Local Mensa Member Named Head Of Regional Organization
Don’t even think about phoning Jitske Hart between 7 and 7:30 p.m.
She has a standing date with Alex Trebec and “Jeopardy.”
She gets all the questions right about her native Netherlands, and doesn’t do too badly on Stephen King.
As a member of Mensa, Hart embraces the chic and geek with the wit and insight characteristic of the society of geniuses.
She was recently named head of the regional Mensa organization, the international club that takes only people who score in the top two percent of standardized intelligence tests.
A former literature professor, Hart hopes to set a few things straight about Mensa.
On the club’s stuffed-shirt image: “It doesn’t make snobs. In fact, most Mensans are humble. Intelligence doesn’t give you bragging rights.”
On its eclectic members: “We have a lesbian fundamentalist Christian … a seamstress who knows every Ghost Rider in town … discussions jump from quantum physics to poetry in a discussion of evolution. It’s never dull.”
And on its quotient of geeks: “We’re lucky our socks match. I think that’s why we wear white socks … We were very worried that Ted Kaczynski was a Mensan.”
But like most intellectual leaders, Hart has reform in mind. She wants to limit the number of Mensa meetings in bars - institutional “drink and smoke” gabfests - for the health of non-smoking members.
She expects discussion. “Boy, this is a group of people that loves to haggle,” said Hart. “Leading Mensans is like herding cats.”
She’s a Dutch national, married to a man she met as an exchange student in Ohio. They moved to Spokane in 1981. She returns to the Netherlands every two years to retain Dutch citizenship.
After seven years of part-time teaching jobs at Gonzaga, Whitworth and Eastern, she fell into a freelance writing and editing business.
Bingo is one of her base pastimes, but, like most sharp minds, Hart’s takes odd tangents. The Bible sits by her bedside - she describes herself as fundamentalist - and she subscribes to Mad Magazine, the newspaper and a left-wing journal called the Liberal Opinion.
“I looooove Dilbert,” says Hart, IQ of 152.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo