CM Commonwealth School Magazine Fall 2015
The Pause That Refreshes Writing and art by Commonwealth alumni/ae Also: Moving Staircases and Other Wonders Captain America
Why I Made It Captain America By Christopher Gleason ’15
W
alking around Salem close to Halloween, I took a lot of pictures of people in costumes. Most of them were rushed and not very well composed, and this one was no exception: the entire right-hand side of the photo showed the father of this little Captain America from the waist down. But I liked the image of the kid; I liked the angle of the wall and the way the boy looked. I spent a few class periods using Photoshop to make it look as though the wall extended. It was difficult and time consuming to copy and match the style of the brick-patterned wall, but mainly, it was boring. After I had worked on it for a while, Rusty asked me, “What do you want to do with this photo?” I told him I wanted to fix the background to make the wall look natural. “No, he insisted, “What do you want to do with this photo?” I thought about it. I liked this picture because the kid looked like he was in his own world. He seemed to believe he was Captain America, a hero in his own mind. I told Rusty that I wanted to bring the idea of playing pretend to the foreground. First I gave the boy laser eyes. Then I began making a fantasy world around him. The fantasy enhanced the image (and solved the problem of the right side of the photo). I added all the colors and one big rainbow, and it was done. Though I originally liked the part of the shot showing a child dressed as a superhero, by using my imagination I was able to bring the whole picture to life. With simple photo-manipulation, I turned an unusable photograph into a piece of art that I felt had meaning.
FROM TH E ED I TO R
“
I
wish we had more space,” I found myself saying over and over as I compiled alumni/ae writing and art for this issue of CM. With so many terrific examples of both—so much more work than would fit—choosing was difficult. In the following pages you’ll find, we hope, a satisfyingly broad mixture of styles and subjects both in the texts and in the visual works accompanying them. We hope most of all that these selections will prompt you to take in more art and writing (and performance, and scholarship) by these and other alumni/ae as well by as our current students. “I wish we had more space”: also one of the reasons we decided to go through ambitious renovations at the school. With no ability to expand outward, upward, or downward, devising the best use of the space contained within our walls became the only way to improve our facilities. You can read more on the project in this issue, or by revisiting the updates posted during the summer at www. commschool.org/renovation. To watch the renovation unfold was an extraordinary experience for me. First, demolition revealed fascinating details of nineteenthcentury construction. Later, I was amazed by the scope and coordination as numerous large projects played out simultaneously. Carpenters, masons, plumbers, electricians, and many others danced a steel-toed ballet as they worked among and around each other. Our site managers demonstrated impressive tenacity, constantly coping with unexpected discoveries, from rotted floor joists to stubborn engineering problems. We didn’t cross the finish line quite when we’d planned: we spent the first few days of school in rented spaces off-site. But seeing our lovely school updated and improved, while still retaining its historical charm, has been nothing short of magical. Tristan Davies ’83
Director of Communications, Editor tdavies@commschool.org
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The Commonwealth School Alumni/ae Magazine Issue 9 Fall 2015 Headmaster William D. Wharton
Editor Tristan Davies ’83 tdavies@commschool.org, (617) 266-7525 x290 Design Jeanne Abboud Associate Editor Rebecca Folkman Class Notes Editors Grayson Palmer Drew Oliveira Contributing Writers Alisha Atlas-Corbett ’01 Christopher Gleason ’15 Alina Grabowski ’12 Robert Johnson, Jr., ’67 Jazmin Lantigua ’17 Don MacDonald ’90 Ottessa Moshfegh ’98 Chris Norris ’85 Rebecca Steinitz ’82
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Contributing Artists Georgia Adamson ’18 Elise Friedman ’15 Liza King ’69 Don MacDonald ’90 Anne Morgan Spalter ’82 Emma Porter ’17 Sara Press ’92 Brandon Stoloff ’91 Meg Turner ’03 Will Whelan ’01
CMYK / .eps
commschoolalums @commschool commonwealthschool CM is published twice a year by Commonwealth School, 151 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02116 and distributed without charge to alumni/ae, current and former parents, and other members of the Commonwealth community. Opinions expressed in CM are those of the authors and subjects, and do not necessarily represent the views of the school or its faculty and students. We welcome your comments and news at commonwealth@commschool.org. Letters and notes may be edited for style, length, clarity, and grammar. Printed on recycled paper. Please recycle.
Correction In the spring issue, we erred on Jane Cutter’s class year (“The New Civil Rights Movement,” page 8). Jane graduated in 1981. We apologize for the mistake.
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CM Commonwealth School Magazine
Contents
Fall 2015
Why I Made It
4
1
Captain America
News
9
4
Moving Stairways and Other Wonders
Knickpoint
7
Alina Grabowski ’12
1964
6
9
Ottessa Moshfegh ’98
What Does “Mom” Mean?
15
Jazmin Lantigua ’17
Machiavelli
16
Don MacDonald ’90
You Ain’t Never Lied
19
Robert Johnson, Jr., ’67
Smells Like Words
23
Rebecca Steinitz ’82
Class Notes
25
The Alumni/ae Association
31
Alumnus Perspective: My Guilty Top Five
32
The secret shame of Chris Norris ’85
21
On the cover: “Release” from the 2015 spring student art show. This exuberant two-by-three-foot painting by Georgia Adamson ’18 perfectly illustrates the irrepressible creative energy of our school’s students and alumni/ae.
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COMMO NWEA LTH
News Moving Staircases and Other
T
WONDERS
his summer Commonwealth completed the first phase—and the majority of the work—of a major renovation. Overall, the goal is to bring the school in line with current teaching, technology, and facility requirements, while preserving the welcoming, home-like atmosphere and the historical integrity of our buildings.
Major elements of the first phase included:
The removed chemistry and biology labs.
Renovated Science Labs
The newly renovated chemisty and biology labs.
Completely rebuilt biology and chemistry rooms on the first floor include new moveable furniture that allows for quick and easy reconfigurations of the spaces to accommodate lecture classes, laboratory classes, or small-group work. Between the two classrooms a suite of offices and prep areas have replaced the previous open basement stairwell.
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New Stairway and
Lobby Connection
T
he narrow link between the Commonwealth and Dartmouth lobbies, always a bottleneck, has been expanded to include the area once occupied by two restrooms. Besides providing more room to move, elegant sightlines, and better light, the passage now serves as the upper entry to a new basement staircase. A mermaidemblazoned window set into the wall brings in natural light. n
n
n
Equally important, albeit less visible, Commonwealth now has its first school-wide heating and cooling system, based on high-efficiency heat pumps. New exterior windows on the lower level and first and second floors, and renovated windows on upper floors, will prevent those sweeping winter drafts many of us remember so well. Phase two of the renovation primarily focuses on installing an elevator in the prepared central airshaft.
Two students prepare to go down the new staircase.
For more details and photos of how work progressed over the summer (you’ll be amazed), check out the updates posted at www.commschool.org/renovation.
Tristan I need your help with this spot!! Artwork?????
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By Alina Grabowski ’12
Knickpoint R
because her father went missing. “I know you’re busy,” her mother said on the phone. “But it’s your dad.” Remy borrowed the Jeep of the boy was she was dating and left campus a few hours later. Finals had ended, but they were both staying at school for summer research. “Do you want me to come with you?” he asked when she got in the car. She hadn’t realized quickly enough that he was one of those boys so nice that they turned you mean, as though it was your job to prepare them for the realities of the world. “It’s easier if I go alone,” she said. She’d told him that her aunt was in the hospital with a rare stomach infection. “Well.” he poked his head through the open window of the front seat, “if you change your mind...” “If I change my mind, I have your car.” He stepped back from the door as she started to roll up the window. “I’m just trying to help.” “I know,” she said. emy returned home
u u u
Nashquitten was hot, like always from May through August. Her father used to brag it was the hottest town in Massachusetts. Remy remembered the summer he got sunburned so badly that the peeling skin of his face collected in flakes on his shirt collar. As Remy turned into the driveway, the car radio announced ninety-two degrees. Her mother was sitting on the porch swing, sketching something in her notebook. The empty side of the driveway was her father’s spot, so Remy pulled onto the lawn. “What are you drawing?” she asked, opening her door. “I wish you hadn’t done that,” her mother said, shaking her head. “I was just starting to get the yard into some kind of shape.” Remy joined her mother. “It looks the same.”
“That’s because I’m not done yet.” Her mother rose, laying her sketchbook on the swing. “You look good,” she said. “Thanks.” “Your hair’s different.” “I got bangs.” They stood for a moment, scraping the bottoms of their shoes against the splintered porch. “Well, give me a hug.” Remy leaned into her mother’s open arms, which hooked quickly and tightly around her back, as though to anchor her there. “I missed you,” her mother whispered. “Me, too,” Remy said, the easiest lie she’d ever told. Her mother stepped back, leaning her head to one side. “You look so much like him.” She sat back down. “It’s spooky.” u u u
Remy did what she’d done as a girl when her father disappeared. She cut one of his Hanes undershirts into thin strips and tied them to various parts of the room: the foot of her bed, the neck of her lamp, the crank of her window. She tucked the rest into the slats of her closet door, save for one she tied around her ankle and stuffed into her sock. The first time her father left she was twelve years old. She searched “how to bring back your dad” on the Internet. Mystical Marie’s blog advised scattering items that had had physical contact with the missing, like socks or shirts or bracelets, about the place where you wanted him/her to return. Then you were supposed to walk the perimeter of said place, repeating the person’s name while conjuring up a strong mental portrait. Remy walked around the edge of her room, thinking dad dad dad dad dad. She pictured his freckles and his bald spot the size of a silver dollar, but she couldn’t remember whether he’d still had his beard at Christmas. u u u
Opposite page: Sara Press ’92, The Apiary #1, relief ink with hammered gold flecks.
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Remy did what she’d done as a girl when her father disappeared. She cut one of his Hanes undershirts into thin strips and tied them to various parts of the room: the foot of her bed, the neck of her lamp, the crank of her window. u u u Her mother decided they should check past spots. They first went to Conch Light, where her mother once found her father in the lighthouse keeper’s cottage, sleeping underneath the dining room table. Remy had been candlepin bowling with Sarah Evans, and after Sarah’s mom dropped her off, she found her mother sitting at the kitchen counter peeling oranges. “Your dad’s home,” her mother said. And then, “You should go to sleep,” even though it was only eight. When Remy woke up in the morning her mother was still there, curls of peel gone dry on the counter and the floor. Her mother parked the car. “Try the back door,” she suggested. “That’s how I got in last time.” “That was a long time ago.” Remy unbuckled her seatbelt and twisted her hair into a ponytail. The back door wasn’t unlocked, but through a window left ajar, Remy could see the kitchen inside. She heard no noise except the waves slapping the jetty in the distance. Her father was a heavy snorer; and when not doing well, he talked to himself. During Remy’s high-school years, he believed their neighbors were plotting to kidnap them and that the rolling thud of the washing machine signaled their coming. Stay away stay away stay away she often heard him whispering. She didn’t hear anything now. She returned to the car. “It’s empty,” she said, ducking back inside. “I figured.” Her mother sighed. “On to the next.” They drove to Hester’s Diner, sandwiched between Sandpiper Toys and Sandy’s Books on the main strip in the harbor. Almost all the shops were closed now, the windows lit in only a handful of restaurants. At Hester’s, fluorescent bulbs clearly illuminated the interior. Her mother pulled over, and Remy hopped out, the smell of the sea hitting her like strong perfume. As a girl she’d pictured fish bathing whenever she smelled the ocean, cod and lobsters and crabs scrubbing themselves with barnacles and seaweed. She pushed open the diner door to scan the mostly empty counter and high tops. “No go.” Remy got back in the car. “Only one more,” her mother said, turning the key in the ignition. Her face was unreadable, as Remy knew she had trained it to be. Though she had seen her father cry on multiple occasions, she had seen her mother cry just once, when she sliced off the tip of her thumb cutting carrots. And even then it had been a quick tear wiped away with a napkin. “Are you okay?” Remy asked, watching the streetlights they passed spill orange light onto empty sidewalks. “I’m happy you’re here,” her mother answered, her face unchanged. “Really?”
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Her mother placed a hand on her shoulder. “Really.” They turned onto the bridge connecting the town to a cliff scattered with huge beach houses, many occupied only during the summer months. Her mother took a right into the parking lot for Widow’s Walk Beach, empty save for two cars near the dumpster and Port-a-Potty. As Remy rolled down her window, warm air rushed in, thick with humidity and sea salt. She heard the waves breaking and wondered how anyone could ever find that noise soothing. They parked at the wooden boardwalk and stepped onto the sandy parking lot. Red tide alert: NO SWIMMING read a sign staked next to the fence that ran the perimeter of the lot. Remy and her mother walked in silence, sea grass scratching their ankles, the strip of tee shirt still tied around Remy’s. It was dark on Widow’s Walk, but a bonfire burned in the distance, and sounds of teenagers laughing and clinking beer bottles echoed down the beach. Houses that looked too heavy for their thin wooden stilts guarded the narrow rocky expanse, some lit, others dark. Her mother pulled a tiny green flashlight from her jacket pocket, a flashlight Remy recognized as her own, from when she used to stay up late reading under the covers. “Let’s do a sweep,” her mother said. Then she hooked an arm around Remy’s. “But stay together.” They walked parallel lines along the strip of damp sand, eaten to almost nothing by the high tide. The moon dripped a long triangle of light over the ocean. Remy stopped a moment, causing her mother to trip. Near the shore the sea looked red, and the waves frothy with blood as they broke. “He’s not here,” she said. Her mother squeezed her hand, “Let’s go home.”
Alina Grabowski is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania. The story excerpted here comes from a set of linked stories Alina worked on as the inaugural recipient of the Clearman Cottage Writer’s Residency. The residency funded a week of writing and consultation with author Buzz Bissinger and his wife, writer and producer Lisa Smith, at the couple’s guest house in Washington. Sara Press (www.sarapress.com), a photographer, printmaker, and book artist, lives in Sonoma County, California. Her work is included in the collections of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery Library, among many others.
1964
By Ottessa Moshfegh ’98
An excerpt from
E i l ee n
Photographs by Meg Turner ’03
I
looked like a girl you’d expect to see on a city bus, reading some clothbound book from the library about plants or geography, perhaps wearing a net over my light brown hair. You might take me for a nursing student or a typist, note the nervous hands, a foot tapping, bitten lip. I looked like nothing special. It’s easy for me to imagine this girl, a strange, young and mousy version of me, carrying an anonymous leather purse or eating from a small package of peanuts, rolling each one between her gloved fingers, sucking in her cheeks, staring anxiously out the window. The sunlight in the morning illuminated the thin down on my face, which I tried to cover with pressed powder, a shade too pink for my wan complexion. I was thin, my figure was jagged, my movements pointy and hesitant, my posture stiff. The terrain of my face was heavy with soft, rumbling acne scars blurring whatever delight or madness lay beneath that cold and deadly New England exterior. If I’d worn glasses I could have passed for smart, but I was too impatient to be truly smart. You’d have expected me to enjoy the stillness of closed rooms, take comfort in dull silence, my gaze moving slowly across paper, walls, heavy curtains, thoughts never shifting from what my eyes identified—book, desk, tree, person. But I deplored silence. I deplored stillness. I hated almost everything. I was very unhappy and angry all the time. I tried to control myself, and that only made me more awkward, unhappier, and angrier. I was like Joan of Arc, or Hamlet, but born into the wrong life— the life of a nobody, a waif, invisible. There’s no better way to say it: I was not myself back then. I was someone else. I was Eileen. And back then—this was fifty years ago—I was a prude. Just look at me. I wore heavy wool skirts that fell past my knees, thick stockings. I always buttoned my jackets and blouses as high as they could go. I wasn’t a girl who turned heads. But there was nothing really so wrong or terrible about my appearance. I was young and
fine, average, I guess. But at the time I thought I was the worst— ugly, disgusting, unfit for the world. In such a state it seemed ridiculous to call attention to myself. I rarely wore jewelry, never perfume, and I didn’t paint my nails. For a while I did wear a ring with a little ruby in it. It had belonged to my mother. My last days as that angry little Eileen took place in late December, in the brutal cold town where I was born and raised. The snow had fallen for the winter, a good three or four feet of it. It sat staunchly in every front yard, rolled out at the lip of every firstfloor windowsill like a flood. During the day, the top layer of snow melted and the slush in the gutters loosened a bit and you remembered that life was joyful from time to time, that the sun did shine. But by afternoon, the sun had disappeared and everything froze all over again, building a glaze on the snow so thick at night it could hold the weight of a full-grown man. Each morning, I threw salt from the bucket by the front door down the narrow path from the porch to the street. Icicles hung from the rafter over the front door, and I stood there imagining them cracking and darting through my breasts, slicing through the thick gristle of my shoulder like bullets or cleaving my brain into pieces. The sidewalk had been shoveled by the next-door neighbors, a family my father distrusted because they were Lutheran and he was Catholic. But he distrusted everyone. He was fearful and crazy the way old drunks get. Those Lutheran neighbors had left a white wicker basket of cellophane-wrapped waxed apples, a box of chocolates, and a bottle of sherry by the front door for Christmas. I remember the card read, “Bless you both.” Who really knew what happened inside the house while I was at work? It was a three-story colonial of brown wood and flaking red trim. I imagine my father sucking down that sherry in the spirit of Christmas, lighting an old cigar on the stove. That’s a funny picture. Generally he drank gin. Beer, occasionally. He was a drunk, as I said.
