Spring 2011 - Baldwin School

The Baldwin Bookshelf
Marion Whatley Cowart ’46,
Once Upon a Summertime,
Xlibris Corporation, April
2007.
It was during summers of the
1930s at Ponte Vedra Beach
when Muffet first began writing
in her diary, a little red leather
book with its own lock and key.
The original journal entries of a child who frolicked in
the sand more than seventy years ago aided by colorful
recollections bring to life the summertime Muffet
cherished. The script is true, the memories still strong
today and the illustrations are the author’s very own.
These personal accounts offer a glimpse of a leisurely old
fashioned way of life that can be appreciated by beach
children of all ages and decades.
Nancy Keeney Forster ’46,
Encounters: A Lifetime Spent
Crossing Cultural Frontiers,
Wind Shadow Press, November
2009.
In 2007, a year after the death
of her husband, Clifton, Nancy
Keeney Forster began the
process of sorting through the
wealth of papers he left behind,
collected over a lifelong career as a Foreign Service
Officer. What she found tucked into a Japanese tea chest
brought her to reexamine her own memories and writings
from nearly 60 years of shared international adventures.
Together, they journeyed across cultural frontiers from
California to the Philippines, Japan, Burma, Washington,
D.C., Israel, Hawaii, and back to California. During
those years, Nancy developed her own career as an
Recent WoRKS By alUMnae
educator in international schools. The Forsters spent
their lives crossing and recrossing frontiers, determined
to use dialogue, not conflict, to solve differences
between nations. Nancy Keeney Forster’s fascinating
and compelling memoir could serve as a blueprint for
building bridges across frontiers.
Barbara Livengood Russell ’56, Celebrating My Journey in
Needlepoint, self-published, January 2011.
A collection and celebration of the artist’s love affair with
this traditional art form, this compilation documents
Barabara Russell’s most treasured needlepoint pieces,
both of her own creation and among her collected pieces.
Each work of art is accompanied by detailed descriptions,
simultaneously telling the history of Russell as an artist
and tapping into the greater tale of needlepoint as an
expression of art. Russell’s book debuted at the National
NeedleArts Show in Long Beach, California in the
beginning of January 2011 and was well received.
Joan Cowen Bowman ’50,
Power of the Place, Homestead
Press, June 2010.
Part memoir, part family history, this
tale begins in 1869 with the birth
of the author’s grandfather in New
York City, one of 14 children, who
became a self-made millionaire by 1900. He built The
Place in 1906 on the North Jersey Shore, the estate which
provides the inspiration and framework for the story.
Although she was born a year after her grandfather’s
death, the author spent her entire childhood on his
estate, a magical kingdom filled with special smells and
sounds and tastes, but one that left her unprepared for
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