I have never taught Fernando Zamora ’16, nor have I coached or advised him. Yet I had three encounters with him in the space of 24 hours last week that made me consider how much I value random paths-crossings in this boarding school life. Saturday night, Fernando arrived for our Open House before the crush, and in […]
Stuck in traffic on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, heading to a college friends’ reunion and a god-daughter’s wedding last weekend, I was trying to find something listenable on the radio. NPR crackled into earshot, and I was soon honed in and listening to an interview on Fresh Air whose topic-of-the-moment was OCD behavior in cats. […]
Day Four of EDTs, and we’re hoofing it down from Pine Mountain Lodge (where there has not been a lodge since the 19th century)–windy and cold, but last night, we were warmed, belly and heart, by hot uber-stuffed quesadillas for supper and rousing campfire singing. Our team of troopers (Julia, Ben, David, Carrie, Faith, Sydney, Michael […]
It was a dizzying, brain-stuffing three days. Every April for the past twenty years, Senior Exhibitions have reminded me how curious Thacher students can be, how passionate, how persuasive. And this year, how much better than I they understand the basics of the Big Bang theory and the complexities of cult recruitment, government surveillance and […]
What arrested my attention at lunch today: Two freshman boys, both my English 1 students, tucking simultaneously into almost identical sandwiches, with gusto: white bread, what looked like American cheese, ham. Between the boys’ plates, the parenthesis of a single banana. I stopped at their table to tease them a little: “Really, guys? That’s lunch? […]
It was rain on the roof the Saturday morning of final exams that got me thinking about sounds and associations, a thought-thread that kept spinning out that day (probably because I hadn’t heard it in so long), the next, and beyond: the sound of a big diesel bus tooting once and then roaring out the […]
Does anyone in the sound of my voice remember The King and I–Rogers and Hammerstein’s Broadway show that hit the boards in 1951 and became one of the Great White Way’s four longest-running shows? If not, perhaps you know the dramatic film remake, Anna and the King, with Jodie Foster and Chow Yun Fat?
Occasionally, misspellings actually please me–as in, make me laugh big.
Years ago, one late May, I popped into Michael’s office when he was about to sign the seniors’ diplomas. It was quiet in Olympus; everyone else had left for the day. He told me that he had a system: he’d take each one in turn and consider, for a few long moments, that particular student–what […]
Muffled giggles from the other side of the seminar table. I walk around, find that one of my freshmen is on a page early in The Catcher in the Rye. “What’s funny, guys?” More giggles, but no response. “Seriously — what’s up here?” “Umm. We aren’t sure what ‘necking’ means.” “Oh. It means making out. OK?” […]