The Exeter Bulletin, fall 2015

What’s Your Story?

The first weeks on campus at the start of school remind us all about the importance of connections — those first friendships made and the longtime bonds renewed. Of the teachers and coaches who have been inspirational, and those who may be in the years ahead. And of those members of our community whose impact is often more subtle, yet no less influential to the Exeter experience.

We want to celebrate these connections, the people who made your own Exeter experience memorable, survivable, life-changing ... or simply fun. Share your story with us, and we may share it with our community online or in the Bulletin.

Connect with us at bulletin@exeter.edu and help us tell the stories of Exeter people.

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The Exeter Bulletin Principal Instructor Lisa MacFarlane P’09, P’13 Director of C ­ ommunications Robin Giampa Editor Karen Ingraham Associate Editor Genny Beckman Moriarty Class Notes Editor Janice M. Reiter Contributing Editor Karen Stewart Creative Director/Design David Nelson, Nelson Design Staff Writers Mike Catano Nicole Pellaton Editorial Assistants Susan Goraczkowski Alice Gray Communications Advisory Committee Daniel G. Brown ’82, Robert C. Burtman ’74, Dorinda Elliott ’76, Alison Freeland ’72, Keith Johnson ’52, Yvonne M. Lopez ’93 Trustees President Eunice Johnson Panetta ’84 Vice President Marc C. de La Bruyère ’77 Mitchell J. Bradbury ’78, Wole C. Coaxum ’88, Flobelle Burden Davis ’87, Walter C. Donovan ’81, John A. Downer ’75, Mark A. Edwards ’78, Jonathan W. Galassi ’67, David E. Goel ’89, Jennifer P. Holleran ’86, Eiichiro Kuwana ’82, Lisa MacFarlane, Sally J. Michaels ’82, Deidre O’Byrne ’84, William K. Rawson ’71, Kerry Landreth Reed ’91, Dr. Nina D. Russell ’82, J. Douglas Smith ’83, Morgan C. Sze ’83 and Remy White Trafelet ’88 The Exeter Bulletin (ISSN No. 0195-0207) is published four times each year: fall, winter, spring and summer,

by Phillips Exeter Academy 20 Main Street, Exeter NH 03833-2460 Telephone 603-772-4311

The Exeter Bulletin is printed on recycled paper and sent free of charge to alumni, parents, grandparents, friends, and educational institutions by Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH. Communications may be addressed to the editor; email bulletin@exeter.edu.

NICOLE PELLATON

Periodicals postage paid at Exeter, NH, and at additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA by Cummings Printing.

Copyright 2015 by the Trustees of Phillips Exeter Academy.

ISSN-0195-0207 Postmasters: Send address changes to: Phillips Exeter Academy Records Office 20 Main Street Exeter, NH 03833-2460

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“WE ARE TRYING TO CREATE FULLER, BETTERROUNDED HUMAN BEINGS WHOSE VALUE CAN’T BE MEASURED ADEQUATELY BY A BUBBLE-TEST SYSTEM ... .”

—page 24

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IN THIS ISSUE

Volume CXXI, Number 1

Features

18 Educational Exchange

The benefits of global teacher-to-teacher engagement

By Genny Beckman Moriarty and Karen Ingraham

24 Learning to Speak, Learning to Listen

How Exeter’s writing program helps students engage with the world

By Genny Beckman Moriarty

30 A Leap Forward

The Academy plans for a new field house

By Karen Ingraham

Departments 6

Around the Table: Principal Lisa MacFarlane’s column, PEA’s new trustees, Faculty Wire, Non Sibi in a Minute, and more.

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Table Talk with Christina Mace-Turner ’88

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Inside the Writing Life: A Conversation with Jonathan Galassi ’67

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Connections: News and Notes from the Alumni Community

36 Profiles: Edward “Ted” Walworth ’62, Ciatta Baysah ’97, Mary Tuomanen ’99 and Kush Patel ’05 94

Memorial Minute: Robert Foote Brownell Jr.

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Finis Origine Pendet: The Song of the Goldfinch, by Alice Little ’18 —Cover illustration by Iker Ayestaran

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AROUND THE TABLE

What’s new and notable at the Academy

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What I Bring to Exeter

By Principal Lisa MacFarlane P’09, P’13

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y first weeks at Exeter have been inspiring. I’ve been able to meet many students, parents, faculty, staff, and alumni and they have shared with me vignettes of their Exeter experience. All confirm what I knew to be true: Exeter isn’t a finite entity, bounded by time and place. It’s a tapestry of richly textured relationships amongst people that extends across generations and across the globe, and that grows in value throughout our lives.

As someone who has moved a score of times throughout my life, I draw energy both from the sustaining power of the past and the exhilarating potential of the future. Signs and symbols of the new, of Exeter, surround me in my new home: I had a chance to choose art for Saltonstall House from amongst the treasures of the Lamont Gallery and portfolios of talented students; and warm thanks to the many, many friends who have given me wonderful Exeter memorabilia! But I am not without my past, those memories and talismanic objects that anchor us in who we are and what we bring with us to the days ahead. Over the last few weeks, I have had the opportunity to reflect on what I hope to offer to this extraordinary community. In addition to my Italian great-grandmother’s three-foot, handmade rolling pin (I can’t replicate her ravioli), my parents’ Danish mid-century modulars (they have moved with us for over 50 years), and the 57 Hardy Boys books and the Hardy Boys Detective Handbook (as children, my brother

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and I practiced tailing unsuspecting neighbors), I bring: • From my own daughters, the reminder that our work here is centered on individuals of great promise, whose families are trusting us both to nurture and inspire them. That is first and foremost the commitment we make to our students and their families.

• From my parents, the truth that education opens our heads, our hearts, and our hands to the world beyond our immediate experience. Contributing to that on a daily basis is a privilege and a joy.

• From my own education, the spirit of non sibi and the resolve both to give Exeter the same commitment that our students, faculty, and staff bring to school every day, and to help Exeter make the difference in the world that so many of us believe it can.

• From the example of my mentors (and some of them are here!), my promise to bring the kind of leadership that you’ve come to expect — and deserve.

All of us at Exeter draw on a shared past that holds us to high aspirations: the Deed of Gift sets high standards for us all, individually and collectively. It calls us to envision a bold future for Exeter, one infused with “usefulness to mankind.” Much thorough research and thoughtful discussion have already gone into imagining that future. I am invigorated by the work ahead, and eager to turn our ideas into actions. I look forward to this next journey with all of you, and my thanks for the warm welcome to the Exeter family. E

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The Academy Welcomes New Trustees

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with the Academy, entered PEA her upper year and his fall the Academy welcomes two new lived in Gould House, where she served as a proctor. trustees to the leadership team. Eiichiro She participated in ESSO, PEAN, Student Council, Kuwana ’82; P’15, P’16, P’18 and Sally International Society and Asian Society, and served Jutabha Michaels ’82; P’12, P’14, P’17, as an admissions guide. She earned her A.B. from P’19 have officially expanded their already generous Stanford University in 1986 and her M.B.A. from contributions to Exeter by joining our other 19 the Wharton School of the University of trustees in service.

Pennsylvania in 1990.

“My three children and I have been Kuwana Michaels’ support of Exeter spans the extremely privileged to receive the globe and is the driving force behind an best secondary school education in increasing Academy presence and visithe world,” Kuwana says. “At the same bility in Asia. She was an elected director time, given the disruption caused by of the General Alumni Association and technology in all industries, including served as its secretary, vice president education, and changes in demoand president. From 2008 to 2012, she graphics, we must remain vigilant and served as an Academy trustee, where committed to keeping Exeter a global she was a member of the Education leader in secondary school education. I and Appointments Committee, the look forward to supporting Principal Michaels Institutional Advancement Committee Lisa MacFarlane as she leads Exeter in and the Technology Task Force. She was these exciting and challenging times.” a founder of the Exeter Association of Kuwana entered PEA in September Thailand and has served as an admis1978 and lived in Wentworth Hall. sions representative since 1994. She He was active in ESSO, The Exonian, is a former general gifts chair for her PEAN and was a member of the Cum class and has served as a class agent and Laude Society. He later earned his A.B. member of the Major Gifts Committee. in East Asian studies and economics, Michaels graciously serves as a host for graduating magna cum laude from numerous Exeter events and for visiting Academy Harvard University in 1986, and went on to earn his faculty and staff in Thailand.

M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1992.

She and her husband, David Michaels, Kuwana has been a member of Exeter’s 1781 co-founded GMS Power Public Company Limited, Committee, an admissions representative, class one of Thailand’s leading private power developers, agent, major gift chair and committee member, in 1991. Previously, she served as a special adviser to and donor to the Friends of the Academy Library.

Thailand’s minister of foreign affairs, on the board Outside of Exeter, he serves on the board of The of the Bangkok Patana School, as secretary of the Nature Conservancy, Hawai’i.

Stanford Alumni Club of Thailand, and as a member In 2004 he co-founded Cook Pine Capital with of the international council of advisers to the Asian his wife, Yumi Mera Kuwana. Prior to starting CPC, University for Women. he held various positions at Goldman Sachs Group Michaels and her husband live in Bangkok and Inc., based in New York and Japan, and at Merrill have four children: Aaron ’12, Jessica ’14, Sara ’17 Lynch in New York. and Sam ’19. Michaels’ brothers, Dr. Rome Jutabha Kuwana and his wife live in Greenwich, ’81 and Charlie Jutabha ’88, also attended the Connecticut, and have three children: Kiyo ’15, Hiro Academy. E ’16 and Alyssa ’18.

Michaels, now in her second trustee appointment

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An Energetic Start to the New Year As Exeter began its 235th year, there was a near palpable buzz of excitement when students returned.

The community eagerly welcomed them, as well as the Academy’s 15th principal instructor, Lisa MacFarlane. In keeping with tradition, classes officially got underway with the Opening of School Assembly on Sept. 11, which included Principal MacFarlane’s inaugural address to students, faculty and staff. On-demand video of the event is available at exeter.gameonstream.com.

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The laughter and camaraderie among friends, new and old, infused every corner of campus — particularly the Academy Center’s Grill.

Principal Lisa MacFarlane delivered her first Opening of School address.

Dorm proctors provided new dorm mates with campus tours before classes began.

A standing ovation for the procession of nearly 200 faculty members as Opening Assembly got underway.

Principal MacFarlane tested her strength during the Big Red Carnival, held in Thompson Gym during the first weekend of school.

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Non Sibi in a Minute

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MICHAEL GARY: INSPIRING URBAN YOUTH THROUGH SPORTS

irector of Admissions Michael Gary wanted to give back in a meaningful way to the two Connecticut

LOU JONES

communities he says gave him a lot: New Haven, where he grew up, and Hartford, where he attended Trinity College.

A lifelong athlete, Gary recognized the impact athletics can have on young people and liked the idea of introducing local kids to lacrosse, a game “not readily available to kids in the inner city,” he says. While not a lacrosse player himself, he knew skills learned on the lacrosse field would transfer to other sports and develop into life skills as well. Believing access to the sport “could open up doors” for underprivileged youth, Gary founded Inner City Lacrosse.

Program sessions take place on the campuses of Yale University and Trinity, and Gary recruits players from both schools to volunteer as team coaches and mentors. “I know that if you can get kids into those environments and give them role models to look up to, they begin to see themselves in those settings,” he explains. “They begin to see possibilities.

That’s what happened to me.”

Gary believes the idea that “you finish what you start” is one of the biggest takeaways for young athletes in team sports. Participants in his program commit to attending every session, a total of seven Sundays in the fall. If they honor that commitment, they get to keep all of their equipment, free of charge. “To get good at lacrosse,” Gary says, “you have to work hard. You learn not to quit.”

It’s a lesson that Gary — who makes the weekly trip from Exeter to Hartford and New Haven while the program is in session — knows very well. Although he puts in a lot of miles on the I-95 corridor, he says it’s important to “be there in person to motivate parents and applaud their kids.”

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MEET ESSO’S GLOBAL COORDINATOR MELODY NGUYEN

elody Nguyen ’16 got her first taste of community service in her hometown of Ho Chi Minh City, where she visited children in orphanages, many of them victims of Agent Orange. While the work was fulfilling, Nguyen says the expectation among the agencies that sponsored the orphanages was that volunteers would donate or fundraise, and she adopted that mindset “without knowing where the money was going or how it was affecting people.”

Nguyen’s work with ESSO has since broadened her experience and her viewpoints on community service by spurring an interest in politics and grassroots activism. She says her involvement here on campus with Amnesty International, Global Health Initiative and Tutoring for Children helped her realize that community service can and should be about “changing laws and helping communities” in ways that suit their needs. That awareness carries over into her volunteer efforts in the orphanages back home, where Nguyen and her peers have switched from fundraising to donating books and teaching the children to read.

