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Christopher Benfey: Something Big on the Line

Chris Benfey described the pot as though it were an old friend. Made of red clay and with a type of glaze known as tobacco spit, the jug sat in his grandparent’s hallway next to the big, black telephone. At the top of the swooping handle was an indent where the potter had pressed his thumb like a signature.

To write his memoir, Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay, Benfey surrounded himself with such objects. The purpose, he said, was to ground his pockets of misty memories in reality.

“For this particular book, it was very important for me to have a world objects around me,” Benfey told his Dodge Room audience on November 8. “Doing a memoir is always about getting lost in the self—and objects keep you honest.”

Benfey, the fourth and final author in the 2012 Writers’ Workshop Series, said that it was almost impossible for him to separate out his two loves of literature and pottery. Those dual interests became more pronounced during his years at the Putney School, where they were reinforced by quirky professors and equally eccentric classes.

“There were two things I really cared about at Putney,” Benfey said. “One was pottery and one was poetry.”

Benfey was also inspired by people: his English teacher—who would threaten to dance on a table in pink tights if his students didn’t pay attention—was one; Potter Dave, an Edgefield slave in the 19th century who inscribed two-line poems on his enormous stoneware pots, was another.

It was Dave’s “short, decisive, enigmatic poems like lightening bolts in the night sky” that inspired Benfey as he was writing his latest book, he said. But while a poem could be a flash of lightening, a truer metaphor for memoir writing came from fishing.

“You have something on the line or you don’t,” Benfey said of the process. “And you hope when you write a book that you have something big on the line.”

On Being A Car Headlight: Backstage at Rumors

Emily Sillars ’15 doesn’t have the most glamorous job in the Rumors cast. If she’s very good at it, no one in the audience will even know she’s there—her small part will simply weave another thread in the magic cloth of the play.

When stage manager Minh Do ’13 tells her the cue through a headset—cue five, or six, or 12—Sillars tips a giant light mounted on a pole and spins it toward the stage windows.

“To me, it just looks like this,” says the soft-spoken Sillars, and she spins the light toward the windows. During the show, the beam plays across the interior of a sophisticated New York mansion. Or at least that’s what it looks like to the audience. From Sillars’ perch backstage, all she can see is an unfinished wall, full of exposed joists and beams.

“I can’t tell what it looks like at all,” Sillars says, adding with a gesture at the room beyond, “It all works together and makes this place.”

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Pompeii and Chocolate Pasta: A Trip to Italy

They picnicked in the rolling countryside, saw ancient frescoes in Pompeii, and swam in the Mediterranean. But perhaps the quintessential moment of the Latin program trip to Italy came when the eight students and three adults visited del Cioccolato Antica Norba.

At the small family-run chocolate factory and museum, the group learned about how cocoa is processed and sampled fresh, warm chocolate, said language teacher Emily Vezina, one of the trip leaders.

“Many students bought souvenirs here,” she wrote in an email about the trip. “Chocolate pasta, best served with ricotta cheese and pine nuts, was a popular purchase.”

See the full gallery.

Over the course of their weeklong stay, from June 7 to 14, the students also explored Pompeii—visiting ancient fast food restaurants, homes, temples, mosaics, and frescoes—under the tutelage of Alessandro, a “dramatic and expressive guide.”

In the town of Sorrento, the group stayed in a hotel perched on the cliffs overlooking Mediterranean Sea. In the evening, they walked down the switchbacks of a narrow cobblestone road and went for a swim.

“Some students swam out to a nearby cave in the rock promontory that framed the bay,” Vezina wrote.

In the medieval city of Norma, in the Lepini Mountains, the students strolled along ancient Roman roads, saw a bath complex that was being excavated, and had a picnic in the countryside.

“Meanwhile all around us paragliders floated through the sky,” Vezina wrote, “some landing in the ruins, others sailing to the countryside below.”

Seminars and a Song for Reunion 2012

Thirteen women from the Northampton School for Girls Class of 1962 were heading down a back staircase when one looked around with sudden recognition.

“Miss Whittaker and Miss Bement used to walk down these for prayers!” she said.

“Oh my God! Yes!” said a classmate.

The women paused for a moment, glancing around, and then continued on their way down the stairs, swapping stories of French fieldtrips, old pranks, and favorite teachers.

The tour of the former Northampton School for Girls buildings and grounds was just one of many activities that celebrated school history and alumni during Reunion Weekend, June 8-10.  Special reunion exhibits and slideshows celebrated the past, while jazz on the quad, summer barbecues, and class dinners recognized the spirit of the present.

During the class-sponsored seminars, faculty and alumni offered lectures on everything from playwriting and mite infestations to the upcoming Presidential election.

In a popular talk on Afghanistan, Lieutenant Colonel Richard H. Brown ’72 and Colonel Stephen P. White ’77, P’11 discussed the country’s drug trade and the development of, and setbacks with, major infrastructure.

“I can’t emphasize enough how very difficult this stuff is because of the terrain,” Lt. Col. Brown said, showing slides of rugged mountains and arid desert land. Still, he said that the development of infrastructure, in a long-term and sustainable way, was critical to getting Afghanistan back on solid economic footing.

“The silk road is the balancing act,” he said. “That’s what could tilt the economy positively.”

A balancing act of the academic kind was the focus of another talk—“Williston Northampton Today,” presented by Head of School Robert W. Hill III P’15.

Speaking to alumni in the Williston Theatre, Hill talked about how boarding schools have changed over the past decade and how The Williston Northampton School, in particular, had become “a more diverse campus in every sense.”

 “We are schools of the world,” he said. “What happens in our classrooms, on our fields, in our dorms provides a foundation for everything that follows.  That almost 350 alumni and former faculty are on this campus this weekend is a testament to the strength of this experience.”

 Read Bob Hill’s full speech.

Both the pre-merger institutions of the Northampton School for Girls and Williston Academy were recognized in archival images and slideshows over the weekend. There was also a special dedication of the NSFG Angelus bell in its new home on the lawn of 194 Main Street.

But it was a tour of the old NSFG campus on June 9—through buildings now part of the Cutchins Programs for Children and Families—that proved to be a highlight of the weekend.

In celebration of their 50th Renunion, members of the Class of 1962, their spouses, and a few fellow alumna walked through the old buildings, reminiscing about school life. The rooms brought back memories of favorite teachers, awards ceremonies, English papers, and science labs.

“I dissected a frog in here!” said an alumna, through a doorway.

“Are the worms still in here that we cut up?” joked another. “Do you see any worms?”

It was not a walk down memory lane, perhaps, but a stroll through memory’s classrooms and corridors. Which made it all the more fitting that, as the tour was drawing to a close, the NSFG alumna lined a front staircase and together sang the Alma Mater.

 

A Passion for Film: Charles Frank ’13 Aims for Sundance

Junior year at The Williston Northampton School is a busy one under the best of circumstances for most students, but it is particularly hectic for Charles Frank. At 17, Charles is already an accomplished filmmaker with an impressive resume. And if things go as planned, he will celebrate senior year with other filmmakers at the Sundance Film Festival.

Charles’s short film, “Breezless” won best picture at this year’s Williston Northampton, an honor he received last year, as well. The festival, which received entrants from both independent and public high schools, is an annual event that began in 2007 and continues to grow every year.

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