Category Archives: Aimee L.

August 18, 2011 · 4:26 pm

Historical Penn: The School of Veterinary Medicine + Laura Ingalls

Author: Aimee L.

I just realized that my last blog post was about the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, and how I have been checking out every single Edgar-Award winning book I can get my hands on (just finished The Last Child by John Hart and Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin.  Am now reading Ruth Rendell’s Tigerlily’s Orchids. Don’t spoil the ending for me if you’ve already read it. Though, truthfully, I’m halfway through the book and there doesn’t seem to be much of a mystery. No murders, no kidnappings, no intrigue–just a lot of detailed character studies of fairly unlikable people living in London. It is funny though).  So, fine, I won’t rave about Penn’s library again. Instead, I will post some feel good pictures I received from the School of Veterinary Medicine for the Homecoming Weekend guide (mark your calendars–it’s coming up on Nov. 4-6. It’s my job to remind you).

First, here are a few  vet school related photos from the archives (available through the VPD Library!! I can’t stop).

School of Veterinary Medicine and Veterinary Hospital, July 1909 (exterior, ambulance for small animals, during construction)

I love that this is an ambulance for small animals. How nice that they would just show up at your door if your kitty cat got into your butter churn or your dog ate up all of your coal or your ferret fell into the outhouse (I’m guessing at the details based on my only source of historical knowledge, the Little House on the Prairie series. Again, see previous post).

School of Veterinary Medicine and Veterinary Hospital (built 1883-1884 and demolished ca. 1901, Furness & Evans, architects), exterior

Here is the old vet school building–very bucolic, set in a field of overgrown dandelions.

School of Veterinary Medicine and Veterinary Hospital, interior, class in surgical amphitheater

Look how interested all these men are at seeing the dog having his foot bandaged. That’s because this was before the invention of TV (I’m pretty sure. Laura Ingalls didn’t ever mention watching cable with Pa while Ma put Carrie to bed in the corn crib).

School of Veterinary Medicine and Veterinary Hospital, December 1908

This is either the Vet School or nearby insane asylum during lunch break. Hard to tell from this distance.

School of Veterinary Medicine and Veterinary Hospital, circa 1900, Blacksmith Shop

Here, the students are leanring a second trade, horseshoe-crafting, just in case the whole “vet” thing didn’t take off.

Barbaro, the undefeated Kentucky Derby Race Horse winner, and Penn vet staff member

In case you didn’t realize it, Barbaro was treated for his broken leg at the George D. Widener Large Animal Hospital at the School of Veterinary Medicine’s New Bolton Center. You can read more about it here.

And, as promised, here are some present day photos submitted to me for the Homecoming Weekend guide–all very cute dogs successfully treated at the School of Veterinary Medicine.

And just so you don’t think I’m biased toward dogs, here are a couple of cats for you:

This reminds me of that scene in one of the Little House books where Laura and Mary have toothaches from eating too many handmade sno-cones and Pa pulls out all of their teeth.

You can find even more cuteness at the Penn Vet photo gallery here.

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July 11, 2011 · 7:23 pm

Nerd Alert: Why I Love the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library

Author: Aimee LaBrie

I’ve had a library card ever since I was in kindergarten. My mom has always been a reader-of-novels and she passed this love on to me, starting with the Little House on the Prairie series. I can still remember the feeling I used to get when I would leave the library with half a dozen books in my backpack—giddy with the possibilities each book offered. Even if I didn’t read all of the books I borrowed (and I seldom did), I liked having all those choices—an adventure story about mice, a story about a misunderstood doll, a detective story where the kids were smarter than the adults.  As an adult, I still feel the same way about reading and about the library; almost like I’m getting away with something when I go inside and emerge with a stack of books; it seems too good to be true.

Here at Penn, you might think that the libraries on campus are very academic-focused, and it’s true that they have hundreds of scholarly texts and journals and numerous online resources. But they also have an excellent fiction section, a new books collection on the first floor of the Van Pelt-Dietrich library, and a substantial DVD collection that I’ve borrowed from numerous times (I just rented Philadelphia Story starring  Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn a few weeks ago. Have you seen that film lately? If not, get it).