Nguyen says she’s learned to listen closely and foster authentic connections with the children she works with instead of “swooping in to be the hero.”

This new understanding informs her role as coordinator of all global and on-campus ESSO programs as well. Nguyen wants participants to go beyond “just talking about issues with each other.” She encourages club leaders to “take action and find an outlet to the community” by imagining projects and setting concrete goals for each term. Nguyen helps with logistics and she checks in regularly to keep clubs on track. At the same time, she advises leaders about the dangers of good intentions and unforeseen consequences, encouraging them to anticipate negative outcomes before they proceed.

With an enlarged understanding of community service, Nguyen is motivated to help her peers make a difference, too. But the rewards of helping others are mutual, she says. “Being part of other people’s lives and having new experiences, it enriches me as well.” E

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Seeing Tech Through Plato’s Eyes TA B L E TA L K W I T H C H R I S T I N A M A C E - T U R N E R ’ 8 8

By Daneet Steffens ’82

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hristina Mace-Turner’s career trajectory appears to have been generated through a perfect storm of positive parental role modeling, self-directed future insight, a determination “to learn as much as possible about as many things as possible related to the work I’m interested in,” and an appreciation — gleaned at Exeter — for Plato. As a business affairs and content strategy expert in the tech industry, Mace-Turner ’88 has worked with multiple organizations — including Apple, Flipboard and the Helen Gurley Brown Trust — helping them develop their messages and brands. But her first job entailed cutting her legal teeth as an intellectual property attorney at Loeb & Loeb LLP in New York.

“I went to law school not because I wanted to practice law but because I was interested in technology,” she explains. “My mother went to law school, as one of two women in her class, and became an entrepreneur.

So I knew the law offered good foundational structure for a business environment. When you bring new products to market, the legal boundaries are a major issue because the law is this iterative process; when it doesn’t anticipate a situation, there’s suddenly this big question mark. I knew that how things would evolve in the space of the Internet would be drastically impacted by the law and vice versa, that there would be this relationship of real friction and evolution.

That’s what intrigued me.”

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Post-Loeb, she landed at TBWA\Chiat\Day in Los Angeles, then with Apple, where she worked with content partners — primarily film studios at first. But as the app store and iOS platform grew, so did the range of her content colleagues. “I’ve worked across almost every industry — I can’t think of a vertical that I haven’t worked with,” says Mace-Turner. “You have to be able to sit in the shoes of that industry — and get comfortable quickly — so you can help them say, ‘OK, this is what we’re about and here’s this platform. What’s our bridge? How do we use this in a way that’s useful to us and what are we going to get back?’ When the relationship is truly optimized, when there’s a great understanding of the platform and what the company is able to offer there, then you’ve created a meaningful product — and something that can’t exist in any other environment. Take Flipboard’s launch, for example: It enabled media companies to be able to express themselves on the iOS platform, but it also allowed consumers to have an experience that they couldn’t have outside of an iPad. That is the magic. That’s what’s so exciting about this industry.”

In fact, after Apple, Mace-Turner signed on with Flipboard to help build partnerships and to explore the world of startups: “I wanted to know more about this new type of industrial revolution, the technology revolution.” Mace-Turner fell for the industry’s Wild West culture — lock, stock and barrel. “By the numbers, there are very few people who make tons of money in tech,” she says. “Most people are going to find healthy failure: nobody cares if you fail at launching a startup because they speak the same language — they know how hard it is, they know that 9 out of 10 are going to fail. Instead of saying ‘fail’ they say ‘pivot,’ and start over with a new idea. Because there are so many things you can do.”

While she thrives on that excitement, she also espouses a community-driven commitment that envisions, for example, public institutions becoming places of learning around computer science.

Recently, she collaborated with the Helen Gurley Brown Trust on creating the BridgeUp: STEM/American Museum of Natural History venture, a free, science-meets-computer-science code-writing program for ninth- and 10th-grade girls. Because if technology is the new final frontier, Mace-Turner feels that we should reach it together. “Whether you’re a big corporation, a medium-sized business or a nonprofit, it doesn’t matter: You’re in the technology business — or you’re going to be,” she says. “My role has been to try to help people optimize and seize the opportunities that come with technology, as opposed to getting crushed. I like helping them flourish and transition their business into this tech space, because it is fundamentally important for their future. Think about it: If nonprofits don’t have a place in tech, all the institutional learning is going to die off. The millennials, the next generations of leaders, are learning through social media.”

And that’s where the Plato bit comes in. Among many lifelong delights Mace-Turner gained at Exeter — she’s still close with her freshman-year roommate, and their families spend holidays together — was Julia Duff ’s philosophy class. Mace-Turner loved Plato’s “flow of thought, how rational it was and how contemplative. He forced you to reflect upon yourself and your own actions,” she says. “I believe that if you have access to technology’s teeny, rarified world, there’s a moral obligation to lift other people with you. It’s like Plato’s allegory of the cave: If you get out, you don’t go running off into the wilderness; you figure out how to go back and take people out with you. Technology can be used to do bad things, but it can also be used to do wonderful things. I enjoy helping people exploit the wonderful pieces, to pull that thread forward. That’s my goal.” E

“I BELIEVE THAT IF YOU HAVE ACCESS TO

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OBLIGATION

TO LIFT OTHER PEOPLE WITH YOU.”

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Faculty Wire BETTY LUTHER HILLMAN EXAMINES THE POLITICS OF STYLE

History Instructor Betty Luther Hillman’s new book, Dressing for the Culture Wars: Style & the Politics of SelfPreservation in the 1960s & 1970s, has been released by the University of Nebraska Press. In the book, which had its origin in her dissertation topic, LutherHillman investigates the use of clothing and hairstyles by social activists in the mid-20th century as symbols of their political beliefs.

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, author of Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era, calls Luther-Hillman’s work “a wonderfully engaging and thoroughly researched study of the politics of style and self-presentation during the tumultuous decades of the 1960s and 1970s.”

Luther-Hillman’s scholarly work has appeared in the Journal of the History of Sexuality and Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies.

JON SAKATA COLLABORATES ON ART INSTALLATION FOR ILLUMINUS BOSTON

In October, Adjunct Music Instructor Jon Sakata collaborated with artist Rob Trumbour, an associate professor of architecture at Wentworth Institute of Technology, to re-create a salt marsh in downtown Boston. The multi-genre installation, designed to be reminiscent of the city’s pre-urban landscape, was one of 30 chosen to be part of HUBweek’s contemporary art festival, ILLUMINUS Boston.

In their artists’ statement, the duo write, “lifeSOURCE temporarily reinserts the natural rhythms … into the bustling Boston area by re-creating a salt marsh, an evolving and wildly diverse ecosystem rich in color, texture, form and sound, that supports life.” View the full project description at www. illuminusboston.org/project/lifesource.

Sakata is a concert pianist and interdisciplinary artist who has performed and exhibited at celebrated institutions and venues around the world.

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WILLIE PERDOMO’S POETRY COLLECTION EARNS PRESTIGIOUS LITERARY AWARDS

English Instructor Willie Perdomo has received national recognition for his third poetry collection, The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon (Penguin). His recent honors include being named winner of the 2014 International Latino Book Award for poetry and a finalist for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. The book is currently a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for poetry.

Perdomo says the poems in this collection were inspired by his love of music and the stories his mother used to tell about an uncle he never met, a percussionist in a 1970s descarga band.

Chris Abani, author of The Secret History of Las Vegas and The Virgin of Flames, writes, “Perdomo’s skill and lyrical voice is like a wet finger drawn slowly, agonizingly over the taut skin of a drum face, until the very last moment when it explodes into beat.”

Other English teachers received literary honors this year as well. Highlights include: Todd Hearon: 2015 Dartmouth Poet in Residence at the Frost Place; Spring 2015 Campbell Corner Poetry Prize; finalist for May Swenson Poetry Award and others Matt Miller: Walter E. Dakin Fellowship in Poetry at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference; River Styx Micro-Brew Micro-Fiction Prize for “This Tune Goes Manly” Ralph Sneeden: Finalist for National Poetry Series

Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize and the May Swenson Prize for Barcarole

Erica Plouffe-Lazure: Winner, 2014 Arcadia fiction

chapbook contest for Heard Around Town; finalist for Carolina Wren Press Doris Baker Award for Cadence and Other Stories

Alex Myers: Finalist for Lambda Literary Award for Revolutionary; winner of Good Housekeeping essay contest; featured on PBS NewsHour

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GLOBETROTTING EXETER The summer months were once again rich with opportunity for students to embark on travel around the globe — whether for engaging cultural immersions overseas or eye-opening internships closer to home.

SUMMER DESTINATIONS INCLUDED:

New York City (Academy of American Poets internship)

Manchester, NH (Conservation Law Foundation internship)

Ireland (ESSO service learning trip)

Bibracte, France (Roman-Gaul Archaelogical Field School and study tour)

Tokyo, Japan RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator Based Science (internships) and PEA foreign language program

Atlanta, GA (Turner Broadcasting internship)

Palo Alto, CA (Stanford biology lab internship)

Costa Rica (ESSO service learning trip)

Hawaii (Student Global Leadership Institute)

Rome and Orvieto, Italy (archaeological dig)

In 2014-15:

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38 4 37 100%

of the student body participated in

THE BLOGS OF SUMMER

separate travel experiences on

RIKEN Nishina Center internship (https://pearikeninternship2015. wordpress.com)

Roman-Gaul study tour

Stanford Medical School internship (https://thedrosophilife.wordpress.com/)

continents.

Roman-Gaul archaelogical study tour (https://jjobibractejournals. wordpress.com and https://magistracampbell.wordpress.com)

faculty traveled as chaperones or co-learners.

of the financial need was met by the Academy on all programs.

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Rome and Orvieto, Italy archaeologogical dig (http://www.digumbria.com) Costa Rica ESSO trip

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EXETER DECONSTRUCTED T H E S C H O O L W E L O V E I N D E TA I L

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BELL AND CLOCK TOWER, ACADEMY BUILDING

The fourth Academy Building that stands today was commissioned to replace the one that burned down in 1914.

Completed a year later, the new building was designed to replicate as closely as possible an earlier Academy Building, lost to a fire in 1870.

The Weathervane The model of a fully rigged, triple-mast sailing ship, first executed in copper, was restored in 2000 and gilded in 23K gold leaf.

The structural framework of the new building used 250 tons of iron and nearly

ONE MILLION

Scholarship students used to be responsible for ringing the bell throughout the day by pulling on a rope that was oneinch thick and descended from the bell into the janitor’s room three stories below. Today, schedules for the bell, clocks and class day are downloaded by electrical services personnel in the Facilities Management Department into a controller and programmed to adjust for Daylight Savings Time.

From a description in the October 1915 Bulletin: “Rising gloriously” from the center of the new building’s hip roof with balustrade is a “beautiful, octagonal shaped cupola.” The lower story of the cupola has eight windows and is topped by the clock tower and a weathervane, perched more than

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off the ground.

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which weighs more than 500 pounds, was a gift from the class of 1870. It incorporates metal from the bell that sat atop the previous Academy Building. The mallet that rang the bell before it was mechanized weighed 80 pounds.

Today, the bell striker is a mechanical electrical hammer that strikes the old “rope driven” bell located in the tower.

RING ME

red bricks drawn from the brickyard in Exeter.

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THE BELL,

THE CLOCK was a memorial to David T. Seligman, class of 1872, a gift of his widow and children. Seligman, a lawyer, was a patron of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a director of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.

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Inside the Writing Life A C O N V E R S AT I O N W I T H T R U S T E E J O N AT H A N G A L A S S I ’6 7

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onathan Galassi has been a respected figure in publishing since joining Houghton Mifflin in 1973. He moved to Random House in 1981 and was famously fired five years later, only to land at prestigious Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG), where one of his first acquisitions was Scott Turow’s legal thriller Presumed Innocent, a manuscript he read, in a tidy twist of life interacting with art, shortly after serving on jury duty. Today he’s head of FSG, working with writers such as Michael Cunningham, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen and Alice McDermott. He is also a poet and translator, and his debut novel, Muse, which gently skewers the late-20th-century book industry with palpable familiarity and intimacy, was published earlier this year.

NANCY CRAMPTON

By Daneet Steffens ’82

Q: At Muse’s heart are myriad characters based on real-life colleagues, including two gentlemen publishers who “cordially detested each other, and greatly enjoyed doing so,” and a female poet of celebrity proportions: “…the freewheeling, free-spirited Martha Graham of mid-century poetry, its Barefoot Contessa, with a dash of Dorothy Parkerish spice….”

