Speaker Celebrates Moody’s Democratic Spirit
Sociologist and filmmaker James Ault ’64 addressed the NMH community on Founder’s Day February 3 and in his speech described how he became “radicalized” in the ’60s and began a career creating an acclaimed cinema verite documentary on the religious right, Born Again: Life in a Fundamentalist Baptist Church. He also shares biographical information on Dwight L. Moody’s life: how at age 10, he was forced to leave home to support himself in Greenfield; how at 17 he moved to Boston; and how at 19 to Chicago where he started a Sunday school for poor children of all races.

Ault urged white middle-class intellectuals to see social conservatives, who often retain wider ties with church, friends, and kin (as opposed to the “geographically mobile” nuclear family of many educated liberals) as their equals, and to appreciate their intelligence. “… Here is where our school’s calling to ‘true democracy,’ in our founder’s life and vision, perhaps comes into play. Because it demands that, rather than dismissing those with more traditional outlooks and values as boorish, distasteful, or downright off-the wall—it invites us to see in those perhaps more ‘ordinary folk’ people of equal value to us, to whom we owe respect and openness of the kind Dwight L. Moody extended to those he reached out to.” Read the full text of the speech by clicking here.

Alum: Global Warming Problem Requires Multifaceted Solution
NMH welcomed back to campus last week Seung Jin Song ’82, the head of the mechanical and aerospace engineering department at Seoul National University. Song spoke in the Rhodes Room Thursday evening, describing the multidisciplinary nature of the work needed to solve the problem of energy use and global warming. The work needs scientists and engineers, he maintained, but also economists, policy makers, social scientists, and ethicists, as well as people with the ability to work across political, geographic, and class boundaries.

“I couldn't help but notice that this sounds just like the principles of an NMH education,” noted David Reeder, chair of the science department.

During his stay, Song also spoke to physics and astronomy classes and dined with Korean students.

Artspace Achievements
Each year NMH, along with all public and private Franklin County high schools, participates in a juried visual art competition at the Artspace Gallery in Greenfield. This year, in a continued show of excellence, four of the eight NMH submissions were awarded prizes.

Here are the award-winning artists: Hanson Ching Ping Cheng ’11 won first place in the ceramics category; Britt Lilienthal ’08 took second in photography; Hallie Bean ’08 took first in drawing; and Dan Lovett ’08 won second place in the printmaking category.

Artspace is at 15 Miles Street in Greenfield and is open 1 to 6 pm Monday through Friday. The work will be on display until February 8.

Walking off the Mats
As he reflects on the end of his career as a wrestling coach and physical education teacher, Frank Millard isn’t all that sentimental. “After 45 years, it’s time,” he says, bright eyes smiling under his crew-cut white hair.

Millard, who will retire at the end of the year, sits in his office, a floor above the mats in James Gym, and works on his computer as two bread-box-sized bronze statues of wrestlers grappling sit atop a bookshelf over his shoulder. Wrestling, a major focus of his life, got him where he is today, he says.

“Wrestling has been pivotal in almost all my career decisions and moves,” he says. “I’m passionate about it.”

That passion is contagious. For decades, the boys on the team he coaches have been winning, and there’s a statistic that bears that out: 712-204-3. With five matches left to the season, that number’s bound to change, but as it stands, it’s the second-most wins for a wrestling coach in the United States. What’s the key to inspiring boys to win matches? Expecting them to win, Millard says. Winning motivates. “That’s what it’s all about,” he says. “That why you play the game. It’s important to me, it’s important to the kids. Wrestling is unique in that there are two people on the mat, and at the end of the match, one person gets his hand raised up. It’s always more fun to get your hand raised at the end of a match.” Millard demonstrates, lifting his arm.

Besides motivation, a good wrestler should be in top physical condition. “When you’re practicing or in a match, you’re constantly lifting or pushing or pulling another person, and they’re doing the same to you. It’s constant physical effort,” he says. “We prepare wrestlers by pushing them hard physically.”

Millard began wrestling in high school in Watertown, NY, and went to college at SUNY Cortland where he earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in physical education. He taught in New York and joined NMH in 1985, where he was athletic director until 2005. He’s coached wrestling the entire tenure here and coached JV baseball for two years. Rob Buyea, a science teacher and fellow upstate New York wrestler, will take over when Millard retires.

“Frank is known throughout New England and nationally for his coaching accomplishments, but he is also known and respected for his twenty years of guiding NMH athletics as the director of the program,” says Tom Pratt, the current director of athletics. “He set a high standard of excellence in both coaching and administration that I not only appreciate, but aim for.”