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He was simple in that way. When something was the matter, he was easy to distract and soothe: I’d just hand him a bottle and leave the room. Of course his drinking put a strain on me as a young person. It made me very tense and edgy. That happens when one lives with an alcoholic. My story in this sense is not unique. I’ve lived with many alcoholic men over the years, and each has taught me that it is useless to worry, fruitless to ask why, suicide to try to help them. They are who they are, for better and worse. Now I live alone. Happily. Gleefully, even. I’m too old to concern myself with other people’s affairs. And I no longer waste my time thinking ahead into the future, worrying about things that haven’t happened yet. But I worried all the time when I was young, not least of all about my future, and mostly with respect to my father—how long he had left to live, what he might do, what I would find when I got home from work each evening. Ours was not a very nice home. After my mother died, we never sorted or put her things away, never rearranged anything, and without her to clean it, the house was dirty and dusty and full of useless decorations and crowded with things, things, things everywhere. And yet it felt completely empty. It was like an abandoned home, its
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owners having fled one night like Jews or gypsies. We didn’t use the den or the dining room or the upstairs bedrooms much. Everything just sat there collecting dust, a magazine splayed over the arm of the couch for years, candy dish full of dead ants. I remember it like those photos of homes in the desert ravaged by nuclear testing. I think you can imagine the details for yourself. I slept in the attic, on a cot purchased by my father for some summer camping trip he never took a decade earlier. The attic was unfinished, a cold and dusty place I’d retreated to when my mother had gotten sick. Sleep in my childhood bedroom, which was next to hers, had been impossible. She had wailed and cried and called my name throughout the night. The attic was quiet. Not much noise traveled up there from the lower floors of the house. My father had an armchair that he’d dragged from the den into the kitchen. He slept there. It was the kind of chair that shuttled backward at the pull of a lever, a charming novelty when he’d bought it. But the lever no longer worked. The thing had rusted into permanent repose. Everything in the house was like that chair—grimy, ruined, and frozen. I remember it pleased me that the sun set so early that winter. Under the cover of darkness, I was somewhat comforted. My father,
however, was scared of the dark. That may sound like an endearing peculiarity, but it was not. At night he would light the stove and the oven and drink and watch the blue flames whir under the weak overhead light. He was always cold, he said. And yet he barely dressed. This one evening—I’ll begin my story there—I found him sitting barefoot on the stairs, drinking the sherry, the butt of a cigar between his fingers. “Poor Eileen,” he said sarcastically when I walked through the door. He was very contemptuous of me, found me pathetic and unattractive and had no qualms about saying so. If my daydreams from back then came true, one day I’d have found him splayed out at the bottom of the stairs, neck broken but still breathing. “It’s about time,” I’d say with the most bored affect I could muster, peering over his dying body. So I loathed him, yes, but I was very dutiful. It was just the two of us in the house—Dad and me. I do have a sister, still alive as far as I know, but we haven’t spoken in over fifty years. “Hi, Dad,” I said, passing him on the stairs. He was not a very large man, but he had broad shoulders and long legs, a sort of regal look about him. His thinning gray hair stood up high and bowed over the crown of his head. His face
I’m very reasonable now, peaceful even, but back then I was easily enraged. My father’s demands that I do his bidding like a maid, a servant, were constant. But I was not the kind of girl to say no to anyone. “All right,” I said. My father grunted and puffed on the short butt of his cigar. When I was disturbed, I took some comfort in attending to my appearance. I was obsessed with the way I looked, in fact. My eyes are small and green, and you wouldn’t—especially back then—have seen much kindness in them. I am not one of those women who try to make people happy all the time. I’m not that strategic. If you’d seen me back then with a barrette in my hair, my mousy gray wool coat, you’d have expected me to be just a minor character in this saga—conscientious, even-tempered, dull, irrelevant. I looked like a shy and gentle soul from afar, and sometimes I wished I was one. But I cursed and blushed and broke out in sweats quite often, and that day I slammed the bathroom door shut by kicking it with the full sole of my shoe, nearly busting the hinges. I looked so boring, lifeless, immune and unaffected, but in truth I was always furious,
Ours was not a very nice home. After my
mother died, we never sorted or put her things away, never rearranged anything, and without her to clean it, the house was dirty and dusty and full of useless decorations and crowded with Please provide photo caption things, things, things everywhere. And yet it felt completely empty.
appeared to be decades older than he really was, and bore in it a wide-eyed skepticism and a look of perpetual disapproval. In retrospect he was much like the boys in the prison where I worked—sensitive and angry. His hands shook all the time no matter how much he drank. He was always rubbing at his chin, which was red and drawn and wrinkled. He’d tug at it the way you’d rub the head of a young boy and call him a little rascal. His one regret in life, he said, was that he’d never been able to grow a real beard, as though he could have willed it, but he had failed to. He was like that—regretful and arrogant and illogical at once. I don’t think he ever really loved his children. The wedding band he continued to wear years after her death suggested that he’d loved our mother to some degree at least. But I suspect he was incapable of love, real love. He was a cruel character. Imagining his parents beating him as a child is the only path to forgiveness that I have found so far. It isn’t perfect, but it does the trick. This isn’t a story of how awful my father was, let me be clear. Bemoaning his cruelty is not the point of this at all. But I do remember that day on the stairs, how he winced when he turned to look up at me, as though the sight of me made him ill. I stood on the landing, looking down. “You’re going out again,” he croaked, “to Lardner’s.” Lardner’s was the liquor store across town. He let the empty sherry bottle slip from his fingers and roll down the staircase, step by step.
seething, my thoughts racing, my mind like a killer’s. It was easy to hide behind the dull face I wore, moping around. I really thought I had everybody fooled. And I didn’t really read books about flowers or home economics. I liked books about awful things—murder, illness, death. I remember selecting one of the thickest books from the public library, a chronicle of ancient Egyptian medicine, to study the gruesome practice of pulling the brains of the dead out through the nose like skeins of yarn. I liked to think of my brain like that, tangled up in my skull. The idea that my brains could be untangled, straightened out, and thus refashioned into a state of peace and sanity was a comforting fantasy. I often felt there was something wired weird in my brain, a problem so complicated only a lobotomy could solve it— I’d need a whole new mind or a whole new life. I could be very dramatic in my self-assessments. Besides books, I enjoyed my issues of National Geographic magazine, which I got delivered to me in the mail. That was a real luxury and made me feel very special. Articles describing the naive beliefs of the primitives fascinated me. Their blood rites, the human sacrifices, all that needless suffering. I was dark, you might say. Moony. But I don’t think I was really so hardhearted by nature. Had I been born into a different family, I might have grown up to act and feel perfectly normal. Truth be told, I was a glutton for punishment. I didn’t really mind getting bossed around by my father. I’d get angry, and I