I really enjoyed the whimsical feel of the novel and kept wondering: Exactly how much fun did you have creating this part roman à clef, part satire, full-on ode to your profession?

Galassi: You’re absolutely right — writing this book was tremendous fun for me. I undertook it as a challenge: to try to write fiction after having worked with many far more accomplished novelists over the years; to memorialize a colorful period in my profession that is really over now and pay my loving if occasionally irreverent respects to some of my heroes and heroines; and to create a counterfactual world in which a poet is the dominant literary figure of her time. It’s a poet’s revenge on reality!

Q: I loved the fact that one of the critical characters is a bookseller — and a firm voice of reason. Does she embody someone from your life? Do you see booksellers as a stabilizing force during these transformative times for publishing?

Galassi: The bookseller, Morgan Dickerman, is a made-up character but she represents a rational faith in the value of the writing-publishing undertaking and the kind of open-minded, generous realism I’ve often encountered in this essential part of our business. I’ve known — and loved and admired — people like her. They represent the best of our profession.

Q: Muse evokes a lovely nostalgia as well as the intensity of a well-loved, well-lived career. Did the story come easily?

Galassi: I started with what I knew. Some of the book is close to my lived experience. But Ida, the poet, the enigma at the heart of the book, was always an invention, and when the tale becomes hers it moves into full-throttle fictional territory. I spent one summer writing every day without rereading what I’d done; a year later I looked at it and decided I had something I could work with. I did that to stifle the editor in me and let what it was I needed to say emerge without excessive criticism. No doubt it was percolating in me subconsciously all that time. But I think a lot of writing is done that way, while we’re living along.

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Q: You studied with Elizabeth Bishop at college and became friends with her. Was there a topic that you particularly enjoyed discussing with her?

Galassi: She didn’t really like to talk about writing in her private life — at least not with me. I do remember sending her some early books I edited at Houghton Mifflin and her telling me how awful she thought they were. That was very typical of her: In the midst of a marvelously warm personal note, her very definite judgment would reveal itself — and not just about literature.

She was very much a New Englander in that way. What I loved most about her was how down-to-earth, how genuine, how much herself she always was: “home-made,” as she puts it in “Crusoe in England.” It was always person-to-person with her. That was very endearing. So I not only revered her as an artist, but loved her as a human being. It was an overwhelming combination.

Donald Hall and Gore Vidal, to name a few — and some of the teachers were writers themselves, including Chilson Leonard and Fred Tremallo. Fred and Rodney Marriott made movies and directed plays. And we got to edit each other, too, on the Pendulum. I don’t think I had much sense of confidence in my own creative work at that stage, but I really did enjoy the editing process and felt even then that this was something I could do.

And then there was the old Davis Library, which was a marvelously enveloping and welcoming place where I spent hour upon hour. Rodney Armstrong, the director, was another person who brought literature alive. I remember that he was a friend of the then-scandalous Edward Albee. That was very exciting to a wide-eyed boy from the sticks of Massachusetts.

The point is, it was all there, within reach, invaluable and inspiring. I want to see us continue to provide this kind of access, this sense of possibility, to students today.

WHAT I LOVE MOST ABOUT BEING AN EDITOR IS DISCOVERY. ... ALL OF A SUDDEN THE WORLD IS DIFFERENT BECAUSE THIS TEXT EXISTS.

Q: What do you enjoy most about being an editor?

Galassi: What I love most about being an editor is discovery — being the first person who gets to read something new, whether it’s by an established author or a new voice.

All of a sudden the world is different because this text exists. You get to watch literature changing, being added to, metamorphosing right in front of you. That is utterly fascinating and inspiring. And sharing in that as an editor and publisher, doing your minor part to contribute to it, is an immense joy and privilege. It’s actually been everything I imagined it might be, and much more. My work with my own editor, Robin Desser at Knopf, taught me a new respect for the editor’s work — and gave me a renewed understanding of how vulnerable writers are in the process.

Q: You’ve said that it was at Exeter that you first developed an interest in poetry, writing and literature….

Galassi: I always say that PEA is where I got my education. My English teachers — Hinkle, Luckey, Ploegstra, and, above all, Tremallo — and classics teachers — Coffin, Thomas, Morante — brought literature to life. We were aware that Exonians had become writers — James Agee,

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Q: As someone who’s been immersed in the literary scene since the early ’70s, what can you tell us about the development, and current state, of our poetry and literature?

Galassi: As Darwin pointed out, evolution is not a straight line of descent but a bush that sends out shoots in all directions; I’d say that’s what’s happening in literary culture at home and in the world at large. Literature has been democratizing exponentially in our lifetime, with all kinds of inspiring and confusing results. Great writers have always come from everywhere. The process involves an enormous amount of trial and error, and publishers are necessarily in the thick of this.

This great variety is also hitting up against a revolution in consumption that the digital era has produced.

There will soon be universal availability of every book ever published, which is wonderful but also creates an enormous forest of choice in reading at the same time that there’s an ever-larger range of options in all media.

Readers have become much more casual, less committed, more grazers than devotees, which makes it hard sometimes to see the forest for the trees. You need to step back and get some perspective and eventually the tallest trees, the necessary ones, will emerge. E

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Alumni are encouraged to advise the Bulletin editor (bulletin@exeter.edu) of their own publications, recordings, films, etc., in any field, and those of classmates, for inclusion in future Exonians in Review columns. Please send a review copy of your published work to the editor to be considered for an extended profile or review in future issues. Works can be sent to: Bulletin Editor, Phillips Exeter Academy, 20 Main Street, Exeter, NH 03833-2460.

ALUMNI

1972—Leo S. Montejo. The Snow Leopard — A Pictorial Companion. (mHealthkarma; 1st edition, 2015)

Alex Myers ’96. “I Headed West to Find Myself — And Start My Life Over” [essay]. IN Good Housekeeping [“Relationships”] [“All About Love” Contest Winner]. (September 2015)

1973—David Payne. Barefoot to Avalon: A Brother’s Story.

(Atlantic Monthly Press, August 2015)

1954—Robin Magowan.

The Garden of Amazement: Scattered Gems After Sâeb.

(Longhouse, 2015)

1976—Norb Vonnegut. Mr. President [A Grove O’Rourke Thriller] [Kindle edition] (self-published, June 2015)

1958—Bruce B. Lawrence and others. Who Is Allah?

Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks [Kindle edition]. (The University of North Carolina Press, 2015) 1968—Tony Seton.

The Francie LeVillard Mysteries [Volume Seven].

(CreateSpace, 2015) —The Francie LeVillard Mysteries [Volume Eight].

(CreateSpace, 2015) —Equinox: A Novel.

(CreateSpace, 2015) —The Brink: A Novella.

(CreateSpace, 2015) —Dead as a Doorbell.

(CreateSpace, 2015) —Musings on Sherlock Holmes. (CreateSpace, 2015) —No Soap, Radio.

(CreateSpace, 2015)

1989—Josh Trought. The Community-Scale Permaculture Farm: The D Acres Model for Creating and Managing an Ecologically Designed Educational Center. (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2015) 1994—Debra L. Herbenick.

The Coregasm Workout: The Revolutionary Method for Better Sex Through Exercise. (Seal Press, 2015)

1986—Larissa MacFarquhar.

Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help. (Penguin Press, 2015)

1996—Stephanie Clifford.

Everybody Rise: A Novel. (St. Martin’s Press, 2015) FAC U LT Y Betty Luther Hillman. Dressing for the Culture Wars: Style & the Politics of Self-Presentation in the 1960s & 1970s.

(University of Nebraska Press, 2015)

Ralph G. Sneeden. “Two Short Films of My Father” [poem].

IN Harvard Review [“Poetry”]. (no. 47, spring 2015, Houghton Library at Harvard University) —“Giant Nazi Flag Escapes from an Attic Vodka Box” [poem]. IN The Southampton Review [“Poetry”]. (v. IX, no. 2, summer 2015) B R I E F LY N OT E D 1967—Lawrence Guy Straus and others. “ ‘The Red Lady of El Mirón Cave’: Lower Magdalenian Human Burial in Cantabrian Spain.” IN Journal of Archaeological Science [special issue]. (v. 60, 1-138, August 2015) 1985—Dana Pilson. “Van Gogh and Nature at the Clark.”

IN Journal of the Clark [Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute]. (v. 15, 16-25, 2015)

Erica Plouffe-Lazure. “Shad Daze.” Angel City Review. (no. 1, July 2015)

1985—Claudio Cambon.

Shipbreak. (Edition Patrick Frey, 2015)

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Educational

EXCHANGE BETT Y PIETAK

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T H E B E N E F I T S O F G LO B A L T E AC H E R -TO -T E AC H E R E N GAG E M E N T

O

By Genny Beckman Moriarty and Karen Ingraham

ver the years, Exeter’s faculty has fostered

CHERYL SENTER

connections with other schools and educators

at an increasingly rapid pace, as technology enables greater global engagement and dialogue.

Often, these exchanges start with a single conversation or the desire on one teacher’s part to

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make a difference, and they evolve into classroom visits and formal workshops, professional development programs and curriculum changes — meaningful and progressive impact felt by educators and students alike. The momentum of these connections snowballs to other teachers at other schools in different countries, and the resulting upswell of collaborations yields further discovery and growth.

Meet two educators, an Exeter math instructor and a principal at an international school in Egypt, whose different experiences nevertheless reflect a commonality of purpose among educators who are working to provide every student with access to the best possible educational environment.

JARED HARRIS, PRINCIPAL CAIRO AMERICAN COLLEGE, CAIRO, EGYPT Jared Harris recently installed his school’s first Harkness table, but it wasn’t a first

for him. Little more than a year ago, Harris was principal at an international school in Santiago, Chile, where he worked closely with Math Instructor and Bates-Russell Distinguished Faculty Professor Tom Seidenberg and other Exeter faculty to help his teachers successfully adapt Harkness methods into their classrooms. Below, Harris talks about his “mission to bring student-centered learning to the entire international school community.”

Q: How did you first learn about the Harkness method?

Harris: As a former child and family therapist, I knew the necessity of actively engag-

ing kids — growth was dependent on it. Part of my normal treatment plan was the assigning of homework followed by discussion during our 50-minute meeting, known as cognitive behavioral therapy. I have often wondered if the Harkness method was not partially grounded in psychology.

In 2003 I made a career shift to counseling in the International School System. In my first years as an educator, I was baffled by the overall passive nature of the learning process. In counseling, little if any growth would happen if a student was a passive participant in therapy; I surmised that this must also be true in the classroom.

Although I witnessed all sorts of classroom instructional methods, one thing was clear: Students needed to be more engaged, to talk more. In early 2010, I therefore embarked on a search for an educational pedagogy based more on students’ active engagement in the learning process. It was easy to find resources referencing Socratic methods, but for me they were still too centered on the teacher.

Eventually, I found a 2009 article written by Exeter instructor Meg Foley and [then instructor] Lawrence Smith about using Harkness in a history class. After I read the article, I would never think the same way about teaching again.

Following a random search of Exeter faculty emails, I sent off three notes. To my disbelief, within about five hours I received a warm and welcoming response! A few months

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later, Tom Seidenberg was leading interdisciplinary Harkness discussions with our faculty at the International School Nido de Aguilas, a pre-K-12 international school in Santiago, Chile, with over 1,700 students from 50 different countries.

The next year we had our first three Harkness tables. Within four years — with student, faculty and parent support — we had committed to the Harkness method in our humanities classes and rolled out more than 20 Harkness tables.

I left Nido in June 2014, en route to Cairo American College (CAC) in Cairo, Egypt.

One of the most desirable factors in relocating was the openness and dedication that the students, faculty and administration showed toward student-centered methods during my interview visits the previous year. Even though not one individual had heard of Harkness, they were excited to explore new teaching methods. I left several copies of the Exeter faculty-written book, Respecting the Pupil, for the CAC faculty to read.

Q: What do you see as the greatest strength of student-centered learning pedagogies like the Harkness method?

Harris: The world is rapidly changing at a pace that is both exciting and alarming.

I have lived on three continents over the past 13 years, working in three very different educational systems. Being a father to three young “third culture kids,” I am aware of the skills that will be required in the coming years as our young ones prepare to engage the world. At the most simplistic level, it is all about communication. Students, including my children, are going to have to be proficient communicators. Creativity is important, collaboration is important, critical inquiry is important, but they all rely on

“THIS IS WHAT HARKNESS DOES. IT REQUIRES THINKING, REFLECTION, FLEXIBILITY, EMPATHY AND BEING COMFORTABLE WITH UNCERTAINTY.” —JARED HARRIS

communication. This is what Harkness does. It requires thinking, reflection, flexibility, empathy and being comfortable with uncertainty; but it all comes back to communication. The kids take the driver seat; they must deliver a message. This is where schools around the world are still failing our youth by not adopting student-centered methods.

Many are producing smart kids who cannot communicate.

Student-centered learning provides the foundation for so many skills that will be required by our students in the coming decades: critical inquiry, communication, accepting divergence of ideas, operating in the gray area, “doing” instead of “knowing,” cross-cultural communication, and the list goes on. It is the predominant interaction that our international teachers need to be having with students.

I heard in Chile, and am now hearing again in Egypt, “Dr. Harris, I love the new tables. They make me feel important and smarter.” This is the greatest strength of the Harkness method. [It] is empowering, and it gives voice to our youth, irrelevant of nationality or languages spoken.

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Q: What has been your approach to educating faculty about student-centered learning?

Harris: It is all about conversation. My commitment to my faculty, to my students, to my parents is simple: The most important things that I do every day are to listen and to engage them in conversation. In the hallways, on the stage, on the playing fields and in the classroom we talk. It’s dialogical leadership — leadership through conversation.

In the international school setting, most schools are bombarded by a never-ending stream of the newest educational initiatives, typically driven by No Child Left Behind research. Add in a transient student, faculty and administrative culture, and institutionalizing change is nearly impossible.

I tried to shelter the faculty from the “initiative-of-the-month club,” carefully keeping our focus directed at transforming our classrooms into truly student-centered environments. Desks were moved into horseshoe arrangements, then into circles, then into ovals. The first Harkness table arrived, and the energy it created among the faculty was remarkable.

I carefully designed professional development opportunities to support student-centered learning. Exeter faculty came to Nido (and [come to] CAC now) each year to train our faculty, and I sent my faculty to the Exeter Humanities Institute and the Anja S. Greer [Conference on Mathematics] each spring on Exeter’s campus.

Q: Why is having Harkness-like tables in the classrooms so important to you?

Harris: For Harkness to work, it involves a complete commitment. What the table

does is transformational. Immediately upon entering the Harkness classroom, the ethos is palpable. Unlike desks, the table cannot be taken apart to go back to traditional teacher-centered habits. It provides a connective energy, while the white space that remains between students when desks are placed in a circle creates a subtle barrier.

Q: How have you adapted the student-centered model for your school communities?

Harris: I have very strategically involved students and faculty in the process of imple-

menting student-centered teaching in Santiago and in Cairo, and I never “mandated” the approach. I have been lucky to have a parent community in both countries who placed enormous faith in my philosophy. Moreover, having a head of school and board of trustees who trusted my message was paramount. I have always kept a realistic picture, and have been clear in communicating that we are creating our own hybrid-Harkness teaching environment.

Due to our international schools’ transient populations, and the large and somewhat prescriptive nature of the International Baccalaureate (IB) program, there is a time and place for other instructional methods, including limited direct instruction and other more traditional teacher-centered methods. I have empowered those amazing lecturers to keep lecturing, but to also inject a healthy dosage of Harkness.

In Chile, each year that we committed more to Harkness, each indicator on our school quality indicator improved: Test scores went up, student interest increased and college acceptances to elite institutions increased. These measurements indicated that the Harkness method is an effective approach to teaching in international schools driven both by an American educational model and the external testing requirements from the IB.

Q: How do you see your mission playing out in the near future and the long term?

Harris: I am very optimistic about the changes occurring in international education.

I frequently communicate with like-minded educators who are deeply committed to implementing student-centered methods in K-12 international school settings. Every year, more teachers are being exposed to progressive educational practices at conferences like NAIS (National Association of Independent Schools) and institutes like the

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Exeter Humanities Institute. In addition, there are more and more high-profile former U.S. independent school heads moving on to headships in international schools.

Harkness tables are popping up slowly at international schools, too; the momentum is building. I am excited to continue working with Exeter faculty in implementing student-centered teaching around the world, from Chile to Egypt, and soon enough I hope to continue to Ghana, Kenya and other developing countries. Our schools around the world need student-centered methods, and our children deserve it.

AVIVA HALANI INSTRUCTOR IN MATH, PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY This past summer, Math Instructor Aviva Halani traveled to South Africa and Swaziland with Teachers Across Borders Southern Africa (TABSA), an international organization that sends teams of math and science teachers to provide professional development and curriculum support to their peers in rural southern Africa. Halani reflects here on the rewards of that partnership.

Q: Tell us about Teachers Across Borders Southern Africa and the work that they do.

Halani: Teachers Across Borders Southern Africa is a grassroots, all-volunteer orga-

nization of educators from the United States, South Africa and Canada. This organization originally started 15 years ago in an attempt to help South African teachers, mostly those who had grown up during apartheid when they weren’t allowed to study math and science beyond a certain level due to their skin color. Now, some of these teachers are attempting to teach subjects they never formally learned. TABSA coordinates with min-

“I CAME AWAY ... WITH RENEWED PASSION FOR INCREASING EDUCATIONAL ACCESS FOR OTHERS.” —AVIVA HALANI

istries of education in Southern Africa to run weeklong workshops on middle and high school math and science topics. Teachers in the district provide TABSA with lists of topics they have trouble teaching and the TABSA workshop leaders align their lessons to national standards.

Q: What was your personal connection to the work you did with TABSA? Halani: My parents grew up in rural eastern Africa in conditions similar to those I

observed this summer. My dad grew up in Uganda and was forced to leave as a refugee in 1972. My mom grew up in Tanzania and left in ’74. Starting at age 6, she was sent away to a home stay in a different town because her village’s one-room school had shut down. I actually met up with my parents and my brother in east Africa after my southern Africa leg. Neither of my parents had been back since they left. Seeing the town

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Learning to

SPEAK LISTEN

Learning to How Exeter’s

WRITING PROGRAM

Helps Students Engage with the World

By Genny Beckman Moriarty

O

n Wednesday mornings in Phillips Church, as sunlight filters through the stained-glassed windows, a certain stillness spreads over the rows of students

and adults.

In that hush — right before the first few notes of the opening music and the speaker’s approach to the podium — lies a sense of expectancy. Each week, in the midst of our hectic schedules, members of the Academy community choose to come together in a collective exhale, to listen to an extended personal essay known as meditation. The 30-minute respite nourishes many of us, allowing us to forget about looming tests and deadlines and the pressures of everyday life for a few peaceful moments.

Beyond the chance to slow down, meditation offers a sense of belonging and highlights the ability of language and stories to unite and sustain us. Each week during fall and winter terms, adults from the community find the courage to share their hopes and fears openly and vulnerably in front of a receptive audience.

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“WE’RE HELPING THEM DEVELOP THE HABIT OF SEEING THEIR LIVES AS STORIES.” Students in Todd Hearon’s English class debate the merits of Rilke’s writing advice in Letters to a Young Poet.

In the spring, selected seniors follow suit. The feeling of connection — one might even call it communion — that ensues can be powerful.

That power is not lost on Exeter’s English Department, for which “the belief in stories and storytelling” is at the heart of a distinctive vision, says Mercy Carbonell ’96 (Hon.), longtime instructor in English. It’s a belief, she argues, that is “essential to what we do.”

English Department Chair Ellen Wolff agrees. “Our distinctiveness begins with the personal narrative. Other schools teach it or touch upon it, but there isn’t usually the same emphasis or duration of attention,” she says. From the moment they arrive as Alice Little ’18 wrote a poignant narrative for English class last year, preps, students are expected to cull their memories, using experiences from their which was awarded first place for prep lives as material for writing assignments. Writing about what they know limits the Prize Papers by English faculty. Her essay appars on page 96 of this issue as the variables for young writers and frees them to focus on essential writing skills such “Finis Origine Pendet.” as clarity of expression, voice, focus and tone that will serve them well no matter what they write.

Through discussions and assignments of increasing complexity, English classes at Exeter encourage a slow building of skills that arise out of the discovery of a student’s voice — both on paper and at the table — and the crucial capacity to listen closely and respectfully to the voices of others. But while the skills are important and tend to carry over to other genres, teachers have another goal as well.

“We’re helping them develop the habit of seeing their lives as stories,” says Wolff, who hopes that kind of “narrative mindset” will help students make sense of their lives. “In so doing,” she asserts, “they’re more likely to be effective agents in the world.”

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“WE SEE WRITING AS A WAY OF ENGAGING WITH BOTH THE SELF AND THE WORLD.” Alistair Matule ‘17 and English Instructor Ralph Sneeden meet after class to talk about writing and life.

Like Wolff, English Instructor and Director of Studies Brooks Moriarty ’87 sees a dual purpose behind the department’s “deep commitment to personal narrative.” He explains, “We see our writing curriculum as both a skill-building enterprise and a moral endeavor. By building the skills they need, we are preparing [students] for the kinds of writing they’ll be doing in college and beyond. But we are also preparing them for the ‘business of living.’ We see writing as a way of engaging with both the self and the world.”

With this focus on the exchange of voices through the close reading of literature and the writing of personal narratives, the department’s curriculum and pedagogy lend themselves well to the ideals set forth in the Academy’s founding deed of gift — and reiterated many times since — that goodness and knowledge ought to go hand in hand and that the “great and real business of living” that Moriarty references is usefulness to mankind.

These higher-reaching ideals can appear at times to be in tension with the pressures of standardized testing and college admissions, and with a utilitarian approach to education that sees STEM courses as the path to securing a good job. Such pressures can lead to anxiety about the relevance of the humanities and have prompted calls from some education reformers to assign more nonfiction texts in English classes and to privilege argument- and research-driven writing over other modes of expression.

Michael Brosnan, editor of Independent School magazine, who has taught part-time at Exeter and writes widely about education and the issues facing independent schools, says that while such pressures are real and independent schools are not immune from the need to respond to them,

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they can have the unfortunate effect of “tamp[ing] down on some of the desires and the mission” of even the most progressive schools. Brosnan, who is heartened to see schools such as Exeter respond to those pressures in unique and creative ways, bemoans the fact that administrators tend to rely too heavily on data to determine what is worthwhile in the classroom.

“There’s this idea that you’ve got to weigh and measure,” he says. “And if we can’t measure it, how do we know it’s valuable? You know, there are more and more sophisticated ways to measure, and those may get around to including the value of the humanities, but still, there’s a high level of intuition here.”

AN EMERGING SENSE OF SELF

Creating the Space to Write Among the many ways the English Department fosters a literate community — from the student publications Peal, PEAN and The Exonian to the Lamont Poetry Series and the Prize Papers awarded each spring — one of the most beloved traditions is that of the Bennett Fellowship, which each year brings a talented, emerging writer to campus. Read on to find out more about the inspiration behind the program’s founding: In his new memoir, First Passages, Elias Kulukundis ’55 recalls “navigating the straits between two cultures.” As the son of wealthy Greek parents, his upbringing was often at odds with his American education.

While a senior at Exeter, Kulukundis studied creative writing with George Bennett ’23, whom he recalls as “the perfect Harkness teacher.” Kulukundis says Bennett, who taught the class in his living room, inspired in him a love of literature and a commitment to becoming a writer. First Passages outlines his struggle as a young adult to balance his own desires with the

need to please his parents — a struggle that eventually led to his creation There is, in fact, increasing evidence from research of the Bennett Fellowship. revealing the benefits of a liberal arts education — includKulukundis established the fellowship to give emerging writers the ing increased social and emotional intelligence, improved gifts of time and financial support that would allow them to devote themcognitive functioning and decision-making, and greater selves to their craft. He was adamant that fellows should not yet be firmly empathy. In September, author and researcher Mary established in their writing careers and would have no duties while at Helen Immordino-Yang spoke to Exeter’s faculty regardExeter other than to pursue their own literary projects and talk about writing the scientific evidence linking emotions, empathy and ing with students. Kulukundis wanted those conversations to occur inforlearning. mally, to mirror the classes Bennett taught in his living room.

Religion Instructor and Vira I. Heinz Professor Kathy Since the first Bennett Fellow arrived on campus in 1968, Exeter has Brownback P’08 reports that Immordino-Yang has found hosted 48 talented writers, many of whom have gone on to earn critical that emotions play a significant role in the development acclaim for their works. A full list of Bennett Fellows can be found at www. of rational thought. So, Brownback explains, “rather than exeter.edu/bulletinextras. escaping the emotions to think more clearly, it is essential for students to be able to feel, understand and clarify their emotional lives. This kind of self-understanding is also an essential underpinning of a moral community.”

Like Brownback, Wolff was struck by the relevance of Immordino-Yang’s research, which demonstrates the importance of taking breaks from the focused, task-oriented frame of mind that shapes students’ daily lives at school, to enter into the resting or “default” state of social-emotional intelligence — the platform for high-level, integral thinking. “In asking students to write about their own lives,” Wolff posits, “we may be inviting them to enter that resting state that allows them to integrate their experiences into an emerging sense of self.” Far from being the self-indulgent exercise some critics deem it, the writing of personal narratives “may actually help students organize their minds in a way that both feels good and does good,” Wolff says. She admits the thought might be idealistic but adds, “I think the connection is there.”

TEACHING THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE

Whether based on intuition or science, Exeter’s English teachers have long agreed that education must go beyond the mere acquisition of skills or content to confront the questions of what it means to be human, to be a good citizen. “We believe in the teaching of the human experience through stories, through narrative and through dialogue — which, even when thoughtfully done, can be messy and muddy and slow as it edges toward lucidity and sharpened clarity,” says English Instructor Todd Hearon, who is the 2015 Dartmouth Poet in Residence at the Frost Place. Echoing his colleagues’ sentiments, he adds, “We are trying to create fuller, better-rounded human beings whose value can’t be measured adequately by a bubble-test system, by the college into which such beings matriculate (or don’t), or by a purely pragmatic approach” to education.

Of course, no one from the English Department would argue that students don’t need to learn how to analyze a text or write a cogent argument. As Wolff points out, “We are a high school English department. We do need to teach students the nuts and bolts of writing logical sentences.”

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“DEVELOPING THE VOICE ON PAPER IS CRITICAL TO DEVELOPING THE VOICE IN DISCUSSION.” Through reflection and collaboration, students in Exeter’s English classes develop into strong writers and readers.

Wolff insists the department’s methods are designed to do just that. “We are preparing them to read, write and think in a variety of modes,” she says, “but it is developmentally appropriate to begin with the self and gradually open up.”

Wolff traces a teaching arc in which students progress from writing paragraphs to vignettes to stories, anchored in their own experiences and memories, and gradually broaden their focus to include the experiences of family and the local community. Eventually, they expand outward again to grapple with literary criticism, the cornerstone of many high schools’ writing programs.

Reflecting on the merits of Exeter’s teaching arc, English Instructor Alex Myers ’96, author of the novel Revolutionary, which was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, says, “Adolescence is a perfect time to start asking people to write, revise and understand their own stories. Later, these can feed into the larger story of self in relation to other, whether that is through analytical papers, research or fiction writing.”

Although they don’t begin to craft formal analytical essays until their upper years, students regularly draft short reading responses, often using them to contribute to classroom discussions.

In those conversations with peers, students learn to articulate their thoughts with nuance and to defend their positions with evidence from the text — all skills that will help them as writers, too.

Mercy Carbonell points to students’ Harkness discussions as “their initial and developing journey into acts of collaborative interpretation and skills.” She adds, “As students get older, they begin using those acts of interpretation in differing analytical forms.”

The interplay between the spoken and written word — or between language expressed and language received ­— is an important component of the department’s vision. Becky Moore, former department chair and current Woodbridge Odlin Professor in English, explains, “To develop

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a confident voice at the table, you must feel the authority that writing your own stories gives you.” And if confidence and the ability to listen and respond to others’ ideas are critical to good readers, they are critical to good writers as well. Being attentive to the audience’s needs provides an authentic, internal incentive for young writers to master those same skills and develop their singular voices. At the same time, as students listen and respond to their classmates’ feedback, they learn to value other voices and points of view.

The beauty of Harkness, says former Bennett Fellow and current English Instructor Erica Plouffe-Lazure, is that it “gives students a direct stake in the outcome of their education. It makes them accountable to themselves and to their peers, and provides them with the tools … to engage in discussion and collaboration and to turn ideas into actions.”

Reflecting on his first term at Exeter, Chris Vazan ’16 confirmed the merits of the department’s approach, writing, “Perhaps the most important thing I have begun to learn is to live, think and observe empathetically and attentively. I have begun to be able to really think about myself and about others, and perhaps the greatest way to practice this is through the analytical reading and personal writing we did in class.”

FERTILE GROUNDS FOR GROWTH

An Intellectual Community of Writers and Scholars Exeter’s writing program derives much of its strength and richness from the English Department’s faculty, who represent a diversity of interests and educational backgrounds. An overwhelming majority of Exeter’s more than 30 English teachers hold advanced degrees, and their specialties vary widely, from English literature and American studies to education, law, divinity and creative writing, to name a few.

Many of Exeter’s English teachers actively write and publish in scholarly journals, national and regional magazines, and literary journals such as Crab Creek Review, AGNI, Kenyon Review and American Poetry Review. There are journalists, literary critics and a number of nationally recognized and award-winning poets, playwrights and writers of fiction and literary nonfiction, several of whom have released works through a major publishing house or university press. Some English teachers are involved in cross-disciplinary work with other departments or have designed electives such as Lit and the Land or Law and Lit that allow them to share their particular interests with students.

English faculty share their expertise with peers from across the country by leading workshops at professional and literary conferences, including Exeter’s Humanities Institute, Rex A. McGuinn Shakespeare Conference, Writers’ Workshops and the Exeter Diversity Institute.

With their colleagues from other departments, Exeter’s English teachers frequently take part in Harkness outreach efforts both stateside and abroad.

In their free time, teachers often elect to combine travel with research or professional development. This summer, English teach-

Nowhere are the rewards of engagement with the self ers flew to the heart of Dublin, Ireland, to participate in the Beckett and and participation in the larger community — through James Joyce summer schools; to Ohio for the Kenyon Review Writers the careful use of language and the sharing of stories — Workshop for Teachers; and to Tennessee for the prestigious Sewanee more evident than in that quiet of Phillips Church during Writers’ Conference. meditation.

The Rev. Bob Thompson ’72; ’71, ’89, ’95 (Hon.), Phelps minister for Phillips Church, oversees the weekly meditation service. He sees its evolution from a “spiritual biography” assigned in advanced religion courses to a capstone writing project for the English Department (and something of a rite of passage for Exonians) as fitting, calling it the “perfect vehicle” for culminating four years of writing instruction centered on personal narrative and an exploration of voice.

The power in meditation, he adds, rests in the intensely personal connection between individual speakers and their audiences, who are engaged in the simultaneous acts of giving and receiving. “Sitting there in the audience,” says Thompson, “you’re connected to the giver. It’s a moment of grace.” He argues that those “moments of giving, of honesty, of risk, are fertile grounds for deeper religious growth.” But even for the nonreligious, the connection itself can feel sacred. “It is inherently beautiful and beneficial. If nothing more happens than sharing, that is profound,” Thompson concludes.

During her own meditation, delivered in Phillips Church in the spring of her senior year, Carlin Zia ’13 reflected on the power of our shared spaces and stories to make us feel more deeply connected to one another: “I realized that my truth is both ... the steady wooden rafters of this church and the words that rise below them. It is the … exposure of the reader and the emotional weight of bearing witness to [this] vulnerability that each listener carries and that together we share. It is the physical hug directly afterward and the small mental pat on the back I give each time I subsequently see that person on the path. It is in knowing just a little bit more about a fellow Exonian, a fellow human, and the broader community of this Island we share.” E

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T H E A C A D E M Y P L A N S F O R A N E W AT H L E T I C F I E L D H O U S E

By Karen Ingraham

I

n 1928, Colonel William Boyce Thompson, class of 1890, gifted $150,000 for the construction of a sports cage. That spring’s Bulletin stated, “Such a building will assist in developing the baseball material and will fill the long-felt need of the track team. For the second sport a cage had become a necessity, if we were ever again to compete with Andover on even terms.”

The Thompson Cage was erected less than a year later, and both the baseball and track teams used it during the winter of 1929. The main building was reported to be “large enough for batting-practice, base-running, and a baseball game restricted to the infield. A net separates the board track above and the cinder track below. When the whole cage is used for track, there is room for a 100-yard straightaway.” Although the Bulletin editors cautioned, “We must not expect miracles to follow the opening of the cage,” coverage in that same issue indicated the spring track squad had “begun the season in much better condition than ever before…” and the 1929 baseball team began “with throwing arms and batting eyes close to the ordinary mid-season form.”

The Cage propelled Exeter’s baseball and track

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programs forward by allowing for training and competition during the cold-weather months. In the 86 years since, the Cage has stood as it did that first season, while PEA’s physical education program has grown tremendously. It now supports 53 competitive teams at the varsity and junior varsity levels, as well as fitness classes that enroll nearly 150 students.

With a greater number of Exonians engaging in physical activity than ever before, the Cage — an admirable construct in its day — no longer adequately serves the needs of today’s young athletes. In recognition of this, the Academy has embarked on plans to construct a new 67,000-square-foot field house with a 200-meter track and four indoor tennis courts on the site of the Cage.

The new facility — estimated to cost $34 million ($29.5 million for construction, $4.5 million for permanent endowment) with a target opening in 2018 — is part of the Academy’s South Campus Master Plan: a long-term, strategic effort to provide a modern, state-of-the-art physical education complex for the entire community.

(Watch for more on the South Campus Master Plan in the winter 2016 Bulletin.)

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ARC/ARCHITECTURAL RESOURCES CAMBRIDGE , INC.

A Leap Forward

View more field house renderings and schematics at www.exeter.edu/ bulletinextras.

A MODERN FACILITY

pedagogically driven strategies and priorities, which include, as coach Hilary Coder says, “making sure that each athlete, who has a finite athletic life, has the opportunity to make the most of their gifts.” The facility will, for instance, enable a student who had to cut his training by two-thirds because of deceleration distances in the Cage to explode in terms of training and potential.

• The Prep Program, a feeder for varsity track, will once again provide approximately 80 students each term with an introduction to the sport and the opportunity to develop their interests and talents.

ARC/ARCHITECTURAL RESOURCES CAMBRIDGE , INC.

A new field house with a 200-meter indoor track would further elevate Exeter’s athletic programming and put winter track on equal footing with the other competitive team sports recognized and supported by the Academy. A new facility would also safeguard the Academy’s position as a leader in physical education and provide the indoor training facilities sought after by more than 60 percent of the student body. A new field house would also be on par with facilities being built by peer schools, including Phillips Andover and Deerfield, and such broad commitment could revitalize the prep league for winter track, creating new avenues of competition for our athletes beyond what they currently have access to.

Facility attributes include: • A 200-meter flat track with six lanes (eight lanes on the straightaway) with NCAA-recommended 60-foot radius and lane width of 3 feet, 6 inches • Dedicated NCAA-regulation areas for shot put, high jump, long jump and pole vault, enabling simultaneous, safe competition as required at meets • Four tennis courts on the infield • Multipurpose surfacing on the infield for track, tennis and other athletic team and group activities • A new wrestling room located on a mezzanine that overlooks the track and tennis courts • Drop nets that surround the infield to allow for concurrent use of this area and the track by different teams or groups • Two batting cages • Bleacher seating for approximately 500 spectators • Parking garage underneath the facility with roughly 170 spaces • Sufficient storage areas for track and other sporting equipment • A plan for rooftop solar installation, which would provide a renewable energy source for the majority of the building’s electrical demand.

PROGRAMMATIC BENEFITS Track

Every November, about 100 athletes — or 10 percent of Exeter’s student population — join the winter track team.

They are a diverse group of boys and girls, from off-season football and lacrosse players to preps who’ve discovered hidden talents for track and field to recruited athletes who intend to pursue the sport collegiately.

With such broad student engagement in a sport as old as ancient Greece, the new field house will enhance opportunities for personal and collective growth.

• The winter track program will progress via

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An exterior rendering of the new field house (opposite page) and an interior view (above). The new facility will be built on the site of the Cage.

• Home meets — eliminated in 2013 and 2014 — will

return, providing athletes with more opportunities to compete against peers from other schools. The new field house will allow the coaches to drive the competition schedule based on what they determine to be the best structure for Exeter athletes.

• Track athletes will also have a stronger sense of community. Currently, because of Cage limitations, students are working out in smaller groups in the wrestling room, in the weight room, in stairwells and on the rubber runway of the Cage floor.

During a training trip last winter to a nearby university’s field house, the whole team was able to practice together. Coder says, “There was banter, camaraderie, processing and exchange regarding the workout ... also about things that were going on in the kids’ lives. It really struck me how this very psychosocial team-building time was completely absent with the current situation in the Cage.”

Tennis

On November 15, 1884, Exeter won its first tennis match against Andover. The athletic program is one of the oldest at the Academy, established in the 19th century along with football, baseball, crew and track — all before Exeter

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had even broken ground on its first than limited use of a space also gymnasium, which it did in 1885. being shared by other programs.

