Saw a hardback copy of “The Group” by Mary McCarthy for a dollar at the hospital volunteer stand, and bought it to read again. Good decision.
Only this time, I said to myself, I’m going to find out what all these mysterious Vassar references mean. Down here in Australia, the word Vassar itself has no meaning for most people. As a twelve-year old, I struggled gamely through the book, using my imagination and I suppose, getting it mostly right. As a fifty-year-old, I’d like to get the details sorted. So I went to the internet, and I am a little better informed.
I can now tell you what a Vassar Devil is (a square of Devil’s Food Cake, with Vanilla Icecream, Chocolate Fudge and a Marshmallow Sauce on top), and confirm for you that both Jacqueline Bouvier and Meryl Streep were Vassar girls (it figures), and that Matthew Vassar died (peacefully) while addressing the trustees of the college he’d founded.
However, all the references that Google and Jeeves supply talk about the Daisy Chain, or show you a picture of one, but don’t actually say what it is!
Obviously some kind of “best looking girls” thing, but I’d like to know more. Who chooses 'em, whendo they do whatever it is they do (walk in procession carrying garlands of daisies?)
Any Vassar girls posting here? Or just well-informed general readers?
We had something similar at my college. I am sure it was ripped off from Vassar, or else we both got it from some other classical source.
The sophomore class dresses in white, and they carry the daisy chain on their shoulders. It’s a ropelike thing that is covered with greenery and has daisies woven into it. They sing a lot of the traditional songs of my college as they march. Then at some point they lift it and move it to the shoulders of their graduating sister senior class.
Either this sort of thing is common at women’s colleges or Cranky is an alum of my school, because we do the exact same thing here. I didn’t participate as a sophomore, but I guess I will as a senior this year since it’s a part of the graduation festivities.
I don’t know about what they do at Vassar, but here it’s not at all a “best looking girls” thing – AFAIK any sophomore who hangs around after final exams until graduation can help make and carry the chain.
Don’t worry too much about the term creating images in your minds. Jokes about daisy chains at all-girl’s colleges go way back into the 20th century. At least.
And Google tells me that Daisy Chain is a hot porn star in girl/girl videos.
Indeed. My wife got an unforgettable moment of embarassment when she saw “The Last Emperor” with her grandparents, who were born around the turn of the century. Her grandmother was a flapper, and when a certain scene began, she piped up, loud and clear “In my day, we called that a daisy chain!”.
Well, Barbara was a very high-society lady. She was on the social register of New York and Washington, DC, some years back. “Pulling a train.” would simply have been too uncouth to describe “enthusiastic events” in her day.
Yes, Virginia, there were wild parties before the 1960s…
[sup]The feeling is more than mutual![/sup][/ul]