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loathed him, yes, but my fury gave my life a kind of purpose, and running his errands killed time. That is what I imagined life to be— one long sentence of waiting out the clock. I tried to look miserable and exhausted when I came out from the bathroom that evening. My father groaned impatiently. I sighed and plucked the cash he held out. I buttoned my coat back up. I was relieved to have somewhere to go, a way to pass the evening hours other than to pace the attic or watch my father drink. There was nothing I loved more than leaving the house. If I had slammed the front door hard on my way out, as I was tempted to, one of those icicles overhead would have surely cracked off. I imagined one plummeting through the hollow of my collarbone and stabbing me straight through the heart. Or, had I tilted my head back, perhaps it would have soared down my throat, scraping the vacuous center of my body—I liked to picture these things—and follow through to my guts, finally parting my nether regions like a glass dagger. That was how I imagined my anatomy back then, brain like tangled yarn, body like an empty vessel, private parts like some strange foreign country. But I was careful shutting the door, of course. I didn’t really want to die. Since my father had become unfit to drive it, I drove his old Dodge. I loved that car. It was a four-door Coronet, matte green, full of scrapes and dents. The floorboards had rusted through from years of salt and ice. I kept in the glove box of the Dodge a dead field mouse I’d found one day on the porch frozen in a tight ball. I’d picked it up by its tail and swirled it through the air for a moment, then slung it in the glove box with a broken flashlight, a map of New England freeways, a few green nickels. Every now and then that winter, I’d peek at the mouse, check on its invisible decomposition in the freezing cold. I think it made me feel powerful somehow. A little totem. A good luck charm. Outside I tested the temperature with the tip of my tongue, sticking it out into the biting wind until it hurt. That night it must have been down close to single digits. It hurt just to breathe. But I preferred cold weather over hot. Summers I was restless and cranky. I’d break out in rashes, have to lie in cold baths. I’d sit at my desk in the prison whipping a paper fan furiously at my face. I did not like to sweat in front of other people. Such proof of carnality I found lewd, disgusting. Similarly, I did not like to dance or do sports. I did not
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listen to the Beatles or watch Ed Sullivan on TV. I wasn’t interested in fun or popularity back then. I preferred to read about ancient times, distant lands. Knowledge of anything current or faddish made me feel I was just a victim of isolation. If I avoided all that on purpose, I could believe I was in control. One thing about that Dodge was that it made me sick to drive it. I knew there was something wrong with the exhaust, but at the time I couldn’t think of dealing with such a problem. Part of me liked having to roll down the windows, even in the cold. I thought that I was very brave. But really I was scared that if I made a fuss over the car, it would be taken away from me. That car was the one thing in my life that gave me any hope. It was my only means of escape. Before he’d retired, my father had driven it on his days off. He’d wheeled it around town so carelessly—parked up on curbs, screeched around corners, stalled out on no gas at the dead of night, scraped it alongside milk delivery trucks, the side of the A&P building, and so forth. Everybody drove drunk back then, but that was no excuse. I myself was a decent driver. I never sped, never blew through red lights. When it was dark out, I liked to drive slowly, foot barely on the pedal, and watch the town roll by like in a movie. I always imagined other people’s homes to be so much nicer than mine, full of polished wood furniture and elegant fireplaces and stockings hung for Christmas. Cookies in the cupboards, lawn mowers in the garages. It was easy to think of everyone having it better than me back then. Down the block, one illuminated vestibule made me feel particularly disparaged. It had a white bench and a blade by the door like an upturned ice skate to scrape the snow from your boots and a garland of holly hung on the front door. The town was a pretty place, quaint, you’d call it. And unless you’ve grown up in New England, you don’t know the peculiar stillness of a coastal town covered in snow at night. It is not like in other places. The light does something funny at sunset. It seems not to wane but to recede out toward the ocean. The light just gets pulled away. I’ll never forget that bright jangle of the bell over the liquor store door since it rang for me nearly every evening. Lardner’s Liquors. I loved it there. It was warm and orderly, and I wandered the aisles for as long as I could, pretending to browse. I knew, of course, where the gin was kept: center aisle on the right if you’re facing the
cashier, a few feet from the back wall, and just two shelves of it, Beefeater on top and Seagram’s below it. Mr. Lewis, who worked there, was so gentle and happy, as though it had never occurred to him just what all that liquor was for. That night, I got the gin, paid, and went back to the car, laid the bottles on the passenger’s seat. How odd it is that liquor never freezes. It was the one thing in that place that simply refused the cold. I shivered in the Dodge, turned the key, and drove slowly home. I took the long and scenic route as the darkness fell, I remember. My father was in his chair in the kitchen when I got back to the house. Nothing special happened that night. It’s just a place to begin. I set the bottles down within his reach on the floor and crumpled the paper bag in my fist, threw it at the pile of trash by the back door. I walked up to the attic. I read my magazine. I went to bed. So here we are. My name was Eileen Dunlop. Now you know me. I was twenty-four years old and had a job that paid fifty-seven dollars a week as a kind of secretary at a private juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys. I think of it now as what it really was for all intents and purposes—a prison for children. I will call it
Moorehead. Delvin Moorehead was a terrible landlord I had years later, and so to use his name for such a place feels appropriate. In a week, I would run away from home and never go back. This is the story of how I disappeared.
Eileen, published August 18 by Penguin Press, is Ottessa’s debut novel; a novella, McGlue, received the Fence Modern Prize in Prose and was published last year by Fence Books. Meg Turner (www.megjturner.com) lives and works in New Orleans, Louisiana, where she moved to start the New Orleans Community Printshop. Her work is shot primarily with a large format film camera and printed as photogravure and wet collodion. The images reproduced here date to 2014 when she travelled to the Ukraine to create work for a solo show comparing Chernobyl with a small abandoned power station in New Orleans. CM 13
14 CM
By Jazmin Lantigua ’17
WHAT DOES
“MOM” MEAN? As a child, I sat beside my dad in his bedroom and looked across at a mirror. Ugly, I thought. Dad laughed. “You’re insulting Jahna, you know. You’re her spitting image.” “Who’s that?” His eyes softened. “Mom.” Years later, I’m standing in front of the same mirror, holding her photo up to my face. Am I really the spitting image of this woman? Are my curls hers? The dark brown eyes I take pride in hers? Could my big nose possibly have been hers, too? I am undoubtedly hers. But she was never mine.
This poem appeared in the Winter 2015 issue of The Marble Collection, the Massachusetts high school magazine of the arts.
Opposite page: Emma Porter ’17, untitled
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Machiavelli
By Don MacDonald ’90
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becausae tIe want tYou’ riumphre riandght.kneI called w youyouwouldhereappreci my masto tsearvorstroke.my
Your Signorirefuasewasto meetverywiwithsethtoe sterndaitoyours. here and
YesOli. Vivterotellozzo i s dead. to is dead.
Is that right?
Niccolò,cityI’shavemostcomplet e l y obli t e rat e d hated enemies. .in onetwday.o of your
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How much would you have had t o pay someyou?condot200,tiere000to doducatthiss?deed for Yeah. Something like that. Niccolò.withSendmine.yourThattr’soopswhereto Cithteáhammer di CastelfalollsandnextPerug. ia
IAndt wouldtheynotwouldhavenotbeenhavesuchdonea cleanit sosweweep.ll.
ased on the life of Niccolò Machiavelli, this graphic novel focuses on the disparity between the widely held perception of Machiavelli as an evil opportunist and the actual story of his life. The book first ran as a webcomic from 2010–14, and was published in 2015 following a successful Kickstarter campaign. In this excerpt, Machiavelli is on a diplomatic mission to Cesare Borgia, who had called some of his mutinous lieutenants to Senigallia to mend fences. While there, in a stunning coup de main, Borgia’s men execute them all when their guard is down. Borgia summons Machiavelli to his rooms to gloat.