Despite the impressive history of • Technology enhancements will tennis as a PEA sport, the Academy enable video review of events lacks indoor courts for its players to and matches as a team, or indiaccess for training during the shoulvidually in on-one-one sessions der seasons and for tryouts, practices with a coach. and games in early spring when the

outdoor courts are often comproCommunity Access mised by lingering winter conditions Physical Education is a requireor spring rains. ment at Exeter, one that preAs a workaround, temporary dates even the Harkness gift. And flooring is placed in Thompson Gym early in the Academy’s history, in March and netting erected for a Exonians were already keen on single court to accommodate tennis having the proper spaces to pursue Tommy Miller ‘15 during a winter track tryouts. The run-outs and end lines their fitness interests. In its April meet at the University of Southern of the makeshift court fall short of 6, 1878 edition, The Exonian wrote, Maine. PEA has canceled home meets regulation length, which can pose “Gymnastic exercises ought to be due to current conditions in the Cage. unexpected challenges for tennis athprovided in such a way that all stuletes accustomed to standard courts and surfaces. dents may reap the advantages of it. ... We hope that our The four courts in the new field house will: suggestion will in a short time bear fruit in the shape of a commodious building ... [with] every appliance dear to • eliminate the need to construct the same number outside when those courts are relocated to accommo- the true born athlete.”

More than 130 years later, Exonians are fortunate date the new Theater and Dance Center. to have not one building but a complex of facilities and • provide year-round access for tennis players, giving grounds that have evolved to meet the growing needs of these athletes the ability to develop long-term traintoday’s athletes and a culture in which fitness is a staning programs and focus on improving areas of weakdard part of life. Yet it is the very success of our athletic ness in their games through practice on consistent, and physical education programs, and Exeter’s continued regulation surfaces. commitment to excellence, that have made the Cage no • reduce the need to disrupt schedules and cancel longer “commodious” for the demands placed upon it. A matches during inclement weather. The entire tennew, larger field house will ensure: nis program would be elevated as a result, with every player possessing a greater competitive advantage • The 200-meter track becomes a resource not only for than is currently possible in early-season play. the winter track team, but also for any athlete seeking a running component to his or her training routine. PEA community members, including faculty Wrestling and staff, will also use the track during lunchtime and Recognized as a sport by the Academy in 1934, wrestling other off-work hours, making the field house a comhas a long and proud history at Exeter, and while the curmunity hub and engendering connections among rent wrestling room in the Cage is functional, it lacks a adults and students alike. modern design that would raise the level of training available to students in the following ways: • Out-of-season athletes can continue a training regimen during the colder months. The baseball and • Nearly three-quarters of the students who try out for softball teams, for instance, will have access to two the sport are already wrestling and competing yearbatting cages, rather than one; and lacrosse players round. This is a marked shift from 10 or 15 years ago, will be able to practice shooting on goal. when a majority of students on the team would have had no prior exposure to the sport. As a result of this • Club sports and team practices will benefit from a shift in incoming talent, the wrestling coaches have more consistent, safe surface on which to play. redesigned training regimens, which require a larger, • Fitness instructors who have had to cut class sizes, dedicated space for the use of supplemental equipalter programs and teach in hallways and closets will ment. Without enough functional space, wrestlers have proper space, lighting and ventilation in which must train on their own in different areas of the athto teach. E letic complex and not benefit from team building and immediate access to the coaching staff.

For more information on the field house and the campaign to fund it, contact Lynn Knowles, in the Office of Institutional Advancement, at lknowles@exeter.

• Space dedicated to the wrestling program will ensure edu or 603-777-3020. athletes have consistent, year-round access, rather 3 2 • T H E

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NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ATHLETIC COMPLEX

By Mike Catano Thanks to the support of Exeter alumni, the Academy completed two athletic facilities projects on the south campus that have had an immediate and positive impact on the entire Exeter community.

Downer Family Fitness Center gets a workout Built on the ground floor of Thompson Gym, the much-anticipated new fitThe Downer family: Nick ‘06, Caroline ‘07, ness center has a generous 9,000 square feet of open space; a turf space Tony ‘75, Amy ‘75 and Chris ‘06. for multi-direction drills and agility training; 38 pieces of cardiovascular equipment, such as stationary bikes, elliptical machines and treadmills; 12 power racks with Olympic platforms accompanied by free weights; and Keiser air resistance machines. Popular additions include a music system, TVs, and video technology to enhance training.

The fitness center was made possible thanks to the generosity of the Downer family, which includes Trustee John “Tony” Downer ’75; his wife, Amy Chan Downer ’75; and their children, Caroline Downer ’07, Chris Downer ’06 and Nick Downer ’06.

The new center triples the space of the former weight room located in Love Gym, which was built in 1970. In recent years, strength and conditioning has shifted away from universal The fitness center offers a weight machines that work on isolated muscle groups to more complete training circuit. athletic movements, gross motor activity and multi-joint exercises. This required more space — for the heavily used Olympic lifting stations (barbells) and the large turf area.

Rob Morris, football coach and former athletic director, and Strength and Conditioning Coach Andrea Sweet developed their vision for a new fitness center after visiting some of the best New England facilities at the college and prep school level, including Division I Boston College and Springfield College. Sweet, whose office is adjacent to the exercise area for accessibility to students, says the new facility “lets us coach to a higher level,” and she adds, “It is so rewarding to see this project come to fruition.”

Hatch Field sees early season action Located behind Phelps Stadium, the new synthetic turf field — named after Norman “Hatchie” Hatch, who was considered Exeter’s “father of lacrosse” — is now available as a secondary artificial playing surface to help offset the demands placed on the eight-year-old turf in Phelps Stadium.

Hatch Field’s larger size supports multiple practices simultaneously, which allows for greater ease in scheduling team practices and interscholastic games. Athletic Director Shane LaPointe is thrilled that the increased capacity allowed Exeter to host a field hockey jamboree in September. “We could fit four teams comfortably around the venue and conduct a safe tournament,” Girls field hockey playing on the new turf. she says, “and trainers and spectators could access the field easily.”

Use of Hatch Field will vary with the athletic seasons with field hockey leading the fall schedule. Boys and girls lacrosse will be assigned to the turf during springtime, and if weather conditions make the grass fields and diamonds unsuitable for play, the soccer, baseball and softball teams will also relocate to the turf. Athletic team tryouts, fitness classes, the Prep Program and intramural and club teams will also benefit from this additional, consistent playing surface.

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CHERYL SENTER

“BEING A STUDENT AT EXETER IS LIKE CLIMBING A STEEP MOUNTAIN, BUT THE VIEW FROM THE TOP MAKES IT ALL WORTHWHILE.”

CONNECTIONS

News and notes from the alumni community

Why I Volunteer

The author with her children Charlie and Josie.

By Sally Brown Russ ’81

M

DAN COURTER

y relationship with Phillips Exeter Academy began in 1978 with a letter of acceptance from Lewis Hitzrot.

I arrived on campus in September, brimming with excitement and nervousness. Could I ever hope to get the grades my parents were expecting? Would I get along with my roommate? It was thrilling to join this community of talented faculty and impressive peers. You probably felt much the same way when you embarked upon your journey with the school.

Being a student at Exeter is like climbing a steep mountain. But as I tell my children who are current students, the view from the top makes it all worthwhile. After reaching the summit (graduation), your relationship with the school levels out and your path going forward will be forever loaded with friendships and connections and celebrations.

And Exeter does have celebrations! In any given month there are parties and outings for Exonians all over the world. Volunteers help make many of these events happen (just look at page 40 for a story about the president of our New York alumni association, and see photos on pages 42 - 47 of student and alumni gatherings, many of them hosted by dedicated volunteers). These diverse social get-togethers share the common thread of celebrating our connection to this amazing institution and to one another.

It’s been a privilege to continue my association with Exeter for over 30 years through volunteer roles ranging from planning reunions to organizing alumni dinners and hosting ice cream socials for students from my area. Even making fundraising phone calls has been a pleasure because I’ve reconnected with folks who climbed the mountain with me. To a person, we are all proud of our connection to Exeter. A recent highlight has been attending the annual fall Exeter Leadership Weekend (look for photos in the next issue of the Bulletin!), when class officers and correspondents, regional association leaders, admissions representatives, reunion volunteers and Parents Committee members come back to school to hear about what is new on campus, share ideas and network with one another.

I encourage you to get involved if you aren’t already. I have met wonderful classmates, connected with fellow current parents, and rekindled friendships from my teenage years. Volunteering for Exeter has enriched my life, and here’s the best part: It’s been overwhelmingly FUN! E Sally Brown Russ ’81 lives part time in Exeter and in Houston, Texas, with her husband, Mark Russ. They have three children: Jack ’13, Charlie ’16 and Josie ’16.

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P R O F I L E

E D WA R D “ T E D ” WA L W O R T H ’6 2

Back to Basics

By Sarah Zobel

A

fter three decades as a surgeon, Edward “Ted” Walworth, M.D. ’62 had mastered laparoscopy and other high-tech approaches to medicine. But when he began volunteering with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF; Doctors Without Borders) in 2011, it was the old-school medicine that most engaged him.

“The joy was going back to basics: pre-laparoscopy, pre-CT scan, pre-MRI,” says Walworth. “It was me, my stethoscope, my eyeballs and my judgment. I felt like a 28-year-old again, using the basics of surgery that I had learned back in my residency.” That residency, at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and the Veterans Administration hospital in nearby White River Junction, Vermont, occurred between Walworth’s time at Columbia Medical School and his two years in the Navy. When his service ended in 1977, Walworth and his wife, Candace, a nephrologist he’d met at Columbia, both found positions at St. Mary’s Hospital and Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, Maine. Together, they opened a practice and went on to build their own office facility and dialysis unit.

Walworth’s humanitarian work originated during the summer after his Exeter graduation. He joined a group called Winant Volunteers, working with youth and adults in social clubs and settlement houses in lower-income areas of London. Four years later, he served as a group leader for the Winants in Liverpool. And in 2002, when a group of nurses traveled from St. Mary’s to an affiliate, St. Boniface Hospital in Fond-des-Blancs, Haiti, for a week, Walworth joined them. He dealt mostly with “lumps and bumps” because there was no means of using general anesthesia, but still got a sense of what it meant to practice medicine in a developing country. Inspired by that short trip, and with his 33-year practice winding down, he applied to MSF. Walworth’s first mission, in July 2011, was to Duékoué, a small town in Ivory Coast that had recently lost 800 citizens to infighting. The surgeons who had fled the area were just returning as Walworth arrived, and he served as their assistant. In 2012, Walworth was deployed to Léogâne, Haiti, near the epicenter of the catastrophic 2010 earthquake.

“I learned more orthopedics in that month than I had in medical school, residency and practice combined,”

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Dr. Ted Walworth (center) in Rutshuru, Congo, with colleagues from Belgium, Congo and Niger.

he says. “You sort of get in your own lane in the States and you don’t cross boundaries. But with Médecins Sans Frontières, you do everything that comes at you.”

His missions continued in 2013 with a month in the Central African Republic, where political instability was on the rise. Walworth was the only surgeon at the hospital in Paoua, which meant he was on call 24 hours a day.

“Setting bones, urological procedures — I did it all,” he says of that tour, adding that it was his most satisfying.

“Bottom line: Getting out of one’s comfort zone for me meant seeing all of this in real time, not on a TV screen, traveling to areas far off the tourist radar, and practicing surgery in a totally different ... environment.” His final assignment, in 2014, was in Congo, where he was one of three surgeons in rotation in Rutshuru.

Now Walworth’s goal is to motivate others to volunteer. He’s involved with Maine Gun Safety Coalition and the Public Health Committee of the Maine Medical Association, but he has stepped down from an active role with MSF. Eleven months away from medicine and one month practicing feels too risky after five years of retirement.

“You never forget how to make an incision,” he says.

Rather, “it’s the mental processes, the coordination, the give-and-take with other doctors” that get rusty. He’s also looking forward to spending more time with his two daughters and two new grandchildren, as well as to continuing to play the bassoon in several Maine ensembles. Whatever time is left may be dedicated to following the advice of his late uncle, the writer William Zinsser, who suggested Walworth turn his MSF journals into a family history or a handbook for others who also seek to fulfill their humanitarian instincts. E

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P R O F I L E

MARY TUOMANEN ’99

Onstage Waves

By Sarah Zobel

A

ctivism and theater have been intertwined since Aristophanes sent the fictional Lysistrata and the women of Greece on a mission to end the Peloponnesian War in 411 B.C. Mary Tuomanen ’99 carries on that tradition, pointing to current and historical events — including the Occupy movement, the Pussy Riot trial in Russia, and the struggle between second- and third-wave feminists — as influential to her career both onstage and behind the scenes. A Philadelphia-based playwright, director and actor — in her words, a “theater artist” — Tuomanen has looked at issues of gender and sexuality and of race relations in her work. She’s been part of ensemble theater and solo productions and played Joan of Arc, Hamlet and, most recently, a young Andy Warhol. While it was her time at L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris that helped Tuomanen understand the multidisciplinary European approach to theater and how to structure a story as writer, director and actor, she first found experiential theater — which assimilates the audience into the show — at Exeter.

