Author John Katzenbach will delve into these and other deliciously dark themes when he returns to the Williston Northampton campus on November 9 for the final installment of the 2015 Writers’ Workshop Series.
During the free and public lecture, Mr. Katzenbach will speak about his forthcoming book, The Dead Student, which includes a character he describes as “one of the most interesting bad guys I’ve ever created.”
“He’s a killer with a plan, and a belief that everything he’s done is totally, utterly justified,” Mr. Katzenbach notes on his website. “And not a bad guy, except that he seems to kill people.”
Originally a criminal court reporter for the Miami Herald and Miami News, Mr. Katzenbach published his first novel, In The Heat of Summer, in 1982. Since then, he’s published 12 other novels, including The Traveler, Day of Reckoning, What Comes Next, and Red 1-2-3.
Four-year-old Jackson walked patiently around the AP psychology class, holding one of the devices that makes him so special and letting the Williston Northampton School students gently touch his head.
On the floor, his two-year-old brother, Chase, played with stuffed toys, while at the front of the room, his mother, Corinne Walters, explained to the class the process both boys had gone through while learning to use their cochlear implants.
“When it first got activated, he was in tears for days,” Ms. Walters said of Jackson. “Shoes walking on the floor were freaking him out. Silverware freaked out Chase.”
On Friday afternoon, Ms. Walters and her sons, both of whom were born deaf and have been gradually adjusting to life with implants, were in class to provide a hands-on component to a unit on sensation and perception.
Photo by Dennis Crommett
Students in the psychology class leaned over their desks to ask questions about the implants as the boys played and doodled on the white board.
The visit was a serendipitous one. Since Williston Northampton science teachers Amber Rodgers and Christina Berghoff share a classroom, when Ms. Rodgers left the words “cochlear implant” on the white board after her lesson, Ms. Berghoff spotted the note and mentioned that she had both previously worked with deaf students and was still helping to assist the Walters family.
Tanglewood Nation. A view of the lawn at Tanglewood just before a concert. Scott Barrow
The first visitor in Williston Northampton School’s annual Photographer Lecture Series can trace his love of photography all the way back through his family tree—some 150 years.
Scott Barrow notes that his family began taking fun photos in the 1860s, when such a playful attitude toward the medium was still relatively rare. In his biography, Mr. Barrow adds that he spent childhood nights in the basement darkroom with his father and that those sessions sparked his own love of photography.
Scott Barrow
A decision to spend his last $150 on a Canon SLR and five rolls of Kodachrome in 1972 seems to have paid off handsomely: Mr. Barrow’s hundreds of assignments have been for clients across the range of advertising, travel, editorial, and corporate spheres. These include American Express, Charles Schwab, Citibank, Procter & Gamble, Tylenol, The Wall Street Journal, British Airways, Northwestern University, Williams College, Disney, National Geographic, NY Times Travel Publications, Scientific American, and U.S. News and World Report.
Mr. Barrow has been awarded the Communication Arts Photography Award of Excellence, Graphis Photography Annual Award, New York Art Director’s Club Award of Excellence, and PX3 Prix De La Photographie Paris, among other accolades.
Scott Barrow
“I take beautiful photographs for a living and I enjoy it,” Mr. Barrow notes in his bio. “The bigger challenge for me as an artist is to go beyond beauty and find my connection to the scene, to become part of it in the moment that I release the shutter. It is only then that I can truly share what I saw and felt with you, the viewer.”
Mr. Barrow will present the first in the 2015-16 Photographer Lecture Series on November 5 at 6:30 p.m. in the Dodge Room, Reed Campus Center. All lectures in the series are free and open to the public.
During her last visit to the Williston Northampton School in 2010, Debra Monroe talked about her moving memoir, On the Outskirts of Normal, the unsentimental story about a white woman who adopts a black baby in small town Texas.
Ms. Monroe’s latest memoir finds her reaching even farther back into her history for a tale that’s both arresting and full of wit and poise. On November 3, she returns to Williston for the 2015 Writers Workshop Series, where she will discuss My Unsentimental Education, the story of her journey from the working class in Spooner, Wisconsin to the professional class in Austin, Texas.
As with all lectures in the series, Ms. Monroe’s talk is free and open to the public and will begin at 7:00 p.m. in the Dodge Room, Reed Campus Center.
Ms. Monroe, who teaches at Texas State University, has written The Source of Trouble, which won the prestigious Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction; A Wild, Cold State, a book of stories; and the novels Newfangled and Shambles. In 2010, she published her first memoir, which focused on her experiences with her daughter in a small Texas town.
A speaker who takes the latest breakthroughs from the field of genetics and translates them into relatable presentations will return to the Williston Northampton School for a public presentation. Sam Rhine’s Genetic Update Conference (GUC) will take place in the Williston Theatre on Thursday, October 29 from 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and is open to the public.
Mr. Rhine has brought his engaging presentation to the Williston campus for the past three years and has been offering similar half-day conferences to high school students across the globe for the past 30 years. His presentations cover genetic advances, the latest research, and career opportunities.
“Sam will explain the strides made in understanding, treating, and possibly curing conditions, such as diabetes, Parkinsons, Huntingtons, autism, Lou Gehrig’s, multiple sclerosis and many others,” the website notes. “It is an exciting time to be studying human genetics!”
Mr. Rhine received a B.A. and an M.A. from Indiana University, was a doctoral candidate at Indiana University School of Medicine, and was a Lalor Foundation Fellow at Harvard Medical School. He received the Distinguished Hoosier Scholar Award, given to a native Hoosier for outstanding commitment to science education, by the Hoosier Association of Science Teachers (HASTI) in 2007.