Thereto whatis nowelimcanit—donotoglietmherit—
Florence
Siena
Senigallia
Cittá di Castello
Perugia
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By Robert Johnson, Jr ., ’67
You Ain’t Never
Lied
An excerpt from Scene III of Cellphone Blues
O
n a Thursday evening in the Jackson living room, Charles Jackson and his old friend Timothy Parks have been sharing childhood memories.
Charles. When you have your first drink? Timothy. I was 16 years old, and walking along the highway in Gastonia kicking beer cans. I kicked this can of Pabst Blue Ribbon that almost broke my toe. Charles. You didn’t have your shoes on? Timothy. Only shoes I owned then were school-and-church shoes. When I wasn’t in school or church, I got by with these here bare feet. Charles. We did everything in bare feet: played stickball, climbed trees. So what happened with the beer? Timothy. I kicked that can, and it was full of beer, and it was hot outside, so I stepped into the woods and opened it. I sat against this big rock. It was just me and this robin bird looking down from a limb ten feet in front of me, like he knew me. I drank that whole can.
Charles.
What you do?
Timothy. Got up on the porch. She stood this close to me. (He measures off 12 inches with his hands). Then she said, “Boy, I’m asking you again. You been drinking liquor?” I knew I was in a trick bag—if I said yes she would whip me and if I said no she would whip me. So I told her I was passing along the tar road and old man Carmichael was laying in a ditch, so I helped him up and walked him home. He spilled some of his beer on me. I told her I was going to wash my shirt with bleach. She yelled “Boy, don’t you know you don’t wash a colored shirt with bleach?” She told me to get in the room and clean myself up. So that was how it started. When went into the Army, I said, I’m a man now, and one of the privileges of being a man is to be able to have a nice drink whenever you want to. (He walks over to the coffee table and pours a glass of Jack Daniel’s.) Charles. (He pours himself some more Cheerwine soda.) So what time you going up to Excelsior tonight? Timothy. About nine p.m. That’s about the time the ladies get there. By then they ready for a drink and a little excitement. You coming?
Charles. You get drunk? Charles. No. I gotta be back in Tega Cay at seven a.m. Timothy. Drunk? Man, I crawled out of them woods and didn’t go home until late that night. By then my stomach didn’t have nothing left in it. I walked up to the front porch and my foster mama was chewing her tobacco. She yelled “Boy, where you been and why you smell like liquor?” I said, “What liquor?” She stood up, spat out a big blob of tobacco, and told me to step up on the porch. Opposite page: Brandon Soloff ’91, Martin (Portrait of a Blind Man), 2008.
Timothy. You think the boss gonna give you that raise? Charles. He better or he won’t have this carpenter driving down from Charlotte. Gas is $3.80 a gallon, and my pickup gets real hungry on the road.
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You hear what happened at Ralph’s? He came home in broad daylight, and this dude was in his back yard trying to take a radio out of his old Thunderbird. I heard Ralph sneak up on him, took his pistol and cracked the boy’s fingers. Broke all five of ’em. Then he held the gun to his head until the police came. And guess what?
Timothy. You never should have got that eight-cylinder. Charles. Yeah, but I needed something big to carry wood and things. Besides, a big man needs a big truck. (Laughs). Timothy. I hear you there. A man got to have something to show for his hard work. Charles. I told Shirley Ann to start taking the city bus to school, to save a little money. Timothy. Damn shame, ain’t it. You still gonna buy that house from Mr. Michaels? Charles. Yep. It’s in his will. The house is mine if I pay for it. And I mean to pay for it. I want to be out of here soon.
Timothy. I’m looking. Don’t you worry. I want to get out of here too. Things are getting rough. It ain’t too safe. You hear what happened at Ralph’s? He came home in broad daylight, and this dude was in his back yard trying to take a radio out of his old Thunderbird. I heard Ralph sneak up on him, took his pistol and cracked the boy’s fingers. Broke all five of ’em. Then he held the gun to his head until the police came. And guess what? Charles. Ralph got arrested. Timothy. No! The cops didn’t charge him with nothing. They said a man got a right to use reasonable force to protect his property. Charles. Now, if he had shot him that would’ve been a different story.
Timothy. That old man ain’t died yet! Charles. He will. Everyone does. Timothy. Man, why you waiting for someone to die in order to live? Might as well like what you got. (He takes another drink.)
Timothy. That’s the craziest thing! You can’t shoot someone to protect your property? I got my .357 right under my bed, and if I find somebody taking my shit I’m gonna light ’em up. (He laughs.) Charles. It’s those damn crack heads! Drugs! Drugs! And more drugs! I’m going to sleep. Another drink?
Charles. There’s got to be something better. Timothy. Yeah. Maybe a small one this time. Timothy. That’s what I keep telling myself. Charles. Have a blast down at the Excelsior. Charles. You know there’s less space in Mr. Michaels’ house. It only has two bedrooms, and we’ll need that second room for Rachel when she comes home from college.
Timothy. You know I will. Plenty of blues to sing. And don’t worry about me. I’ll find a place to lay my head. I got to do that.
Timothy. You telling me I better start looking for a place? Charles. You ain’t never lied. Charles. Maybe you should do more looking than drinking. Timothy. Look, Charles, you like a brother to me. But don’t tell me how to run my life. Charles. Timothy, my mother raised you after your mama died. Timothy. Foster mama! Charles. O.K., O.K. Foster mama. But after the service when you came back to Charlotte, you needed a place to stay. And you been with us for ten years in that room (Pointing).
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(Lights fade out)
Robert Johnson, Jr. is professor and chair of Africana studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston and an attorney specializing in employment discrimination and civil rights litigation. He has written fifteen plays and nine scholarly books. Brandon Soloff (www.brandonsoloff.com) is a classically trained painter and portraitist, whose work has been commissioned and exhibited throughout the United States and Europe. An experienced art instructor, he currently lives and works in New York City.
Liza (Linda Apsit) King ’69 and her partner, Rick Neumann, restored stained-glass windows at Commonwealth in 2003. They recently closed their architectural stained glass studio in Brattleboro, Vermont, and relocated to North Carolina. Their work incorporates many traditional techniques such as acid etching and silver stain.
Above: Liza King ’69, Calla Lily, stained glass.
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22 CM
By Rebecca Steinitz ’82
Smells Like
1.
