Letters

The Sophia Show Remembered

“Ah, the glamour of working with television” in Vassar’s summer [Vassar Yesterday] issue paid, to me, welcome tribute to The Sophia Show, “a live, local access talk show.” You said it, and for a while I did it. It started out with me, a practicing, mundane lawyer at the Van DeWater office in Poughkeepsie, interviewing a judge of the Southern District of New York—a scholar and a charmer, the late “Pete” Stewart. Then, as the chair of the Mid-Hudson Legal Services, I did a show with its local chief, John Gorman, Esq. (my erstwhile tennis partner). After a while Sophia decided that she had had enough legal shows, so she drew on my talents (which were about as limited as possible and based on a recent trip to Karachi, Pakistan) as a belly dancer. Since no offers followed that spectacle, I next shared (probably with an ever-diminished audience) the secrets of Hungarian (my native land) cooking.

Susanna Eszenyl Bedell '40
Poughkeepsie, New York

Three More Students to Mars

Regarding the VQ report on the Mars photo acquired with the Mars Global Surveyor by Matt Rosenfeld ’07 [Fall 2004], I am delighted to report that three more Vassar students have had similar success. Tai Shimizu ’07, Tom Ferguson ’07, and Dave Vollbach ’07, also members of my course “Astronomy 150: Life in the Universe” last year, obtained their target Mars images from NASA over the summer. I felt privileged to teach that amazing group of students!

Debra Elmgreen, Maria Mitchell Professor of Astronomy 
Poughkeepsie, New York

Dress Details Divulged

The name of the dressmaker in the wedding dress [“History of a Dress, Summer 2004”] is Mrs. C. Donovan, 315 Fifth Avenue, New York. The shoes are of white kidskin, size 4A, pumps with about one to one-and-a-half inch heel, with a bow. There is also a pair of silk stockings, with clocks, and also a separate petticoat with lace and ruffles, but without a train. The train on the dress has three tiers of ruffles.

Eleanor Livingston '41
Boulder, Colorado

Correction

James T. Cowden ’86 wrote in with a correction to the Summer 2004 Vassar article “Looking Back and Looking Forward.” Cowden discovered in the 1983–84 Vassar College Catalogue that Colton Johnson was not in fact “Vassar’s first dean of the college.” H. Patrick Sullivan, professor of religion, was then dean of the college.