The NMH community will honor Millard and has invited wrestlers from years past to attend his last home meet February 9, followed by a reception and dinner. The send off is sure to evoke memories of earlier times and—who knows?—may even get a bit sentimental.

NMH Students Help Solve the World’s Problems
Five NMH students and two faculty members are headed to Genoa, Italy, for a session of the Model United Nations February 25. Les Freeman and Meg Hodgin are leading the group of these student delegates: Evan Abrams ’08, Tom Fagan ’08, Andre Gobbo ’09, and Johannes Wesselhoeft ’09.

Students at the Genoa conference will tackle a range of issues including bioethics, AIDS, disarmament, global warming, and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Model UN programs are demanding, and challenge students in important ways. Student participants undergo tremendous growth in their confidence, skill, and competence working with international affairs in a rigorous and demanding forum. 

During this trip, students will be able to discuss foreign affairs with teens from Austria, Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Germany, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, and Turkey.

Model UN students have traveled previously to such places as St. Petersburg, Cairo, Istanbul, Amsterdam, Rio, and Lisbon. Model UN students from NMH have won praise for their high levels of preparedness and performance at these events. 

NMH King Week Events
Starting January 21, the day the nation observes the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., NMH will be busy paying homage to the leader of the Civil Rights movement. Here are the highlights:

• The play “The Meeting” by Jeff Stetson, imagines a clandestine meeting between King and Malcom X in 1965. It will be performed at Memorial Chapel at 9:35 am January 21.
• Kimmie Weeks ’01 will be the State of the World speaker January 22 at 6:45 pm in the Rhodes Room in Beveridge Hall. Weeks, an advocate for the children and families affected by war in Africa, won a Golden BR!CK Award last April for youth activism and was recently named Knight Grand Commander, Liberia’s highest honor, by its president.
• Acclaimed poet and activist Sonia Sanchez will speak on campus January 23. Sanchez, who has been working for Civil Rights since the 1960s and is a winner of the American Book Award, will address the community at 10:50 am at Memorial Chapel.
• The Brothers, a student group whose mission is to bond and promote peace, love, unity, respect, and success, presents an episode of The Boondocks called “Return of the King” from 7 to 8 pm in Blake Student Center.
• The NMH Jazz Ensemble will play during dinner at Alumni Hall from 5:30 to 7 pm January 24.

Click here for a listing of MLK week events.

Hoggers Head to Historic Arena
The NMH boys basketball team travels to Philadelphia this weekend to play in the “Cathedral of Basketball,” the Palestra. Opened 91 years ago, the building is famous for its seating arrangement, where the bleachers end at the floor and no barriers separate the fans from the game. It was one of the first modern steel-and-concrete arenas in the United States, and also one of the first to be constructed without interior pillars blocking the view. At the time of its construction, the Palestra was one of the largest arenas in the world.

The Hoggers will take on the University of Pennsylvania's JV team at the Palestra, which has hosted some of college basketball's greatest games and players over the decades. The Philly Big Five (Villanova, LaSalle, UPenn, Temple, and St. Joe's) play all of their cross-town basketball games there. In fact, this week, Jerrell Williams ’07 and Terrell Williams ’07 helped LaSalle University defeat UPenn at the Palestra for the first time in eight years. NMH fans are welcome to venture to the City of Brotherly Love to cheer the Hoggers Saturday, January 19, at 2:30 pm.

Speaker Explores Georgia's Political Landscape
Former history teacher Rick Lussen offers analysis of the former Soviet republic of Georgia January 16 at 6:45 pm in the Rhodes Room of Beveridge Hall as part of NMH’s State of the World speaker series. Rick Lussen, the principal and director at the American Academy in Tbilisi, Georgia, leads a 30-minute lecture about Georgia’s relations with Russia, November’s massive demonstrations and police action, and the January 5 re-election of the pro-Western president Mikheil Saakashvili. A question and answer period follows.

Lussen holds a BA in history from Yale University; an MA in language, literature, speech, and theater from Columbia University; and an MS in geography from the University of Massachusetts.

The address is free and open to the public. The NMH State of the World speaker series was founded in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to foster dialogue between the school and local communities about world events.