WORDS
I don’t know what a rose smells like, though when I hold my nose to a full-blown bloom and inhale deeply, I sense a vague sweetness. I don’t know what my husband’s shirt smells like. If he died, I wouldn’t think to sleep in it so I could feel that he was with me. I don’t know what a baby’s head smells like—not my babies, not anyone else’s babies. I couldn’t pick my babies out of a crowd with my eyes closed, and I don’t miss that baby smell when I hug my growing children. I don’t know the smell of feet, chalk, lilacs, gardenias, sour milk, rain, new cars, Chanel No. 5, Old Spice, greasepaint, or napalm. I don’t know what old books smell like. I don’t know what new books smell like either.
I only discovered the word for people like me a few years ago. We are anosmic; we have anosmia: lack of the sense of smell.
2.
I learned smells from books, which made me think they were fictional. I believed that Wilbur’s barn smelled of hay, manure, the perspiration of tired horses, and the sweet breath of patient cows, and that the salty brown smell of frying ham made Almanzo even hungrier. But when real people said, That stinks, or I can smell the sea from here, or I can’t stand the smell of cilantro, I thought they were faking. I assumed that, like me, they knew from books that there were smells and things were supposed to have them. Unlike me, I decided, they were willing to pretend those smells existed beyond the page. As I try to write out this logic, it seems tortuous, but it wasn’t something I ever questioned; it was something I knew. I could not smell the things I read in books, so it was impossible that anyone else could, which meant they must be making it up. I realized I was wrong when I had children. Too young to read or fake it, they smelled poop and thought it was yucky, vanilla and thought it was sweet, dinner cooking and couldn’t wait to eat. As they gained words for odors, I finally lost the sense of smell I never knew I should have had. Poop became my leitmotif. I lived in fear that my babies would have dirty diapers and everyone would know but me. Dozens of times a day, I weighed their saggy bottoms in my hand, peered down the backs of their pants or up the leg holes of their onesies, using replacement senses I never quite trusted for the seriousness of the task at hand. Now weed has replaced poop in my parental anxiety of smell. Is it called skunk because that’s what it smells like? I wouldn’t know. My children could come home reeking of it, and I still wouldn’t know.
Opposite page: Anne Morgan Spalter ’82, Coney Island Lights, 2014, direct pigment print to plexi.
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3.
I only discovered the word for people like me a few years ago. We are anosmic; we have anosmia: lack of the sense of smell. Sometimes anosmia is defined as loss of the sense of smell. When people lose their sense of smell, they wax irate and nostalgic. They write articles in the New York Times about the tragedy and danger of not being able to smell burnt toast and how their friends don’t understand. They write books about traveling the world, searching for smell. They almost always regain what they have lost, because that is the nature of narratives of loss: you lose, you suffer, you recover. Then there are those of us who never had what we’ve supposedly lost. Our friends don’t understand us either. What do you mean you can’t smell? they ask. I can smell, I say. A bit. I smell frying onions, garlic, pine forests, and cigarettes. But not new-mown grass. I only know the grass has been mown when I see the drifts of clippings. And I can’t smell all the things you say you smell, the nuances and differences, the specifics. I can smell citrus, but not orange, lemon, lime, pink grapefruit. I can smell too much perfume, but not whether it is Chanel No. 5 or Justin Bieber’s GIRLFRIEND. I can smell bad, but I can’t say what’s making it bad. Sometimes you screw up your face and cover your nose, and I smell nothing. How can you taste, they ask, if you can’t smell? I can taste. I taste delicious and disgusting, how dark the chocolate is, the difference between dark and milk, bad shrimp, lemon, the sting of salt and vinegar potato chips, the vicissitudes of oysters from different waters. I can’t taste rosemary, thyme, oregano, the dreaded and beloved cilantro, or the difference between organic and what you buy at the corner store. I can’t identify what creates a taste. You will never hear me say, Was this grilled over mesquite? or Did you use Lipton Onion Soup?
4.
When I was a child, reading a book a day, I wondered if the entire world was a big complicated book—a novel, Dickensian perhaps— being read by a giant. What if what we thought we were living was just what he was reading? In fact, the world has always seemed something like a book to me, a sphere—or rectangular prism—in which I am immersed, but to which I never quite fully belong. Oh, I jump at sudden noises and cry when I bump my head. I have dear friends and terrible conflicts. I marvel at the miraculous perfection of my children and rage at injustice. And yet, I do not feel my children’s pain; if they need to be held down for a shot, I hold them. I rarely cry at funerals. I am good in a crisis, able to see what needs to be done and then to do it, regardless of material or emotional chaos. I am a fearless editor, of others and myself: I kill darlings with impunity, hewing certainty and nuance out of tentative verbiage, without sentimentality or regret. Pain and crisis, but also triumph and celebration: it never feels quite real to me, or perhaps it feels only as real as my books. I wonder, sometimes, if this sense of distance, of the unreality of the real, has to do with anosmia. Unable to smell danger (sour milk, gas, cyanide) or comfort (chicken soup, home, the people I love), am I missing a fundamental tether that holds other people to the world? Are my memories lesser for lack of olfactory reminders? Does the diminution of my fifth sense altogether diminish my ability to engage with the sensory realm? Or are the books the problem? Has my life of reading distanced me, the incessantly multiplying worlds of words turning the actual into just another iteration? Does the side-by-side existence within my head of the characters I’ve read about and the characters I know keep them all a step away? Have the pungent smells of the literary created my lack? When I move through the world alone, I see, hear, feel, taste. If I don’t smell, I don’t know it. But if I read alone, I know it.
I have a friend who is a gourmet. He reads the descriptions on wine lists and chooses dark cherries, cedar, and pipe tobacco over earth, pepper, and spice. I read the descriptions on wine lists and think they sound like poetry. My friend had an operation on his ear and when he awoke, he could not smell. He could taste, he said, but everything tasted muted. That’s it, I said, that’s my life. I smell, I taste, but the books, the menus, the reports from the world of smell and taste make it clear that my spectrum is limited, that everyone else has access to realms I cannot fathom. My friend recovered from his operation and reentered the world of the odorously-abled. I make my older daughter sniff my younger daughter to see if she needs a bath.
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Rebecca Steinitz is a writer, editor, and literacy consultant who lives in Arlington. She frequently contributes commentaries and book reviews to the Boston Globe. “Smells Like Words” originally appeared at The Millions. Anne Morgan Spalter, when she was a Commonwealth student, vowed never to use a computer for any reason, but she went on to create and teach the first digital fine art courses at both The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and Brown University. She is the author of the highly regarded text The Computer in the Visual Arts, which combines technical and theoretical aspects of the fields of computer fine art and design.