In addition, if the library doesn’t have the book you want, they will get it for you. For instance, I recently visited Gettysburg for the first time in my life, and someone mentioned the book Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War, by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tony Horwitz. When I got back to work that Monday, I found that though the library didn’t have the book available, they could secure it for me through inter-library loan. In two days time, I had the book in my hot little hands, borrowed directly from the Dartmouth Library. It was like magic. (Book synopsis: Civil War re-enactors are alive and kicking all throughout the South. For a fictionalized account of this crowd, I highly recommend Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders. It’s dark and twisty and very funny).

About a week ago, I read a  New York Times review of the recently published crime novel, A Death in Summer and thought how nice it would be to check it out from the library that very same day, though it seemed unlikely that the VPD Library would have it, since it was pretty much right off the presses.  I walked straight toward the new fiction, and voile! There it was on the top shelf of the collection, as if waiting for me. Again, magic.  I devoured the book over the weekend. It’s written by Benjamin Black, the pseudonym for Booker Prize winning writer, John Banville. You can read a review of the book here or learn more about Banville’s alter ego in the most recent issue of The New Yorker (book synposis: a rich man appears to have committed suicide. But did he??? His strange death is investigated by an alcoholic medical examiner and a detective who, along the way, encounter seduction, betrayal, a corrupt organization for boys, martinis, hundreds of cigarettes, and ponies.  Thumbs up).

I don’t know what’s next on my reading list, but I am certain that when I do decide, I’ll only have to go a little ways down Locust Walk and into the library. It still feels exciting to me, to know that I can enter the library with nothing, and leave with my arms full of possibilities.

Just an aside, I have physical proof of how much my mom loves reading. This is a quilt that she recently made called “Book Brain.” If you look closely (by clicking on the photograph), you’ll see that the whole quilt is filled with hand-written quotes from her favorite books. She dedicated the quilt to me.

A Quilt about the Love of Reading

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June 29, 2011 · 5:55 pm

Remember Penn

The University Archives Digital Image Collection, available through the Penn library system, allows you to pull up photos from yesteryear, including ones from alumni events. I love old photos–I love the clothes and the hair styles and wondering what happened to the people in the pictures.  I love that you can also search for particular photos. Here’s  one what a search for  “homecoming” yielded for me (btw, save the date for this year’s Homecoming Weekend featuring arts and culture,  November 4-6, 2011. Also, we again face the Princeton Tigers this Homecoming Weekend).

This football guide book was for the game on October 22, 1966.

Artist: Louise Day, October 22, 1966

And here’s the game book from November 2, 1957:

Artist: Robert Foster

Finally, one from November 15, 1952.

This photo was taken a Alumni Day, 1952. I imagine that one of the woman is saying to the other, “Oh, no, Margie, this t-shirt certainly won’t be too small on you.” If you can think of a better caption, please send it along.

Photographer: Mike Pearlman, 1952

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June 28, 2011 · 5:33 pm

Gorgeous Gorges

Author: Aimee LaBrie

In my next life, I believe I will be moving to Ithaca. My colleagues in Alumni Relations and I were just there for several days last week to attend Ivy+, a conference where alumni relation staff working from all the Ivies get together to share best practices (the “+” universities are MIT and Stanford).  This  year, Cornell University sponsored the conference and they did an excellent job making us feel welcome. So, for three days, I got to be around a bunch of very smart and very nice people who do a lot of the same things we do–plan reunions, work on getting alumni back for Homecoming or to join their local club, find new and improved ways to use social media to engage alumni.  And, on our off time, we were served delicious meals. Example:

A clock tower filled with white chocolate mousse. Sinful.

We had no trouble devouring it. Here is Lisbeth before she destroyed and devoured the tower.

Lisbeth and tower

On the last night, they hosted an outdoor BBQ with a tour of the gorges.



Penn people and our tour guide

And a short video capturing the beauty of the falls combined with the beauty of Marge, our GAN (Global Alumni Network) team member. Thanks, Cornell, for an awesome (and awe-inspiring) conference.

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May 16, 2011 · 9:11 am

Class of 1961 Celebrates in Style

Author: Aimee LaBrie

This past Alumni Weekend, we welcomed back members of the Class of 1961 as they returned to campus to celebrate their 50th reunion. With a Friday night dinner and dance at the Franklin Institute, a Saturday morning special Women’s Breakfast hosted by co-chairs Joy Hockman and Bobbi Jaffe at the Inn at Penn, and a Sunday AM champagne and pancake breakfast in Houston Hall, the members of the Class of 1961 celebrated in style…Just like they did back in the day when they were students.

