Milton In The News Princeton Poetry Prize Won By El Paso Student
Service Earns Local Coverage
On February 28, 2003, the El Paso Times reported that Claire Tinguely ’04 won the Nancy Thorp Memorial Poetry Prize for her poem “Poppies.” Her prize-winning poem—one of 800 entries—was published in spring 2003 in Cargoes, the Hollins University literary magazine. Later in the semester, Claire won another prestigious poetry contest, the Princeton Poetry Prize, for her prose poem about a dancer in El Paso, Texas, who is resentful of Mexicans. It becomes clear that the dancer’s anger is concerned with identity issues: she is, in fact, part Mexican. “‘How to be a Ballet Dancer in El Paso, Texas’ is written as a ‘how-to’ piece. Every sentence is a command...it’s because of Mr. [Jim] Connolly’s teaching and advice that I won the contest,” Claire said. Claire’s poetry centers on the culture of Southwest Texas, where she grew up.
On April 30, 2003, The Milton Times ran a story on the Academy’s Community Service Day. The story quotes Andrea Geyling, community service advisor, who said, “Community Service Day is an opportunity to recognize the dedicated work many of our students do all year. In fact, the idea was first proposed by the Self Governing Association as a way for all the students to escape from the campus ‘bubble’ and be reminded of the world beyond.” In all, about 600 students traveled to 31 sites as well as staffed on-campus events; they walked and talked with the elderly, helped out at day care centers, performed yard work at Milton’s Town Hall, sorted food at the Greater Boston Food Bank, walked dogs at the local animal shelter and helped
Students clean up the grounds at Milton’s Town Hall.
Boston personality Sidewalk Sam beautify Boston with brightly painted murals.
Saturday Course Reaches 30 Metropolitan Towns for 25 Years In the Canton Citizen (Canton, Massachusetts) on May 29, 2003, an article quoted Olga Mahoney—Saturday Course co-director with Gary Schrager—on the value of the Academy’s 25-year-old enrichment work with independently motivated fourth, fifth and sixth grade public school children. Courses available to them include Blood and Guts, Extreme Math and Invention Convention. “We’re proud of our program’s long connection with so many children from so many towns,” Olga said. “Enrichment programs like ours have often struggled to obtain the resources to survive and flourish as this program fortunately
has. The Saturday Course depends on tuition, foundation grants, corporate donations and financial support from parents and friends of the program. It also benefits tremendously from using Milton Academy facilities.”
Media Covers Former President Clinton’s Address News of Mr. Clinton’s address and Milton’s commencement was covered by National Public Radio, the Associated Press, yahoo.com and MSNBC, to name several outlets. The Nielson audience for all television segments was 1,355,561. Mr. Clinton told members of the Class of 2003 to differentiate between the headlines and the trend lines—between today’s packaged messages and the larger, more complex direction of our world—remembering to see the big picture, and remembering to think.
The poetry of award winner Claire Tinguely ’04 centers on her native Southwest Texas.
59 Milton Magazine