Hardware Hats and All-Women Schools

The strange emails I'm getting to send as part of this research make me smile sometimes. I hope the archives folks who receive them get a smile out of them too. This one is going to Barry University of Miami, Florida. In 1950, it was an all women Dominican University.

"Greetings!

I have what's probably a rather unusual historical question about Barry University for you.

I'm a grad student who is researching cartographic inventors. One of my research subjects, Robert Gatliff of Miami, Florida, created hats and dresses made of items for sale at the hardware store he worked at. I have a 1950 article from the Miami Daily News that indicates that Barry College graduates would be modeling Gatliff's creations at a "Beachcomber Party" at the Coronado Cabana club on 31 May 1950.

By any chance, do you have any historical material on Barry University that could include any information or photographs of this event? Attached is a copy of the newspaper article in case it's helpful; it's from the Tuesday, May 30, 1950 issue, page 6-A.

Thanks very much for your time!"

School and Things

I had an intake phone call with the counseling center today. There's a group of grad students that meet weekly to talk about the kinds of issues that I'm having. I think it would be really beneficial for me to attend something like that. As well as working through some of the anxiety and stress with other people in the same situation, it might help me get to know people a little better and feel less lonely and isolated.

So of course, it interferes with one of my classes. I can't make it to the neighborhood meetings because of classes. I can't make it to the bicycle activism meetings because of classes. I can't make it to the group therapy sessions because of classes. And I only have three classes per week! And one of them is a night class! I'm intensely frustrated at the way timing has refused to line up for me this semester, which doesn't help with feeling resentful about all the time I'm spending on school stuff.

Instead, I'm going to be meeting one-on-one with a counselor. They seem to be heavily booked; my appointment is two weeks out. But I do have one, so that's something.

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My tablet showed up today. It's an HP, and seems to work just fine for reading PDFs while pedaling away on my trainer in the laundry room. I spent an hour and a half doing that while reading stuff for a couple of classes. A more comfortable seat would be nice, but other than that I'm really happy with this solution to the lack of time for exercise problem.

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I'm realizing that we're just about halfway through the semester and I haven't really done any work on the two term papers I need to have ready at the end. It's only a month and a half away, and at this rate I am totally going to fail at these things. Feeling like I am personally failing to meet my responsibilities does not help my mental state. I'm going to try to get some stuff done on them tomorrow and this weekend, as well as taking care of my RA responsibilities. It's hard to want to do more work after doing my 4 hours of daily research, which sounds ridiculous, but it's true. I'm going to work on one paper tonight, with some reasonable goals. Finding four or five sources relevant to the topic, for instance. Hopefully they'll also be sources I can use to write the literature review due for my research design class in two weeks, which I also have not started on.

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I know that gray hair is not caused by stress, and correlation between the two is entirely coincidental. But I'm sure seeing noticeably more gray lately.