CWSAA
The Commonwealth School Alumni/ae Association
From the President: If you are connected to Commonwealth through social media, you watched the first phase of 151 Commonwealth Ave’s massive renovation unfold over the summer. So much of the school’s character and culture reside in the building’s intricate woodwork, its seemingly unending staircases, and its curious nooks and alcoves. Renovating Alisha Elliott ’01 the building while preserving its architectural integrity has proved difficult in unexpected ways. In true Commonwealth fashion, however, each challenge was met with careful critical analysis. The cast iron stove in the bio lab, for example, uncovered during building work in the mid-nineties, became an essential part of that classroom’s setting. While the new plan had been to remove,
relocate, and preserve this cherished-if-odd element, the project hit a snag: we discovered that it was a “load-bearing stove.” So, the stove remains in situ, an essential bone in the skeleton of the building, but hidden once again behind layers of plaster and sheetrock. In these pages, you are treated to writing and artwork from a number of Commonwealth alums, representing decades from the sixties through the current teens. Though their subjects are diverse and their styles unique, each piece is fundamentally informed by an approach learned and honed at this school, influenced by teachers, classmates, and the spirit of the place. Of course, this fall’s freshman never knew the building in its pre-renovation state. They sit in bio class, unaware of the quaint juxtaposition of their state-of-the-art lab with an unwieldy cast iron stove. But we know that the same character and culture inherent to the school will continue to flourish. And in a few years, these new students will themselves contribute to CM as alumni/ae, reflecting on their own roles in the Commonwealth community. We look forward to their stories.
Elise Friedman ’15, “Joe’s Sax Appeal”
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ALUMNA PERSP E CTI V E
Guilty Pleasures: My Top Five (Of Which I Am So Deeply Ashamed) By Chris Norris ’85
O
K, who’s ready to admit some guilty pleasures? You know, those shopworn relics and lowbrow treats we love although we should know better? Well, for this column, I’m taking off my “critic” hat and confessing my own Top Five. (Shhhh!)
5. Moby-Dick, Herman Melville I know, I know: a ponderous collection of pre-Freudian themes— Fate! Destiny!— unspooling in assimilated Shakespearean prose as tediously lyrical as the quest gimmick is trite. From the depths of ennui, I yawneth at thee, thou aspiring epic poet! Yet once that Pequod gets underway, the little kid in me can’t help but jump aboard. The brisk 700-page nautical yarn is still a fine beach read.
4. Fourth String Quartet, Op. 37, Arnold Schoenberg True, those tetrachordal and hexachordal interpolations won’t sustain active listening, but don’t you ever find yourself humming that second interpolated tone row when you’re stuck in traffic? Every now and then, I still sneak over to the Bang and Olufsen, put on some game rendition, listen the first movement’s reintroduction of thirds and sixths in horizontal intervals, and fall into hysterics. Call it the Rice Crispy Treat of 20th Century Composition.
3. A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, Marcel Proust Je ne connais que trop bien les excès que l’on reproche au pauvre Marcel, en se moquant de lui, quand il essaie de se transformer en écrivain: certainement, les phrases interminables, sa manie superficielle dirigée à la société et au snobisme, le coup d’oeil
banal sur l’enfer de la jalousie sexuelle, sans omettre la mièvre sentimentalité de la madeleine et du thé. Néanmoins, quelque chose de cette recherche inutile, qui interroge la mémoire, attire en moi une faiblesse larmoyante et je me vois enchainé à ce coin à tout jamais.
2. The Creation of Adam, Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo Gauche, florid, mired in sixteenth-century Mannerism. You’re almost embarrassed for the poor Tuscan sculptor, laboring atop the scaffold for such a quickly dated representational gloss on patriarchal monotheism. Even so, whenever I pass through Rome, I still creep into St. Peter’s to feast on the hopelessly overwrought buon fresco filling an otherwise fine Renaissance barrel-vault ceiling. For some reason, all the craft, labor, and devotion up there always just cracks me up.
1. The Grand Canyon Talk about vacuous! Two hundred and twenty-seven miles of... nothing. Neither the architectonic elegance of the Bryce, the depth of the Cotahuasi, or the geological variety of my favorite, Mars’ Valles Marineris. But some sentimental favoritism takes me back to this Arizona tourist trap. There, I stand with all the rubes before this dignified crater and “marvel” with the others. Chris is a writer and producer based in New York City whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and many other outlets. This piece is adapted from one published in the New York Observer.
Will Whelan ’01 studied art history and studio art at University of Chicago, and received an M.Ed in art education from Lesley University in 2010. He lives in Dorchester and recently launched Dorchester Art Project, a studio, gallery, and performance space for emerging artists that also promotes creative engagement with the surrounding Fields Corner neighborhood. Will also teaches middle school at the Davis Leadership Academy charter school.
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PLEASE CONTRIBUTE TO THE
ANNUAL FUND
Each gift you make helps ensure that we can attract and retain these teachers who have been at the heart of Commonwealth.
“I think filling the school with faculty members who are passionate about their work—as teachers, advisors, mentors, colleagues—has always been key to this place. Their devotion and scholarship still prove central today to what makes Commonwealth Commonwealth. You can see that even after teaching for twenty years, they remain enthusiastic about what they do as they walk into their classrooms every day excited to talk about chemistry, or biology, or a piece of literature.” —Rebecca Jackman, chemistry teacher and Director of Studies Rebecca Jackman (right) with her partner and fellow Commonwealth teacher Theo Paul and their daughter.
Providing twelve percent of our annual budget, the Fund relies on sustained yearly support from all our constituents: at a school this small, every dollar makes a difference. Our latest financial reports include a list of donors to the school and stories of how those donors have affected the work and lives of people in our community. You will find all this information at www.commschool.org/annual2015, in the 2014–2015 Annual Report of Giving.
To make a donation www.commschool.org/makeagift.
For more information contact Janetta Stringfellow, Director of Development 617-266-7525, ext. 293 Email jstringfellow@commschool.org CM 33
Commonwealth School 151 Commonwealth Avenue
Courtesy Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York
Boston, Massachusetts 02116
Non-Profit Organization US Postage PAID North Reading, MA Permit No. 6
Ben Aronson ’76, Closed Ramp, 2010. Art by Commonwealth students and alumni/ae illustrates every article in this issue of CM, which also features alumni/ae works of fiction, memoir, playwriting, and graphic novel.