The Big Freeze
What do you do with 93 pounds of jersey milk, 17 pounds of white sugar, six and a half pounds of powdered milk, half a gallon of jersey cream, and three pounds of sugared egg yolks? Well, if you’re farm director Richard Odman, you pour it all into a big vat, pasteurize it, send it to local ice cream producer Bart’s Homemade, and serve it to the NMH community. The farm’s cows produced the milk, and the farm team has sent to Alumni Hall 100 gallons of ice cream—50 gallons of vanilla and 50 gallons of raspberry—using the farm’s fresh fruit. Only 25 gallons of ice cream remain to be brought up the hill, and then there will be no more of the sweet, cold stuff until spring, when the cows calve and the milk flows once more. 

Alumnae Artists Ascending
Two alumnae are engaging the art world by creating compelling, original work. Visual artist Erika Blumenfeld ’90 will document the vernal equinox from islands near the North Pole this March. Site-based choreographer Kate Watson-Wallace ’96, whose work has included a dance performed in the back seat of a car for three audience members at a time, won a $50,000 Pew Fellowship earlier this year.

Blumenfeld, captivated by natural light, uses light-recording equipment she designed that allows light to travel directly across the surface of photosensitive materials. “The resulting images are recordings of the subtle gradient shifts that light makes over time, and yield a visual account of light’s trace,” she notes at her website. In March, she will document the vernal equinox from Svalbard, a group of islands near the North Pole and Greenland. This work, commissioned by the Swedish gallery Färgfabriken, will lead to her larger piece on the Arctic and Antarctic called “The Polar Project.”

Watson-Wallace, awarded a Pew Fellowship earlier this year, creates site-based dance performances that re-imagine everyday spaces. The Pew Foundation website had this to say about her work: “She choreographs for the spectator as well as the performer, taking the audience on intimate, human-scaled journeys through a row house, a parking lot, or a dance club. One may witness a contorted female solo in a bedroom closet or a combative duet in the back seat of a Chevy Caprice.” Watson-Wallace collaborated with video artist Ricardo Rivera on the performance piece “House,” which had a sold-out run at the 2006 Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and garnered a glowing New York Times review.

Reshaping Traditions
In November, nine faculty members and six students traveled to Boston to attend the National Association for Independent School’s 20th annual People of Color Conference and the 13th annual Student Diversity Leadership Conference. The theme of the conference was “Learning from the Past, Leading for the Future: Reshaping Traditions,” and speakers included author Gish Jen, former NBA player John Amaechi, and renowned educator and author Frank Wu.

NMH’s director of multicultural education, James J. Greenwood, served as a facilitator of various affinity group sessions and was also named co-chair of the regional group POCIS-NE (People of Color in Independent Schools, New England). In the coming weeks, the conference attendees look forward to sharing their experiences with the greater NMH community.

Attending were these faculty members: Vaughn Allen, Anne Atkins, Metta Dael ’93, Lydia de Faveri-Spiegel, Bea Garcia, Yocelin Gonzalez, James Greenwood, Nate Hemphill, and Hugh Silbaugh. These students also attended: Jason Green ’09, Omoefe Ebhohimen ’09, Rachel Koh ’08, Sergio Tarraf Fhilho ’08, Indigo Dow ’09, Josue Abreu ’08.

What's Up? Asteroids!
NMH students have discovered four large chunks of rock and ice moving through the Main Asteroid Belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The group of nine students in Hughes Pack’s astronomy class spotted the so-called Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) using images from a telescope in Illinois. The group is part of a national project where high schools and colleges search for comets and asteroids. The class uses images from large telescopes to take several pictures of a region of the sky during a given time frame, overlaps the photos, and uses computers to search for any moving objects. Typically, a comet or asteroid will appear as a blurry gray dot moving in a constant, straight path.

This October, class members found K07TN8K, K07T73P, K07T73O, and K07T15N. They compared their findings with a database of known objects at the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to see if their NEOs has been discovered by anyone else, and found that they hadn’t been.

Pack explained what else scientists can gain (besides a heads-up before an asteroid plummets to Earth) by cataloging asteroids. “By counting how many there are, we can begin to build statistical models on what the Solar System might have looked like right after it formed, which might help us understand what we see today, and also what to look for as we find other stars with planets or debris orbiting them.”

Josh Throckmorton ’08 is in the class and had this to say about the discoveries: “Being able to step into the shoes of a professional astronomer and actually contribute to the world of science is one of the coolest things I have ever done in high school. The fact that we, as high school kids, are helping NASA to track and monitor NEOs is pretty amazing. And the best part is that, as Hughes tells us, we can be heroes. And all we have to do is look up.”

See Josh's Powerpoint project on NEOs.