Fashion in 1961

Hill House Dorm

Classroom

Dietrich Hall

Horn and Hardart

Congratulations to the members of the Class of 1961 and thank you to everyone who returned back to Penn to celebrate this past weekend!

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May 2, 2011 · 9:39 am

Year of Games

Author: Aimee LaBrie

Since Penn has announced the fall 2011-12 Penn Reading Project text, Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal, we’ve been trying to brainstorm here in Alumni Relations about how we might use this idea for programming for Homecoming Weekend featuring arts and culture (save the date if you haven’t already: November 4-6, 2011).  Obviously, there’s the natural tie-in with the football game, Quakers vs. the Princeton Tigers, but we want to think of other programming/ideas/games that we could integrate into the weekend that centers around games. It could be cerebral stuff, like discussions about game theory and the gaming culture.  Lisa V.. who is the director of alumni education at Penn Alumni, has already come up with a few topic possibilities for classes: robotics, sports in history, sports and the economy, gender and equality in athletics–just to name a few of her initial thoughts. But we could also maybe do something with actual games–a human checkerboard, an interactive treasure hunt across campus, flag football between alumni classes…Anyway, I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas about what you’d like to see or do for Homecoming Weekend that’s related to the idea of games. Also, take a look at the new website for Year of Games. It’s really awesome.

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April 4, 2011 · 4:46 pm

Squirrels on Film

Author: Aimee LaBrie

We used to have an employee here who referred to me as “The Squirrel Lady,” because every time we were outside together walking on Locust, I would make a “ccchhi-ccchhi” noise at the numerous tame squirrels that dot the green (roughly translated, “ccchhi-ccchhi” means “I have potato chips” in Squirrelese).  I suppose I can’t blame her for thinking it odd that I would want to feed the squirrels–to most people, they are just rodents with fluffy tails.  But spend any time on the Penn campus, and you will see that the squirrels here are more like cats than rats; they are not afraid of people and they will eat pretty much anything you give them. Not only that, but they will come up to you and take the food from your fingers with tiny, human-like paws and then sit back on their haunches and gnaw it up until their cheeks are plump.  I am certain there will come a day when I call over to a squirrel and it runs toward me, takes a flying leap off of a bench, and lands on my face. Until then, I’ll just continue to be The Squirrel Lady.

Here is a photographic example of how busy the squirrels are on campus, and how they strive to stay on top of news from the DP (photos courtesy of Leigh Ann):

 

He has found today's newspaper. Now just has to figure out how to get it back to his nest.

 

In dragging it back home, he panics, wondering if perhaps this is too much paper for his limited space.

 

Practicality wins out as he chooses just the celebrity section.

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March 29, 2011 · 7:49 pm

Why I’m Not an Art Historian

Author: Aimee LaBrie

As a student in the MLA program at Penn, I’m taking a graduate pro-seminar called “Studies in World Art: Religion, Politics, and Culture.” We meet every Tuesday night from 5:30-8:10 in a small conference room in the Jaffee Building (just an aside: one thing I love about meeting there is that one of the admins keeps a full stock of candy in a bowl…It’s the honor system; you can take as many butterscotch hard candies or red licorice or pop rocks as you like. I confess that I always take more than my share). Here is the building, in case you have forgotten what it looks like. If only it were this green now.

The class is taught by Professor Larry Silver, who is a soft-spoken man with a snowy white beard and hair.  He has been everywhere and seen everything—every cathedral or architectural marvel you can name. Each week, we sit around a large conference table and he shows us slides of ornate temples in Damascus and 5th Century Buddhist sculptures in China and paintings by Giovanni Bellini, and I realize again and again the gaps in my education; how much I don’t know about the world, how much is missing in my knowledge about history. I took Advanced Placement history in high school, but honestly, all I remember from those two years is that my teacher, Mr. O’Donnell, often dressed up in costumes to illustrate a lesson. One time, he came in wearing a toga to teach us about Hannibal. The only thing I retain from that lecture is that Hannibal invaded a country while riding in on elephants (I only recall that because I love animals).  And there you have the sum total of my understanding of world history.