Tuomanen discovered the stage during her junior year, at a time when productions historically leaned toward the classics. In response to students’ protests against more Shakespeare, Designer and Technical Director Cary Wendell suggested The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.

“It was really intense, and it changed my brain, and changed me,” says Tuomanen of Marat/Sade, as it is known. “Doing that play at age 17 profoundly affected how I went on with my life.” Today, when she collaborates with her company, Applied Mechanics, or performs with ensemble troupes like the Riot Group or The Bearded Ladies, she readily finds a connection between ensemble theater and the Harkness table.

“The director becomes the Harkness teacher, so is the facilitator — he or she brings provocations, much like a teacher would bring in a text or a question — and the group comes back with answers, either with movement or a soundscape or a scene, and the plays end up being made through a collage of those elements,” she says. Even smaller projects benefit from that approach, as when Tuomanen was struggling to write Saint Joan,

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Betrayed, a one-person show inspired in part by her physical resemblance to Joan of Arc (she performed it in Exeter in summer 2014 as part of a tour). She was invited to refine it at a writing residency at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia; while there, she struggled for reasons she couldn’t immediately pinpoint. Two other playwrights in residence, Deb Margolin and Dael Orlandersmith, suggested she write instead about that resistance, and within two days, Tuomanen had created Hello! Sadness!, a humorous one-woman show that’s a response to societal reactions to activist women.

“Artists and women who take leadership roles can easily be labeled ‘nuts,’ and we have so much political baggage at our disposal to use as a weapon to diminish a person,” she says, making a connection as well to race relations in the United States. Tuomanen incorporated the history of the Black Panthers, visits from poet Emily Dickinson and actress Jean Seberg, and sex workers into the show. And Joan of Arc is there, too, with Tuomanen calling her creation of a “third gender in the 15th century outrageous!”Hello! Sadness! (a title inspired by Françoise Sagan’s novel Bonjour Tristesse) is a reflection of the fight against diminishment — whether because of gender, race or sexuality — and of how difficult it can be to keep asserting oneself.

“Joan shows up and says, ‘No, I’m a third gender — I’m allowed to defy all the rules,’ ” says Tuomanen. “But France wasn’t immediately liberated. Women weren’t then allowed to become knights and wear pants, so you could argue that within her lifetime, she was a failure.

Yet the important thing is to do it because it’s right — not because you know you will succeed, but because it’s the correct thing to do.” E

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C O N N ECT I O N S

P R O F I L E

K U S H P AT E L ’0 5

A New Kind of School

By Debbie Kane

K

ush Patel ’05 was destined to become an

entrepreneur. His earliest role model was his father, an electrical engineer who founded a California-based hardware networking startup and subsequently sold it to a New Hampshire company.

Later, as an analyst in Mumbai for an India-focused hedge fund, Patel met many entrepreneurs, discussing and closely studying their businesses. When it was time for his next career challenge, “I knew I wanted to start my own company,” he says. In 2012, he did.

Patel is CEO of App Academy, an immersive web development and job placement program with locations in San Francisco and New York City. The business model came from Patel’s personal experience taking a software development course. “I thought the immersive coding school model was fantastic but I wanted to make several significant changes,” he says. He and co-founder Ned Ruggeri, a Google engineer and former classmate from the University of Chicago, established App Academy using tuition as an incentive for prospective students: There are no upfront costs to take the course. An App Academy graduate pays a placement fee only if he or she finds a web development job after the program ends.

The fee is 18 percent of the student’s first-year salary, payable over six months after employment begins. “Our students know they want to pursue coding as a career,” Patel says. “They’re essentially putting their lives on hold 3 8 • T H E

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while taking this course. It’s a commitment and they’re not earning any money while they’re doing it. Our tuition model is both an attempt to share the risk burden as well as to better align incentives.”

App Academy’s full-time, 12-week classes are targeted to recent college graduates and career changers. The application process, which includes a coding challenge, is competitive: Of 25,000 applicants annually, only 2 percent are accepted. Prior programming experience isn’t required, and most of the students don’t have computer science degrees or coding backgrounds. The course graduates approximately 500 students annually.

Coding “boot camps” like App Academy help to meet a growing need for web developers. Based on 2012 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, 150,000 programming jobs are available annually. Building upon relationships with tech employers such as Google and Uber, Patel and his team have placed 98 percent of App Academy graduates. Students are making an average annual salary of $105,000 (in San Francisco) or $89,000 (in New York City). That’s outpacing salaries of undergraduates with computer science degrees from top schools, according to Patel. “Google has actually condensed its interview process for programming jobs from a few months to a few weeks for our graduates because they know they’re getting qualified candidates from App Academy,” he says.

Patel credits Exeter with helping him develop critical problem-solving skills and a dedicated work ethic, both key for successful entrepreneurs. “I worked the hardest I ever have when I was at Exeter,” he says. “It gave me the perspective and tools to problem-solve early in my career at the hedge fund and today at App Academy. I know I can push myself and accomplish a lot from working hard.”

For now, Patel works to refine the App Academy brand.

He and Ruggeri aren’t currently interested in expanding to new locations; they’re focused on high-quality training and continuing to be a resource for cutting-edge application development.

“We’re competing with master’s degree programs in computer science,” Patel says. “We want to continue to be the school of choice for coding education.” E

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What’s Your Story?

The first weeks on campus at the start of school remind us all about the importance of connections — those first friendships made and the longtime bonds renewed. Of the teachers and coaches who have been inspirational, and those who may be in the years ahead. And of those members of our community whose impact is often more subtle, yet no less influential to the Exeter experience.

We want to celebrate these connections, the people who made your own Exeter experience memorable, survivable, life-changing ... or simply fun. Share your story with us, and we may share it with our community online or in the Bulletin.

Connect with us at bulletin@exeter.edu and help us tell the stories of Exeter people.

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C O N N ECT I O N S

V O L U N T E E R

P R O F I L E

C I AT TA B AY S A H ’ 9 7

Six Degrees of Ciatta

By Jen Kaleba

I

f you’ve ever met Ciatta Baysah ’97, you might think

of the party trick Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, in which you see how many people it takes to arrive at a connection to the Footloose star. She’s a little like that, only for Exonians and not Baconians, and with a whole lot more practicality.

In January, Baysah was appointed president of the Exeter Alumni Association of Greater New York, of which she’s been a member since 2003. In her new role, she’s leading the charge to connect as many alums (and their families) as possible through a bevy of NYC-based networking events that range from ballgames to philharmonic outings to parent-and-tot picnics in the park.

“The whole point is to allow people to relive their love of Exeter and their classmates, and enjoy New York, because we live in the greatest city in the world,” says Baysah.

Spoken like a native. With a law degree from Seton Hall University, and several years of experience in small firms, she returned to her home city as a litigator in her own Bronx-based practice (Baysah Law Group). When she’s not orchestrating fun-with-a-function networking events for Exonians — as well as current and future entrepreneurs, marketers, business developers and website designers — Baysah serves as a senior legal adviser for the International Justice Project, a nonprofit that seeks to protect human rights by advancing the rule of law. And though it was put on hold due to the Ebola outbreak, she was also tasked by the acting chief justice of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Liberia with coordinating the revision of the rules of procedure for Liberia’s court system.

So, lest you think of Baysah as a mere social butterfly, think again.

“I’m just interested in people,” she puts it simply. “If I could have a superpower, it would be to speak every language on the planet so I could talk with anyone.”

Baysah particularly enjoys talking to people who don’t share her views — a trait for which she credits Exeter.

“When I was there, Exeter wasn’t the most diverse place in terms of racial background, but for some reason it felt diverse,” she says. “The administration encouraged you to experience different people and cultures.” She recalls the

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DAN COURTER

Liberian flag flying in the gymnasium, added in honor of her heritage, as an example of how the school created a supportive environment for cultural diversity, and she says she and other Exeter alums have taken that to heart.

“A lot of my friends from Exeter have that Harkness table view of communicating, understanding other people’s points of view, and then we move on.”

Baysah’s natural ability to connect with others is key to making her an effective social organizer: “I’m a proponent of being open to anything that’s out there because you never know who knows who.”

Case in point: During her time at Seton Hall, Baysah was introduced to John W. (Jack) Bissell ’58; P’95, former chief judge for the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey.

“And everyone knows his father, Hammy,” Baysah says of the chance meeting. (Hammy Bissell ’29 was a longtime Exeter administrator and director of scholarships.) She sent him a résumé that resulted in her interning for Bissell, and ultimately traveling with him back to Exeter when he would speak to the recipients of the Hammy Bissell Scholarship.

Perhaps it’s Baysah’s easygoing approach to networking that has unearthed the best results. Part of why she enjoys the process of making connections between talented, interesting people, she says, is the potential to create something unexpected and wonderful. At Exeter, she saw herself as “a gatherer” who didn’t limit herself to any one group and moved among as many people as she wanted.

Today, through her alumni association work, she’s giving Exeter grads a platform to continue that exploration.

“We have events once or twice a month, and the age range is wide,” she says. Her mother is a frequent attendee and proud Exeter mom, and when Baysah runs into parents of Exeter students, she often puts them in touch with her mother as a way to connect the different generations within an Exeter family. And that includes the next generation, for whom she is putting together a family fun day “to allow alums to bring out their little ones and get to know each other again, and get the future generations to know each other, too.”

“When you go away to school, you’re leaving behind something comfortable,” Baysah says. “You have to make yourself uncomfortable sometimes to get ahead.”

In Baysah’s case, getting ahead is all about being able to help move someone else forward. E

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Baysah on campus for Exeter Leadership Weekend in 2015 (opposite page) and in 2014 with fellow General Alumni Association directors Nancy Wilder ’75, Peter Leslie ’54, Meagen (Ryan) Williams ’93 and Jackie Hayes ’85.

“IF I COULD HAVE A SUPERPOWER, IT WOULD BE TO SPEAK EVERY LANGUAGE ON THE PLANET.”

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commitment our southern African colleagues have for their profession and their students continues to inspire me. Like them, I will seek out new learning opportunities in order to be the best teacher I can be for my students at Exeter.

Educational Exchange

—continued from page 23

where my mom was born was eye-opening for me.

My parents have always instilled in me the importance of education, saying that it is one thing that can never be taken away from a person. From them, I internalized the value of education, but to a certain extent, I took mine for granted. Seeing the limited access to educational opportunities that my South African and Swazi colleagues had, pushed me to reflect on my own background. I came away from my travels with a greater appreciation for the opportunities I’ve had and with renewed passion for increasing educational access for others. At the same time, the

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Q: What did your trip encompass?

Halani: I spent three weeks in southern Africa: one in the Mpumalanga Province of South Africa and two in Swaziland. It was winter in southern Africa and the teachers who attended our workshops were giving up some of their winter break to join us.

We had three math teachers and three science teachers on the TABSA team running daily sessions. In Mpumalanga, we worked directly with about 250 local teachers for several hours a day. The sixth- and seventh-grade math teachers were split into different groups who then rotated through various sessions, so I ended up covering the same material a few times each day.

The next two weeks in Swaziland were supported in part by funding from UNICEF and were hosted at the University of Swaziland (UNISWA) campus. There, we spent a few days training master teachers who then led workshops for another batch of teachers with our support.

The idea is that these master teachers would be able to run workshops after we left.

Teachers came from around the country and many stayed on the UNISWA campus.

The first week was with high school teachers and the second was with teachers from grades 5 through 7.

Q: How did you prepare for the workshops before you arrived in South Africa?

Halani: The teachers in the districts we were visiting provided lists of priority topics that they had trouble teaching. The three members of our team divvied up those topics and put together relevant worksheets, to be combined into booklets that would be handed out at our workshops. Many of the concepts I had from the list of priority topics are not ones I teach in my own classes, so I scoured the South African Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement and Swazi curriculum to understand exactly what the teachers were supposed to know, and I researched what the current educational journals recommend for best practices in those domains. I wanted my worksheets to be problem-based so the teachers could see how students could derive the formulas they need through heavily scaffolded problems and class discussion, as they do here at Exeter. I was continually adding problems and then struggled to trim everything down.