NMH Athletes Rock!
Laurel wreaths have been heaped on the heads of Hoggers (figuratively speaking) recently. Girls basketball players captured victory in the Holiday Basketball Tournament. Joy-Marie Fernandes ’10 was singled out for her soccer skills in a round-up of prep stars in The Boston Globe. And undefeated wrestlers (and their coach) are passing impressive milestones.

The basketball victory was ten years in the making. NMH has hosted the Holiday Basketball Tournament for a decade, and this year, the girls varsity team won, besting crews from Vermont Academy, Holderness School, and Kimball Union Academy. Erika Loomer ’08 was named Athlete of the Week for her performance in the December 8 and 9 games, and played on the All Tournament Team. Head of School Tom Sturtevant accepted the trophy for NMH December 10 at an all-school meeting.

NMH girls varsity soccer quad-captain Joy-Marie Fernandes ’10  was named a Boston Globe Prep All-Scholastic on December 9. Fernandes led the team with one goal and 11 assists for a team-high 13 points. A sophomore, Fernandes was named a 2007 Preseason All-Star, was named a 2007 WWNEPSSA All-Star, and represented NMH in the annual WWNEPSSA All-Star game. Fernandes earned this latest accolade by being recognized by opposing coaches throughout the season.

NMH’s wrestlers recently recorded victories over Tabor Academy 54-30, Belmont Hill School 49-24, and Deerfield Academy 72-12 to run their record to 5-0. The win over Belmont Hill was particularly satisfying in that the team is the defending New England champion and is the top team in the ISL league. Meanwhile, Marty Tarantino ’08 recorded three wins to bring his career total to 102, thus becoming the sixth member of the NMH Wrestling Century Club. John Coutoumas ’08 beat the defending New England champion from Belmont Hill 17-2 as he continues his quest for a national title. The three team wins give coach Frank Millard 702 career coaching wins as he becomes just the third coach in the nation to record more than 700 wins at any level of wrestling. 

Congratulations, athletes!

Tune in for NMH Christmas Vespers
’Tis the season to enjoy Christmas Vespers, either in person or by live webcast this Sunday, December 9, at 3:30 and 7 pm. Following the broadcast, WNMH will stream the concert continuously. Listeners will be able to download the music from the NMH website after December 17. Vespers will feature music by Bach, Lauridsen, Buxtehude, Rutter, Wilcocks, and Matthias, along with traditional carols.

For those of you in the New York area, mark your calendar for our Vespers service on December 19 at 7 pm at St. James Church, 865 Madison Avenue, New York. A reception will follow immediately afterward. Do come—the more the merrier! For more details about the NYC event, click here.

NMH's Transition Year Program Turns 25
Pam Shoemaker’s office is crowded with books—on shelves, on stacks on the floor, on the large table that serves as her desk. The walls are studded with photographs of her former students—students who’ve made good by graduating from college and building careers —and there are a lot of them. From this cozy space, Pam Shoemaker has guided NMH’s Transition Year Program for 25 years. The program provides a postgraduate year for four to six high-achieving, low-income students.

A TYP student pops in. He and Shoemaker briefly discuss the novel she has assigned to the PG English class she teaches. The author is Haitian, as is the student. Shoemaker says he already has taught her things that have enriched her experience of the book.

Another student walks by the office and Shoemaker draws her in. Her head is covered by her fitted sweatshirt’s red hood. “Are you going to wear that hood all day?” teases Shoemaker. The girl chuckles. Shoemaker’s demeanor becomes more serious. “Do you have enough long underwear and sweaters?” she asks. The girl says she does and goes on to her next class.

The Transition Year Program began when college admission officers started contacting NMH about students whose applications they received. The students were smart, motivated, and accomplished, but needed some grounding: a long-term stable situation that the school could provide. Shoemaker designed and developed the program that has produced many successful students. Kimmie Weeks '01, who won a Brick Award last year for his humanitarian work; and Beatrice Biira '04, recently featured in President Bill Clinton's book, Giving, are graduates of the program. A balance of one-third African-American students, one-third Native-American students, and one-third Latino/a students is what Shoemaker aims for.

She says of her role of nurturing these students, “It’s like going along with someone learning to ride a two-wheeler. First you’re holding on and catching them when they fall. Then you see them ride off.”

Musicians Perform around New England
The NMH Jazz Ensemble and World Music Percussion Ensemble will perform at the Vermont Jazz Center Jazz Festival, which is happening December 1 and 2. The NMH groups will perform on Sunday from 1 to 2:30 pm and are among 15 high school music groups slated to play.

