Late morning, most any Saturday. My colleagues are rebuilding the hog pen, plotting a compost bin reconstruction, getting gear and athletes together for an away game or match, assessing homework and labs, meeting one-on-one with a student in the dining room to line out the essay due next week, setting up sound equipment for the […]
Archives: Joy Sawyer Mulligan
Where Joni and I part company
It was in late August that I first felt the happy dizziness of seasons spinning, doubling back and oddly moving ahead at the same time. There, topping the list of my Sierra campmates, was Nan, senior prefect to the 9th grade girls who’d be trekking together for five days (six, if you throw in the […]
Coming back to earth
It’s nearly 3 p.m. when we lucky seven pull out of the mouth of Horn Canyon and, a few minutes later, into the pack station, our ten horses bone-weary from six days on the trail, covering 65 miles or so of rugged Sespe backcountry. Or maybe that’s just me, projecting. I am bone-weary from my […]
HFKT, emphasis on K
“How was your daughter’s graduation?” “Hey! How was the graduation this weekend?” “How’d it go this weekend? Your daughter was graduating, right?” Three’s definitely a charm in this case, or at least charming: the first three students I ran into on Monday morning after Big Gymkhana Family Weekend–the biggest, most populous, high-spirited, tradition-rich, all-School community […]
The 4 Rs
My freshman English class is always a little squirrelly on Wednesdays. We meet last period, which ends at 12:55. They try hard to stick with Odysseus as he’s hanging on for what’s left of his life over the slurping maw of Kharybdis–but I know what they’re thinking … How’m I gonna keep my horse from […]
Plus ça change…
As I was heading from one photo opp to another on the Wednesday of Grandparents Days, gymkhana field to lacrosse, I left a scene I’ve watched too many times to count: adoring, amazed grandparents in the stands, eagle-eyed for their special one out there, riders running races or cheering each other on (often across enemy […]
Full-throttle Sensory
On Sunday, an hour-long hike in the hills with Michael engaged all seven senses: •kinesthetic: climbing up the Rhodes-Metcalf, up to the Gretch, back down the Corwen and ultimately linking to the Barkan •auditory: jays jabbering in trees and bushes all along the trail; rustle of small fauna in the undergrowth •organic: heart pounding harder, […]
Job Description (unbound)
We all heard this week at Assembly about a faculty member, who, as advisor to a certain esoteric campus activity, was called to an unusual job: chasing down an AWOL school pig named Spike and returning her to the pen after patching the offending gape in the fence. Actually, a second teacher, who lives close […]
The Big Warm
Remember three decades ago, The Big Chill, a breakout film for Glenn Close, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, Jeff Goldblum, Meg Tilley, JoBeth Williams, and–as the dead guy whose face no one ever sees, Kevin Costner? (Clearly, I’m beyond worrrying about dating myself.) The first morning the old college friends are together, each comes into the […]
Cambridge Reconnect
In Boston a couple of weeks back, as a break in the conference action–the annual meeting of The Association of Boarding Schools–Michael and I went cross-town, over the Charles, and down to Bertucci’s on Harvard Square, there to meet a handful of CdeP’s most recent grads. Over pizza and salad, Leeah (Northeastern), Trevor (MIT), Steffi […]