It is expensive to print the workshop booklets for all of the participants, so each instructor was given a 10-page limit for printed materials, although luckily we were given quite a bit of leeway on what we could provide on a CD. Many of the participants asked for extra copies of the CDs. During my stay in South Africa and Swaziland, I was struck by just how much creativity is required of teachers working within the confines of limited resources.

and telling me about the success of a recent workshop he had run using my materials.

Q: How would you describe the connections you made during your stay?

Halani: I had a great time with the rest of the TABSA team and felt lucky to be a part of such an amazing group of educators. I value the connections I made with my southern African colleagues and am more grateful than ever for the resources available to both teachers and students here on campus. I learned some great tools for teaching certain math concepts from the discussions I had with them. Most do not have good Internet access, but they do have Internet-enabled phones. Thanks to social media, several have friended me on Facebook and a few have messaged me asking for ways to introduce certain topics or how to help their students distinguish between two types of transformations. I enjoy serving as a mentor and a friend to these teachers. We will hopefully continue to stay in touch and see each other on future trips.

“THESE TEACHERS ARE MY ROLE MODELS”

Q: Were there any notable moments or exchanges you’d like to share with us?

Halani: I have rarely felt as proud or as fulfilled, when thinking about why I chose to teach, as when Thuli, one of the older Swazi math teachers, told me that our sessions had changed their lives. Although she did seem appreciative of the manipulatives I had devised to teach long division, I doubt she was referring to anything I had done in particular. Instead, I think she was referencing the environment and opportunity we had created. She and her peers had a chance to think deeply about the content they were teaching and discuss the best ways to teach such material. We may have guided the conversation, but they were the driving force. They were the ones making most of the connections, between concepts and with one another. Through those discussions, the teachers seemed empowered to do similar work on their own in the future, and they demonstrated their ability when they led the workshops the next day. So far this seems to be working: I recently received an email from one of the Swazi high school teachers thanking me for our work

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Q: Why do you feel that you came away from the trip a better teacher?

Halani: I was not only pushed to think deeply about material I don’t often teach, but from the beginning, I was impressed and inspired by our colleagues’ devotion to their students and their desire to improve as educators. Many of these teachers are aware that their content knowledge is not as solid as it could be because they have not had equal access to education — which I believe is a fundamental right. Recognizing that the deeper our understanding is of a topic, the better we are able to explain it to others, the South African and Swazi teachers absorbed anything and everything we could share with them. They wanted to learn as much as they could in order to best serve their learners. No matter what challenges they face in their daily classes, they remain committed to doing whatever they can to help their students learn.

These teachers are my role models. I am motivated by their dedicaton to seek out opportunities for my own growth as an educator and committed to attending conferences so that I can continue to expand my knowledge of the best practices in the field of mathematics, in order to best serve my own students. I’m ready to learn about new educational technologies that could help our students make better connections between various concepts, and I am eager to discover and explore stimulating problems and activities that will push our students further. E

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M E M O R I A L

M I N U T E

Robert Foote Brownell Jr. DEAN OF STUDENTS, DIRECTOR OF ADMISSIONS, A N D E D WA R D C . S I M M O N S P R O F E S S O R A N D INSTRUCTOR IN SCIENCE , EMERITUS (1926–2014)

R

ROBERT GAMBEE

obert F. Brownell Jr. ’61, ’62, ’70 (Hon.); P’71, P’73, P’79 was born in Smethport, Pennsylvania, on June 13, 1926. After graduating from Jamestown High School in Jamestown, New York, Bob was drafted into the Navy. Through the Navy’s V-12 program, he was sent to Brown University. He then graduated from Williams College in 1948 with a major in physics and a minor in mathematics. Bob continued his education at Duke University, earning his master’s degree in physics in 1950.

In 1949, Bob married his longtime sweetheart from Jamestown, Shirley Wrathall ’70 (Hon.); P’71, P’73, P’79. The couple moved to Tabor Academy in 1950, where Bob began his long career of teaching, coaching and inspiring young men and women. After spending four years at Tabor Academy, Bob moved on to Berkshire School. In 1958, he accepted an offer to join the Phillips Exeter Academy Science Department, and he and Shirley moved their young family to Exeter.

A longtime colleague of Bob’s described him as “the consummate schoolmaster: accomplished in the classroom, dormitory and the playing fields, a superb mentor for teenagers in their formative years.” A brief review of Bob’s PEA career bears out such high praise.

Bob was well-suited to teach physics and chemistry. Presenting scientific concepts with vivid demonstrations, explaining those concepts in concise language and then translating that language to symbolic relationships appealed to Bob’s orderly mind. His extensive knowledge of and genuine interest in all things scientific made for lively, interesting classes, and he enjoyed the tinkering and manipulating of equipment required to set up a good demonstration or lab exercise. He did not like grading lab reports but understood the importance of prompt evaluation of student work.

Students’ interest in and understanding of science was important to Bob. As a member of the class of 1963 commented, “At our 50th reunion, we all had a chance to reflect

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on what Exeter had given each of us. There is no question that it was teachers like Mr. Brownell who left me with a love of science and a love of learning. It is a debt I can never repay, and only now at his passing begin to understand.”

Bob coached varsity basketball for 13 seasons, compiling an impressive record of 134 wins and 76 losses (16 and 5 versus Andover). He spent 16 years in dormitories, including six years as dorm head in Cilley Hall and four as dorm head in Ewald. In 1967, Bob was appointed assistant dean and director of scholarship students. In 1969, he spent a year as acting dean of students, and the following year was appointed director of admissions — the position he filled until returning full time to the Science Department in 1976. He retired from the Academy in 1988.

Former students remember Bob as a teacher whose care and concern went beyond the classroom door or the basketball court. One of his former basketball players wrote, “Memories include my three trips to Harvard while playing for Yale. Coach Brownell drove down to Cambridge to watch me play. What a guy! What a coach!” Another wrote, “I knew Bob for 55 years, as a student, coach and friend. He and Shirl were a constant source of joy, enthusiasm and caring.”

Bob’s integrity, his success as a teacher and coach, and the respect he earned from colleagues and students brought him many accolades.

Among the honors and awards accorded Bob during his Exeter career, we suspect that he was most proud of those conferred by his former students: honorary membership in the classes of ’61, ’62 and ’70; the class of 1988 PEAN dedication; and the award presented to him and Shirley by the entire PEA community: the 1999 Founder’s Day Award.

Bob loved all aspects of his profession and of the school that allowed him to practice them. He was Exeter’s greatest defender but a thoughtful critic as well. He frequently found himself in the role of the loyal opposition when he believed that proposed changes in policy might undermine the standards he felt were the bedrock of the school. He always expressed that opposition openly, however, generally with well-crafted statements he presented in faculty meetings. He loved the give-and-take of an intense debate and always tried to understand the validity of opposing arguments. He commanded so much respect among the faculty that there was never any animosity, even among those who disagreed strongly with Bob’s position. He believed in a faculty-run school, and when the faculty voted to adopt a policy he disapproved of, he accepted the decision graciously, if not happily.

An avid outdoorsman, Bob made good use of school vacations, spending time with family and friends at the cottage he and Shirley built (with the help of some of his players) on Bow Lake and taking almost annual trips west to camp, hike and fly-fish. Tennis and golf also figured prominently in the list of activities he enjoyed. Reading was another of Bob’s passions. A trip across campus from the science building to the gym often involved a quick stop at the library to return a book or two and select new ones. Even as the disease that finally claimed him robbed him of energy and mobility, Bob remained interested in and informed about the world around him. His daily routine included a full read of The New York Times, and one needed only to mention the word “politics” to get from Bob an earful of colorful but well-informed invective.

On July 18, 2014, Bob Brownell died peacefully at his home in Strafford, New Hampshire. He is survived by Shirley and four children: Susan Hodgson, Beth Lee ’71, Martha Grant ’73 and Robert Brownell III ’79. Family, colleagues and friends will remember Bob as a person whose life embodied so many of the characteristics we hope to instill in our students: scholarship, effort, integrity, loyalty and non sibi. E

“THE CONSUMATE

SCHOOLMASTER...

A SUPERB MENTOR

FOR TEENAGERS IN THEIR FORMATIVE YEARS.”

This Memorial Minute was written by Lew Hitzrot ’60; ’96 (Hon.); P’88, P’95, chairperson; Rich Aaronian ’76, ’78, ’97 (Hon.); P’94, P’97; Dave Arnold ’83 (Hon.); Mike Drummey ’79 (Hon.); P’84, P’86, P’87; and Rick Mahoney ’61; ’74, ’95 (Hon.); P’88, P’92, and was presented at faculty meeting on June 6, 2015.

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F I N I S

O R I G I N E

P E N D E T

The Song of the Goldfinch

By Alice Little ’18 Editor’s Note: Alice wrote the following essay in her prep English class, and faculty members awarded it a prize for best first-year writing.

U

— Mary Oliver

p early in the stillness of the morning, I moved with tiny steps past my sister’s even breaths and made my way down the back stairs to the kitchen. The heavy swinging door was closed but I could still hear the quiet shuffling of slippers as they moved across the gray vinyl floor. Pushing open the door without a sound, I slowly peeked my head around the doorway. I was greeted by the smell of burnt toast. “Good morning, Nan,” I whispered.

Wearing a pink robe with matching slippers, my grandmother stood over the sink busily scraping what looked to be a burnt piece of raisin toast. A film of sugar covered the floor and two boxes of unopened butter sat on the counter.

Dishes and cups were scattered around the table, along with a pile of tea bags that had been hurriedly shaken from the box. There was a time when my grandmother had kept her kitchen spotless, but that was many years ago.

Nan was in the midst of a hushed but lively conversation with her long-dead cousin Albert. When she turned and saw me, she smiled. “Oh, good morning, dear, and sorry about the smell. I can’t seem to get that toaster to work properly anymore,” she said. Her hands fluttered around her like a pair of anxious birds, and her snow-white hair had escaped its bun to form tendrils around her flushed cheeks.

“That’s all right, Nan. Why don’t you sit down in your chair in the sunroom, and I can make you toast and tea.”

I took Nan’s small and bony hand, cold but soft like a child’s, and led her into the other room. Sunlight streamed in through the window, catching the natural sheen on the seashell sun catcher and making it shimmer. A simple bouquet of cheerful red tulips in a glass vase brightened the table.

I sat Nan down in front of the window in the sunbleached blue chair and gave her a magazine to read. As I started back into the kitchen, she began to cry. “I was just trying to heat up some cinnamon toast, but that toaster is such a bother,” she sniffled.

I stopped. The moment felt suspended, as if I were watching the scene play out from the outside. I walked back to her and hugged her tightly.

“It’s no big deal, Nan. It could happen to anyone. You sit right here and let me take care of you,” I instructed. I

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“Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.”

pulled over a box of tissues and handed her a few. She smiled, and I spread a green blanket over her knees. Then, whisking into the kitchen, I promptly put on the hot water and shoved another piece of toast into the toaster. While our morning snacks were warming, I arranged cups and saucers on a black lacquered tray and returned to my seat in the sunroom.

Nan stared out the window at the sky. Maybe she was thinking of something long ago, like the young boys in her neighborhood who’d left for war and never returned. Maybe it was something more simple and recent, like last night’s haddock dinner. We were both silent for a while, and I could hear the birds singing “chir-ee, chir-ee.” Nan’s faded bird feeder stood in front of the window, its once vibrant reds and blues now washed out to the color of the old lobsterman’s buoys left stranded on the beach down the street from her house. Perched upon the bird feeder were birds of all shapes, sizes and feathers. I was reminded of my mornings as a very young girl when Nan would instruct me on every detail of each bird at her feeder. She and I would gaze out the window, eager to spot one of our favorite birds. She would always make me cinnamon raisin swirl toast “with extra butter, please!”

I heard the “ding” of the toaster and went to collect the toast, tea and my hot cocoa. As I set them down next to Nan, she closed her eyes and inhaled the scented steam from the tea. Then she turned her eyes back to the window.

“Alice, look!” she gasped. “It’s a goldfinch!” There was indeed a goldfinch at the bird feeder, our favorite bird: nature’s brilliant gold, with black-and-white trim on its wings, compact and self-contained as it sat feeding on the perch of the faded feeder. Its black eyes, dots that never seemed to close, stared back at us through the window as it ate quickly. It may have been the same bird we’d watched so many years ago. After a moment, it darted away into the nearby rhododendron.

I sighed and sat back in my seat, sipping my hot cocoa and trying to suck up the marshmallows through my straw.

Then, the colors of the room — red tulips, blue seats, yellow-and-white checkered tablecloth — blended together, and I listened to Nan as she told me, once again, about her favorite cousin, Albert. E

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