In addition, the NMH Singers and Select Women's Ensemble have been invited to perform at the Association of Boarding Schools Conference in Boston November 29.

Meanwhile, NMH musicians competed against hundreds of students from western Massachusetts at the Music Educators' Western District auditions at Westfield State College November 11. The top students in each area have been accepted to participate in the annual Western Massachusetts District Festival, to take place in January at the University of Massachusetts.

The following NMH students received high enough scores to be chosen for their ensembles:

Chorus: Cam Margeson ’09
Kaori Nakanishi ’08
Yulong Cui ’08
Dreamy Wang ’09
Emily Quinn-Bell ’09
Kavinee Hui ’08
Tad Bezerra ’08
David Hsia ’08
Jordan Kreyling ’11
Will Baker ’10
Brady Ward ’10

Orchestra:
Lysander Jaffe ’09
Will Heo ’10

Concert Band:
Jordan Kreyling ’11 (chosen to play first chair flute)

Jazz Ensemble:
Spencer Hattendorf ’08 (one of only two alto saxophone players chosen)

The following students have been recommended to move on to the All-State level of competition:
Lysander Jaffe ’09
Spencer Hattendorf ’08
Dreamy Wang ’09
Emily Quinn-Bell ’09
Kavinee Hui ’08
Tad Bezerra ’08
David Hsia ’08
Jordan Kreyling ’11 (in both band and chorus)
Will Baker ’10
Brady Ward ’10

Congratulations!

Speaker Brings Feminist Perspective to Media Analysis
Saying that feminism is often thought of as the “f-word,” media critic Susan Douglas encouraged students to embrace equality of the sexes and to be wary consumers of mainstream media. Noting that media both expose and exploit viewers’ anxieties about women's place in society, she identified the paradox that the media expect women both to be “thin, blonde, and poreless” and to change the world.

In preparation for her visit, students discussed Douglas’ work, which includes Where the Girls Are and The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How it Has Undermined Women, with their advisors. Douglas ate lunch with several students and faculty after her talk, and signed copies of her books as she discussed television shows such as MTV’s “My Super Sweet 16” and “Gossip Girl,” which NMH students admitted were frequently playing in lounges across campus.

Green Cup Challenge Planners at NMH
On November 11, 150 people representing 39 schools converged at NMH to plan and prepare for the third annual Green Cup Challenge, to be held in February. Organizers of this sustainability contest hope that electricity-saving measures implemented by participating schools will prevent close to one million pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.

Thirty-two boarding schools and seven day schools from Maine to Florida are competing in this year’s challenge, an annual competition among boarding schools to reduce electricity consumption and raise awareness about the environmental impacts of electricity production.

"With more than 16,000 students participating in the Green Cup Challenge this year, along with the thousands of associated families, faculty, and staff, the positive impact that just one environmentally-conscious individual can have will be magnified several thousand times over,” said NMH science teacher Becca Leslie, who coordinated the school’s hosting of the organizing conference and its participation in the contest.

For NMH Athletes, It's All Stars!
The stars are shining on the athletic fields and courts of NMH. Erika Loomer ’08 represented the school at the volleyball all-star game recently at Andover. She did NMH proud. From among 50 all-stars, Erika earned one of 12 spots on the coveted All-League team of Boston Globe All-Stars. This is the second consecutive year Erika has been so honored.

Meanwhile, Colin Murphy ’09 and Kade Krichko ’08 played soccer in the WNEPSSA All-Star game at the Westminster School. Girls varsity soccer players Jess Woodworth ’08 and striker Joy-Marie Fernandes ’10 also played in that event. Woodworth got the start in net and earned three saves and one goal against. Fernandes, who came off the bench to play about 48 minutes, took three shots and made her presence felt constantly, although their team lost 2-0.

Melanie Bete ’09 and Molly DeLallo ’09 played on the field hockey WNEPSFHA All-Star team. Melanie played midfield and Molly was the solo goalie on the same team, which won 2-0.

Congratulations, all!

Diplomacy Meets Ecology
The Model United Nations team spent a week in Lisbon in October, where it represented NMH at an Eco Forum hosted by St. Dominic's International School in São Domingos de Rana. The group performed to acclaim and received compliments from both student delegates and their adult leaders.

 

Reaching out at NMH
Two new outreach programs have sprung up at NMH this year. The first, Kids to Kids, provides money and materials for the Comfort for Kids wagon at Baystate Franklin Medical Center in Greenfield. Started by Fei Chen ’09 and Megan Gale ’09, the 12-member Kids to Kids group recently hosted a magazine drive. The group will deliver the slightly used magazines to children in the hospital. “I hope to not only raise enough money to support Comfort for Kids Wagons,” says Chen, “but to also send the message that little things are also effective.”

