginia. Changing her mind once again, the woman asked Mary to take her back inside, and wished Mary well into her seventies.

Janet Weinberg Gorski has been fortunate to enjoy lots of domestic travel in 2021, mostly by car. They were able to take a trip to Nova Scotia originally scheduled for August 2020 deferred by just 12 months. The border opened three days before their rescheduled adventure, and all went well, It was interesting to see that conflict around vaccinations and masking was minimal in Canada. Contact tracing logs are kept in every restaurant and people record their information without fuss. Janet reports no complaint about eating lobster every day and exclaimed over the scenery at Cape Breton Island and the Cabot Trail.

Allison Broadhead Saxe writes that energy is returning to New York City at last as live theater, dance and concerts draw people into public performance spaces again. She is happy to shoe her proof of vaccination and ID to enjoy live performances, visit museums, eat in restaurants, and board airplanes. An autumn trip to Florence and the Tuscan countryside was a wonderful celebration of our ability to explore foreign destinations safely.

We were finally able to hold a memorial service for my husband Jim in early October, months after his death in late April. Thankfully, health department protocols allowed a full choir in our Church, to honor his love for sacred choral music. Classmates in attendance were Sandi Ferguson McPhee, Erica Swenson Davis, Greta Solomon, Diane Okrent, and Pat Terbovich Cousey, a lovely co-mingling of Comstock and Chapin friends. Please note that, based on the lovely compassionate responses to my announcement of Jim’s death in the Fall issue of the SAQ, your classmates want to hear about your life.