Dear Bennington,

I have to say that when you spend your undergraduate and graduate education at the same lovely institution, you need, shall we say?, a break. That’s why when I received the invitation to the 75th anniversary of the college celebration all class reunion during the gorgeous fall foliage season, I swiftly declined.

I thought I could live without you Bennington, without your bitter winters and without your politics and your idiosyncratic ways, without your creaky barn classrooms and film class discussions on the living room floor. But I was wrong.

Receiving this 75th anniversary celebration alumni magazine actually succeeded in making me nostalgic. The winters were kind of magical weren’t they? and the lilacs seemed to bloom forever in May, filling the campus with fragrance.

The nostalgic boom really hit when I saw the photograph that made me want to go to Bennington in the first place. This photo from Letter to the World infused my 18 year old mind with such passion that I had enough inspirational fuel to schlep my goods to Vermont and back 4 times a year for the next 5 years. Martha Graham, the ultimate icon of modern dance, embodied so much of my worldly aspiration as a teenager that when I heard she taught at Bennington in the 40s it was all over for me. The romance of the college’s history was the number one draw.

The other female icon that drove my decision home was Helen Frankenthaler. She did so much of her pioneering work in abstract expressionist painting at the college that I figured I would too. Poor Helen. When she came to a lecture at the college once incognito in oversized Chanel sunglasses, I stalked her from the shadows to watch her walk to her car in the parking lot.

I will leave you with these cartoons from the New Yorker that probably would have made more sense in the 70s and 80s when Bennington was allegedly and notoriously the most expensive private college in the US.

caption 1 says: “Just because a girl went to Bennington doesn’t mean she hasn’t any feelings at all.” caption 2 says: “They sent her to Bennington to lose her Southern accent and then she turned her back on everything.

This one is for Stephen. xoxoxo