A Habitat for Humanity chapter, in the works for several months, has already provided labor for one building project in Franklin County.

NMH Outreach programs include being a big brother or big sister, serving free community meals, tutoring children at the local elementary school, knitting for those in shelters, and providing birthday gifts and parties for homeless children. Annie Neill ’97 is the director of NMH Outreach.

NMH Teacher a Fellow in Holocaust Studies
History and Social Sciences teacher Karen Levitt has been recognized as a Cohen Fellow in Holocaust Studies. To earn this title, Levitt graduated from a residential summer program at the Cohen Center for Holocaust Studies at Keene (NH) State College, one of the nation’s oldest Holocaust centers. The program will help Karen bring to her teaching knowledge of genocide, and what ordinary people can do to prevent it from happening.

Levitt teaches World History, Comparative Politics, US History, a Ninth-Grade History Seminar, and Economics. About teaching at NMH, she says, “Not only do students want to do well in their courses, but also they are committed to becoming educated citizens of the world.” At NMH since 2000, Levitt led NMH study abroad trips to the Dominican Republic and South Africa. She also is a certified canoe instructor, a member of the US Canoe and Kayak Association, and a three-time winner of the US Canoe Nationals.

Congratulations!

Gift Spurs Construction of New Admission Building
Head of School Thomas K. Sturtevant recently announced that the NMH Board of Trustees voted to approve the construction of a new admission building to be located near the heart of campus. The construction of this important facility is made possible through a $2.5-million gift from David F. Bolger ’50, whose support for NMH over the years distinguishes him as the largest individual donor in the school’s history.

“In recognition of Mr. Bolger’s loyalty and generosity and to honor his parents, who made sacrifices so that their children could attend NMH, the new building will bear the Bolger family’s name,” noted Mr. Sturtevant. “The spirit of our school and the power of our heritage are reflected in the chosen site for the building, which is adjacent to the ninth-grade village, between Memorial Chapel and Alumni Hall, and in sight of the Memorial Grove of pines. From the building’s covered front porch, our visitors will enjoy stunning views of the campus and beyond to the east and south.”

Mr. Bolger’s leadership gift reflects his deep commitment and faith in Northfield Mount Hermon School. In May 2006, Mr. Bolger gave NMH securities valued at $10 million to be used to endow scholarships, establish a faculty chair, and support an endowment for Memorial Chapel. It is the largest gift the school has received and a remarkable statement of support for Mr. Bolger’s alma mater.

While the admission building construction schedule has not been finalized, the project is expected to be completed before the opening of school in 2009. In keeping with NMH’s sustainability values, the design will incorporate modern resource conservation features and will aim to be LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified.

Student of Russian a Scholar Laureate
Franklin Redner ’09 has been named by the American Council of Teachers of Russian (ACTR) an ACTR Russian Scholar Laureate for 2007. The designation honors his effort in both Russian 1 and Russian 2. Fifty-seven students from around the country were honored by their schools with the title, which also comes with a certificate of achievement and a commemorative pin.

Franklin, who has studied Russian for two years, was drawn to “the romantic and mysterious appeal” of the language. He says that learning the Slavic tongue, with its Cyrillic letters and often unpredictable pronunciation, came easily to him. “All it is for me is memorizing patterns and functions of words and cases, and memorization has always been pretty second nature for me.”

Congratulations!

Author Judy Blume Visits NMH
Judy Blume loves to sniff books. Not in a weird way. As a girl, she would spend many a pleasant hour in the library in Elizabeth, NJ, reading, as well as breathing in the books. “They smell so ripe and used,” she told a somewhat giddy crowd at Schauffler Library at NMH Friday evening. Indeed when her first book, The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo, was published in 1969, the first thing she did when she received a box of them was to tear open the box and—what else?—sniff her creation. Many more books were published after that: titles that many girls, and now-grown-up girls, and some boys, as well, know by heart: Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret, Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing, Deenie, Blubber, Forever. And today’s readers have new books to immerse themselves in: Fudge-a-Mania, Double Fudge, and for older readers, Summer Sisters.