The Penn class is fairly class, and there are a few people who ask questions pretty much every time the teacher gives us a new piece of information. I try not to be irritated by this, but part of me (the impatient part…About 95% of me) just wants him to get on with the lecture versus learning why something is square instead of round or if it was built with toothpicks or really tiny logs. BUT! I think that also reveals my own shortcomings–I often don’t care much about the origins the work; I want the stories behind it. However, a lot of what we’re looking at is BCE (Before the Common Era. Something I learned in class!), and the creators are anonymous. So, there’s not a strong narrative thread in the class, no stories about the artist or who s/he was painting for, no drama about what happened to the piece or who owned it or how it was discovered. It’s all very factual.

On the other hand, we get to see slides of work like this:

Bodhisattva Guanyin, Ming Dynasty, (1368-1644 AD)

And this:

The Battle of the Bridge of Milvio by Piero della Francesca

I’ll never be an art historian, but I can love to sit in the dark and watch these slides flash by.

I read somewhere recently that you can create new brain cells by simply engaging your mind with new information, new knowledge, new tasks.  One more good thing bout working at Penn–it’s making me smarter.

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March 28, 2011 · 9:00 am

The Fellowship of the Burrito

A beautiful, sunny day on campus means many things, but mainly it means it’s time to forget about that Lean Cuisine you stashed in the office mini fridge freezer section you didn’t know existed until recently, and head out to one of University City’s fabulous restaurants for a lunch break!

When we’re not working hard on relating to our alumni, we’re thinking about our next meal or snack, or emergency trip to the frozen yogurt place.  Today, that lucky lunch spot was Chip0tle, and this was our journey through campus: The Fellowship of the Burrito, and the campus elves and ogres we saw along the way.

Behold, Locust Walk!

What a beautiful tree coming back from a long winter’s rest.  Welcome, floral friends!

Oooh, Volcanic Corruption!  Wonder what that’s about.  Who cares?  It’s so fun to say:

How many licks does it take to get to the center of campus?  Mmm, Tootsie Pops.  We’re hungry.  Too bad we’re not already at Chipotle.

We won’t say who, but one of us was too lazy to walk up the incline of this bridge.  So we went around it.

So many food trucks.  So much temptation.  We yearn to stop where we are and forget about the Fellowship of the Burrito.

Ooooh, look!  A flower!

Check out all these frat houses.  We’re pretty sure we’re going to be trudging uphill for the last leg of the journey.

We have arrived!  Thank goodness a delicious meal awaits us inside.

Oh no.  What a long line!  And someone’s luggage – someone traveled even farther than we did to get here!

Spotted: Clark Kent powering up on delicious Chipotle food.  I wonder if he’s going to use his post-meal strength to turn the Earth’s rotation so we go back in time and we can eat our burritos again.

Home Sweet(en) Home.

-Aimee and Leigh Ann

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March 22, 2011 · 5:24 pm

Why I Love the Penn Bookstore

Author: Aimee LaBrie

I am a creature of habit. Every single morning, I buy my coffee at the same place: the Penn bookstore on 36th and Walnut. It’s actually more a matter of laziness in some aspects; I arrive on campus from the 36th Street trolley stop, so I almost can’t avoid the bookstore. But I also love books, and I love that they change the displays all the time, so you there’s always something new to see, some new book I didn’t know about or a new cat calendar or a Penn t-shirt I’ve never seen before.

I like the possibility inherent in these things–maybe one day I actually will read a nonfiction book about bears (unlikely, but I like that I could). Look, look how bright and shiny it is. And they have everything. I actually bought my rain boots at the bookstore one rainy day when I was walking around in wet socks.

The other thing I like about the bookstore is the coffee staff. There’s one girl who works there and she knows that I always order a large coffee with room. Often, she sees me before I see her and the coffee is waiting for me when I arrive at the counter. They’re also generous with their coffee cards. You only need to buy 10 drinks, and you get a free one–of any kind. That means that technically, I can have a free mocha latte with a shot of vanilla every two weeks. Except that I also am a hoarder, and so I squirrel away finished coffee cards should the day arrive that I have no money at all. This same person also only ever charges me for a grande coffee. ALSO, the Starbucks coffee costs less there; I don’t know why, but it does. So, I’m saving like 14 cents a week. Hey, it adds up. And lastly, it’s the one of the few places in the world where two of my very favorite things converge: coffee and celebrity gossip. What more could you ask for?

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