Everyone knows of the horrific tsunami and earthquake that hit Japan recently. Thousands died, tens of thousands were injured, and even more were displaced from their homes. The damage has devastated the region and many people have lost hope in the recovery of their homeland.

People have sent money to Japan in the millions, and that will help the region recover, but there is only so much that money can do. A dollar can keep you warm or fed, but it can’t restore hope in the same way a gesture of caring can. Both are necessary. You can’t fix a problem with a hug, but you also can’t wipe a tear with a dollar bill (it’s not just a metaphor. That stuff really isn’t absorbent enough). We at Williston are giving a message of hope with our 1,000 crane project, as well as giving real tangible help to the displaced children of Japan.

We at Williston folded cranes last month in honor of the Japanese people who died from this natural disaster, and we sent them to Cranes for Kids by Oshkosh B’gosh. The children’s clothing company has promised to donate one article of clothing to the children of Japan for every crane they receive, up to a maximum of 50,000 pieces of clothing. The cranes represent health and best wishes to the people of Japan, while the clothes will provide comfort and warmth to the children who lost everything due to the tsunami and earthquake. Essentially, we’re providing the best of both worlds by providing hope, and backing that promise of better times to come with monetary, tangible help.

In addition to the crane-making extravaganza, we all met outdoors afterwards for a photo of us all standing in the shape of a heart. This part I didn’t really understand the use of, but the pictures turned out really cool and that’s the important thing. We were asked to all wear red so that the heart would be the typical red Valentine’s Day style, but only about half of us got the memo in time. A lot of people showed up in white, following Pastor Burt’s original instructions, and some came in any and every color of the spectrum, as not everyone has perfect memory when it comes to assigned fashion choices. However, when we actually were all standing together, this didn’t really matter for the picture. Those who remembered formed the outline, and those who didn’t provided the fill, and all in all the photo turned out really well.

Text and photos by Brendan Hellweg ’14

On Friday, May 13, young filmmakers from 10 independent schools in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York will have their work shown in the Fourth Annual Williston Film Festival at The Williston Northampton School. The screening will take place at 6:30 p.m. in the Williston Theatre at 18 Park Street. It is free and open to the public.

The Williston Northampton School’s Film Club has organized the event. Every year they recruit a panel of judges from the community and the film industry. This year’s judges are alumni Patrick Burns ’89 (a film editor at Elevation Talent in New York City) and Loren Feinstein ’01 (filmmaker of Ciclovida: Lifecycle), along with Williston family member Marty Chang P’14 (a systems analyst at Northeastern University).

This year’s filmmakers represent the following schools: Berkshire School, The Governor’s Academy, The Hotchkiss School, Kingswood Oxford, Millbrook School, Pingree School, Pomfret School, Suffield Academy, Thayer Academy, and The Williston Northampton School.

Winners of the past three Williston Film Festivals can be viewed at www.williston.com/filmfestival.

The Williston Northampton School is pleased to announce that Alan Alda, grandfather to a member of the Class of 2011, will give the Commencement address to the school’s 121 graduating seniors and the Williston community on Saturday, June 4, at 9:30 a.m. The ceremony will take place on the Williston quadrangle in front of the Reed Campus Center, weather permitting. This celebration will mark the 170th Commencement in Williston’s history. For those unable to attend the ceremony, it will be broadcast via live webcast. A baccalaureate ceremony will take place in the Phillips Stevens Chapel the previous night at 8:00 p.m.

Alan Alda has earned international recognition as an actor, writer, and director. He played Hawkeye Pierce on the classic television series M*A*S*H, and wrote and directed many of the episodes. His 33 Emmy nominations include performances for 30 Rock, The West Wing, ER, and Kill Me If You Can. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1994. He hosted the award-winning series Scientific American Frontiers and was presented with the National Science Board’s Public Service Award for his efforts to broaden the public’s understanding of science.