Her much-loved books also provoked. After the presidential election in 1980, Blume said, the censors “crawled out of the woodwork.” Her frank treatment of subjects such as puberty and sexuality rankled some in the religious right, and some of her books were removed from school and public libraries around the country. Blume says parents have the right to decide what their children can and can’t read, but censors, motivated by anxiety and fear, decide that no one can read a book. “They cannot make that decision for everyone,” she said. She noted that the political left also dabbled in censorship when some wanted Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn banned for its racial insensitivity. Blume says the book needs to be taught in context. “You can’t pretend that things never happened, because they did,” she said.

During her visit to NMH, where her grandson goes to school, Blume addressed a creative writing class, dined with students and faculty, and was the special guest at a mother-daughter reading group on campus. Her talk at Schauffler commemorated the American Library Association’s National Banned Book Week.

As Blume spoke, Tron Bon blazed out the window behind her. “Let’s be grateful they aren’t burning books,” she said with a smile.

Arts Building Bell Tower Topped
The steel cap for the brick bell tower at the Rhodes Center for the Arts was lifted into place by a crane recently as hundreds of onlookers cheered. Teachers brought their classes out to see the top put on the tower, which will house an antique carillon that was used at the Northfield campus. The bell tower also has architectural significance: “The bell tower was a very important element for the RCFA from the onset of design,” says Sherif Anise ’85 a senior associate with CBT, the firm that designed the building.

The tower sets up a triangle with the towers of Memorial Chapel and Blake. “Stylistically, this tower represents both Northfield and Mount Hermon, adapting architectural features from both campuses, which are very different from one another," Anise says. "In many ways, this is the first Northfield Mount Hermon building!”

NMH State of the World Speaker Series Kicks Off
Two alumni speakers will address the NMH community in the coming week: Joshua Emmot '91 and Jack Kenworthy '95.

Emmot, a history teacher and world traveler will present “Facts on the Ground,” a look at the social, economic, healthcare, and political impact on Palestinians in the West Bank of the wall erected by Israel. The address takes place September 26 at NMH in the Rhodes Room in Beveridge Hall at 6:45 pm.

Emmot spent two months in the West Bank in the summer of 2006 while he studied Arabic at Bir Zeit University. He described life in West Bank as living “under occupation in an apartheid state.”

After graduating from NMH, Emmot studied at Wesleyan University and the University of London in the School of Oriental and African Studies. He then joined the Peace Corps and worked for the Queen Noor Al-Hussein Foundation in Jordan helping to integrate Bedouin women into the formal economy by setting up sustainable micro-businesses. He taught English in Shenzhen, China, then traveled from Hong Kong to Syria. Moving back to the states, he started a business in Santa Fe importing carpets and handicrafts from Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan. In 2001 he started teaching in the South Bronx, NY, and in 2004 moved to Milton Academy, where he teaches history.

Jack Kenworthy, who will give a talk on October 3, will report on how high school students are diving in to sustainable projects at the Island School in the Bahamas, where he taught science, and is the director of systems, heading the school’s sustainability projects. Kenworthy, who will speak at 6:45 pm in the Rhodes Room of Beveridge Hall, will discuss how high schools can create solutions to environmental problems. In particular, he will show the potential for high school learning to be tied not only to authentic research, but for that research to feed for-profit companies that raise money for the school. He will talk about projects such as commercial biodiesel, offshore aquaculture, sustainable agriculture, and renewable energy.

At the Island School, Kenworthy is involved with design and installation work on renewable energy projects, biological waste treatment facilities, green building projects, biofuels development, legislation reform, aquaculture, and education for sustainability. He has been awarded the George T. Kidder Award for Leadership, Scholarship, and Service and the Crow Award for excellence in systems thinking (Columbia University, 1998). All are welcome to these free talks.

NMH Band Leader to Play at Arts Festival
Ron Smith, NMH’s director of jazz programs and band, will headline the Paridise City Festival, a juried fine arts and designer craft show in Northampton on October 6 from noon to 4 pm. This is Smith's second appearance at the festival. He and his band, the Ron Smith Jazz Quartet, will be performing traditional jazz standards, swing, and contemporary music. Smith has played with jazz greats Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Nat Adderley, B.B. King, both Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Al Stewart, Andre Ward, Roy Hargrove, Joshua Redman, and Hafiz Shabazz. Smith will be joined by Bob Cummings on keyboard/piano, Doug Raneri on drums, and Jamie McDonald on bass. Smith will play saxophone and percussion.

