Smith College and Cook (Animal) Farm Northampton, MA

(For cute baby cow, chicken, and pig footage now, skip to the bottom and come back to read!) ASM is over- now to venture to Northampton, MA. From a conference of 11,000 scientists to a city whose entire population has hovered around 28,000 for the past quarter century. Northampton is a quaint,British inspired city stuck in the middle of Massachusetts- about 100 miles due west of Boston. Northampton is perhaps best known for its highly prestigious small private schools, for being right down the street from Umass Amherst (about a 20 minute car ride), for its openness to the  lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, and additional (LGBTQQIA+) community, and for Ginger Libation.

Modern study areas in the Smith student center

Courtyard at Smith College

Smith Student Center

​I’m in Northampton to visit an old friend of mine from high school named Carly Inkpen. She is the author of a book that is ready to find a publisher and finishing her last semester for a master’s degree in social work at Smith College- a women’s only school of liberal arts and science. This program is super intensive and includes courses on race relations and institutional racism. During my week in town, the students are holding a large meeting with their faculty to discuss the distressful race relations caused by the institutional racism within the college. Over 100 students attend this meeting. On one hand, it is distressful to confront the fact that institutional racism exists even within the confines of a progressive liberal arts school like Smith. On the other hand, I am optimistic that the fact that institutional racism exists everywhere is being directly confronted by the students of Smith- and that Smith sees this issue as significant enough to confront in the classroom. However, whether or not Smith is willing to enact sustainable change and solutions is still to be determined.

A central courtyard on Smith campus

Northampton contains many beautiful Catholic churches

A main entrance to Smith

When I was at Smith, being the engineer/ scientist thing that I am, of course I was interested in seeing what all was happening in the field of science and engineering at Smith. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they had a state-of-the-art science and engineering building on campus named Ford Hall. The building was built from an endowment provided by the Ford Motor Company to provide opportunities to enhance the role of women in engineering and science education. I was initially drawn to the building by its architecture which reminded me of the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University. Ford Hall is a 140,000 square foot building that was completed in 2010 and houses several research projects being conducted at Smith. So, I emailed a few professors and eventually got a meeting with Denise McKahn- an associate professor in engineering researching Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs) for application in weather balloons. Over lunch, we discussed the role science plays in communities and how scientists need to be aware of the needs of the communities that they serve as much, or more so, than the science they are conducting. 

Ford Hall at Smith College

Mid-century modern meets modern.

Baby PEMFC (with US dime for scale)

Nothing warms my heart like watching kids get excited over vegetables!

Vintage vinyl at Turn It Up!

Northampton was a great city in which to relax. I lucked out on the first night in town, Tuesday- because Tuesday Farmer’s Market night! I bought so many roots! The shrooms were ridiculous! The small population and (summer) weather provided an excellent opportunity to run and ride bikes. Unlike Boston, Northampton had very few police sirens (I heard only one police siren during the week I was there), there were very few buzz-saw and drilling noises, and I heard no one blaring hip-hop (although a few were blaring radio rock). The city contained a quaint center with small independent shops and cafés. Of course, I stopped in the local record store, Turn It Up!, to check out the record selection. The prices were reasonable, but most of the records they sold were super-common 70’s rock in ‘VG’ condition. Northampton has a big music community and culture so there are a few local venues in town that attract some larger acts like the Melvins and ‘George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic’.

The last night in town, I got to attend an event called Queer Beers with some of the students at Smith. The beers were mostly brewed locally- some from Northampton Brewery which was just down the street. Ginger Libation was by far my favorite drink. This is a locally brewed ginger beer that contains 9% alcohol and goes down smoother than a Sprite. Seriously, this is the one drink where the more of it you drink, the better your stomach feels. This is a must try for anyone venturing to Northampton.

Carly and I rode bikes everywhere

Post Ginger Libation nap after blowing up an air mattress for over an hour

All the lols! (You will not receive context for this image)

Rather than finish in chronological order, I’ll finish on the highlights of the trip.

1. Hobbes, the house cat, really is terrible- and super needy! 
2. Carly and I rode our bikes to a local farm called Cook Farms. There were lots of animals on the farm- all of which were equal but some of which were more equal than the others. Included was this baby cow that wanted to lick everything and a cock that walked like, well, a cock. I think chickens just walk so weird- it fascinates me- so I caught it on camera. Also, the piggles were goddamned handsome. Don’t just take my work for it though- check out the videos! At Cook Farm, we got some ice cream made from the freshly milked teets provided by the mooing flesh sacks that grazed their fields and occupied their barns. That teet cream was fucking bomb.com! (Yes, they had asparagus flavored ice cream.)
3. For video footage of farm animals, proceed to the bottom of this page.

This is where Hobbes sleeps while Carly is working

Nice afternoon bike ride to Cook Farm

Most of the trail had these wonderful hedges

This house is so quintessential 'New-England-American-Dream' we had to capture a picture of me riding my bike in front of it

Carly pets the cow

I pets the cow

The pigs say "hello neighbor"

BFFs!