For his role in The Aviator, Alda was nominated for an Academy Award; his other films include Crimes and Misdemeanors, Everyone Says I Love You, and Manhattan Murder Mystery. He also wrote and directed The Four Seasons, Sweet Liberty, A New Life, and Betsy’s Wedding. On Broadway, Alda acted in many plays and received Tony Award nominations for his roles in Glengarry Glen Ross, Jake’s Women, and The Apple Tree. His first memoir, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, and Other Things I’ve Learned, became a New York Times bestseller, as did his second, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself.

Hi, my name is Brendan Hellweg and I am a student at Williston. I also am a writer and editor for The Willistonian, a theater techie, and, as of now, the writer of a student blog. I plan to talk about academics, student life, and general Williston-related news.

Sarah Sawyer helps a student

I figure a good way to start off this blog would be a little bit about one of my favorite parts of Williston: the Writing Center.  I’ve always enjoyed writing and the written word. Since an early age, reading was my go-to source of entertainment (at least until the computer cried its illustrious siren song…) and the idea of inventing whole new worlds of my own thrilled my young self.

The Writing Center is located just above the library. About fifteen inspirational quotes from famous authors hang from the ceiling. Inside the bright little room is usually a writing center aide who reviews and helps edit student work. Although mostly it is meant to be school work, from my understanding the writing center also welcomes extracurricular writing projects and is glad to give advice and helpful hints on basically anything you can type. The Writing Center is especially useful to my English class because the director of the writing center, Ms. Sawyer, is also my English teacher, and having an extra chance for your teacher to point out the same errors that normally you would be losing points for is very helpful.

Brendan Hellweg

So far I have used the center for a three-page essay on the British sci-fi show Doctor Who, a 16-page compilation of short pieces on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and a dystopian short story about the limits of control on the human mind. Every time I walk out I feel like I have just improved my piece tenfold and learned something new about how I can create a story cleanly and articulately. The Writing Center is like a strainer through which I can put a hastily written essay about everything and nothing, and the result is something worth being proud of. I can see myself going there a lot in the future.

Mathematics teacher Alan Lipp, who has taught at Williston since 1975 and was head of the Mathematics Department for nearly 20 years, has recently published The Play’s the Thing: Mathematical Games for the Classroom and Beyond, a book that presents 18 mathematical games and develops the concepts of game analysis and winning strategies.

The book’s inception goes back to Williston’s Intersession program in the 1980s. One of the courses Mr. Lipp offered was a course in math games. He invented several of the games, but many of them are well-known, including Tic-Tac-Toe and Connect-the-Dots. All of the games have an underlying math theme, even if it is not apparent at first. His previous two books, published in 2000 and 2001, were supplements to textbooks for AP calculus. The Play’s the Thing is more general and intended for classroom use in grades 8-12.

“Making math meaningful has been a theme throughout my career,” Mr. Lipp says. “Math should also be fun, interesting, and comprehensible.” He spent many years teaching seventh and eighth grade math in the Middle School, where he found that for students of that age, play was helpful and made topics more engaging. Even with the higher-level courses he teaches now (including AP Calculus and Discrete Mathematics), he will introduce topics in playful way, although eventually “we have to do a logical analysis in order to meet the challenge and mathematical import of what we’re looking at.”

Though the games in The Play’s the Thing can be played by students at all levels, the book challenges students to develop a winning strategy: an effective way to win every time. With some of the games, known solutions exist, but with others, none have yet been found. In the Introduction, Mr. Lipp writes, “In some cases the answers are not known, but the question is presented in the belief that the search for an answer is worthwhile.”

It is the playfulness of the search that has kept Mr. Lipp engaged in teaching math for more than 40 years. “You need to find something in the math that’s new and interesting, if you’re going to be teaching Algebra 1 twenty years in a row,” he says, “so I play math games all the time.”

He also credits Williston students with consistently inspiring his excellent teaching. “Every year I learn something new from my kids,” he says. “They’re creative, inventive, and inspiring.” He considers the students to be his best teachers, and since they have played his math games for years, he also feels that they indirectly helped write his book.