NMH Receives $1 Million from Alumna
A Northfield Mount Hermon School alumna from the class of 1973 has contributed an unrestricted gift of $1 million to her alma mater. The school will use the gift to help support students, faculty, and academic programs. Head of School Thomas K. Sturtevant announced the news during the school’s recent convocation weekend. "An anonymous gift of this magnitude signals how deeply graduates love Northfield Mount Hermon," said Sturtevant. "Not wishing to draw attention to herself, this alumna was motivated solely by a desire to make a difference through a leadership gift that will allow us to invest in key strategic priorities. Support from alumni sustains and strengthens NMH, and this donor's gift is just the latest example of graduates wanting to give back to a school they believe gave them so much."

In January 2004 the Northfield Mount Hermon Board of Trustees voted to consolidate the two-campus school to one and to adjust the size of the student body in order to strengthen its distinctive academic offerings and create a closer community. Since then the school's highly successful fundraising efforts have helped build the endowment, school programs, student scholarship funds, faculty chair appointments, and facilities. In the last three years the school’s endowment has grown 36 percent to $167.5 million. NMH also constructed two new dormitories and broke ground for a new $29 million arts center, due to open in the fall of 2008.

The donor said she is pleased with the progress the school has made since the trustees’ decision nearly four years ago. “I’m incredibly proud of Northfield Mount Hermon—both the school I attended in the ‘70s and the NMH of today—and I’m excited about its future. The strong leadership in place has demonstrated its commitment to the school’s continued growth, while not straying from its founding principles and mission. NMH was a happy and balanced place for me, and I want to contribute towards maintaining the wonderful NMH spirit.”

NMH Senior Witnesses Darfur Devastation
Nicholas Anderson '08 of Conway spent one month in Sudan this summer as a youth ambassador for the relief organization Oxfam. He returned 16 pounds lighter, and changed by experiencing a region of the world radically different than the United States.

Recounting first-hand what it’s like to live in Darfur, where he spent about one week of his visit, Nick says more Americans — particularly young Americans — must learn about the ongoing violence and humanitarian crisis in Darfur and support those who will be struggling to rebuild their lives.

“Wherever I went you could hear the sound of gun shots. There were armed men around every corner,” Nick told Oxfam. “I couldn’t understand how violence like that could be so routine.” Commenting on conversations he had with a local man he was traveling with, Nick noted, “to me it’s a disaster, to him, it’s life.”

In one small town that absorbed more than 60,000 refugees, Nick met with people ranging in age from 14 to 20 who were living in temporary shelters. He asked them all the same question: “If there was one thing you could ask Americans to help you with, what would it be?”

The responses varied little: health care and technical training for jobs. However health care needs in Darfur were basic. “They need shovels to fill in holes and ditches in their schoolyards because during the rainy season, stagnant pools of water form and become breeding grounds for mosquitoes that carry infectious diseases like malaria. In addition, many of the young people in Darfur are looking for training in technical skills—things like carpentry and metalwork so they can get jobs and help to rebuild their communities,” Nick said.

He also noticed that young people there lacked ways to become active participants and leaders in their communities, to have a voice in what was happening around them.

“For teens in the US, there are so many ways to connect with each other and get involved in things that matter to us. In Darfur, so many of the young people I met would love to go to school, but don’t because they can’t afford it, or because the roads to the schools are unsafe and they worry about what might happen to them if they try to get to class,” said Nick. “For those who are able to go to school, that’s all they can do in a day. Once they return from class, they have to stay at home since they are not allowed to leave their homes after dark because of security concerns.”

Nick was introduced to a Oxfam by Constance Kane' 66. He was eager to visit the region after co-founding with NMH student Ana Slavin '08 a successful national high school challenge to raise awareness and funds for Darfur by using the social networking sites Facebook and MySpace. NMH won the challenge with a fundraising effort, led by Evan Abrams '08, and in May, Nick, Ana, and Evan traveled to Washington, DC, to meet with lawmakers and testify before congress. After helping to raise more than $300,000, part of which helped to fund Oxfam’s relief effort in Darfur, Nick felt the next logical step was to see the region for himself and bring his experiences back to share with other teens. He says the impetus to get involved in Darfur was an NMH study abroad trip to South Africa in 2006.

NMH Photos on Flickr
We’re a bit snap-happy here at NMH, and our growing database of photographs is evidence of that. To make it easier for students, parents and alumni to access NMH photos, we’re placing many shots from the NMH website onto the popular online photo-sharing website Flickr. Click here to see what’s up.

Warm Welcomes
Opening Convocation is a time to celebrate the new school year. This year’s event was no exception. With music, singing, and welcoming speeches from, among others, Head of School Thomas K. Sturtevant and Evan Abrams '08, this assembly of community signaled a new season to dive in to work.