Daring to be honest
Todd, did you realize that your collar is flying free, like a wing?” my friend asked. I had missed a collar button. We laughed. How many people had noticed my weird look that morning but didn’t want to embarrass me, or embarrass themselves? True friends will clue you in on a missed button, a piece of parsley in your teeth, the occasional need for a Tic Tac or—heaven forbid!—the advice to adjust your zipper altitude. Even these simple comments are not easy to offer or, sometimes, to receive. Respectful, honest friendships, however, help...
read more“Please take care of yourself, and take care of your friends.”
On Wednesday, November 16, our students contemplated the fate of “Todd” and “Amy”—the players in a courtroom drama that had unfolded during assembly. High school students don’t lightly sacrifice their recess period; yet, that morning, second period bled into the precious 15 minutes of free time, and no one even noticed. That morning’s speaker, attorney Brett Sokolow, had appointed our students as the jury of a complicated, real-life case involving college students, alcohol, and a sexual encounter. Presenting the facts of the...
read moreIsabel Chun, Class III, Illustrates a Recently Published Book
Isabel Chun ’14 has illustrated her first published children’s book. Her childhood love of painting ultimately led her to this project. Isabel’s vivid and colorful illustrations appear in The Kwik Adventures of Baxter Brave and Tommy the Salami, the story of a young boy who sets off with his dog from the high-rise buildings of Hong Kong for an around-the-world adventure. Traversing four chapters—The Desert, The Ocean, The Jungle and The Mountains—the duo encounter storms, beautiful landscapes, and a variety of animals that help them...
read moreEliza Byard ’86
Dr. Eliza Byard ’86 is the executive director of the GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, a national organization working to ensure safe schools for all students, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression. She has over 20 years of experience in nonprofit development and spearheaded the first-ever Ad Council campaign on LGBT issues, ThinkB4YouSpeak. On campus she was hosted by the student group GASP! (Gay and Straight People). “The good news is that when you make the case well, carry the message in a...
read moreDeanne Borshay Liem
For more than 20 years, Deanne Borshay Liem has developed, produced and distributed independent films, including her Emmy Award–nominated personal documentary First Person Plural, which won the grand prize for the best Bay Area documentary at the San Francisco International Film Festival. For her latest project, Geographies of Kinship: The Korean Adoption Story, Ms. Liem received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She visited campus as the 2011 speaker in the Hong Kong Distinguished Lecture Series. “We’re told, as...
read moreStephen Elliott ’99
Having studied engineering and computer science at Yale, Stephen Elliott ’99 became a commissioned Naval officer and served on the USS Henry M. Jackson, a ballistic missile submarine. He’s enrolled in a dual program at Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School. After earning his degrees, he plans to work in the clean-technology industry. Stephen was Milton’s 2011 Veterans’ Day Speaker. “Military experience is so different from generation to generation, service to service, individual to individual. However, there’s a...
read moreHeather McGhee ’97
Heather McGhee ’97 is a director at Demos, a multi-issue national organization that combines research, policy and advocacy to influence public debate and catalyze change. She works every day to address economic inequality. As the 2012 Martin Luther King Jr. Speaker, she urged students to think about difficult economic issues. “The relative privilege that all of us in this room have, compared to the vast majority of Americans, is not a reason to avoid questions of economic inequality—because it makes us uncomfortable, or because of where...
read moreRay Suarez
Broadcast journalist Mr. Ray Suarez wove together evidence, from quotes and video clips, that demonstrates the complex relationship between religion and politics in this country. Mr. Suarez is senior correspondent on the “PBS NewsHour” and author of The Holy Vote. He visited with students and faculty in November as the Class of 1952 Endowment for Religious Understanding Speaker. “We have come to a crazy place in our national life. Politicians are using religion as a marker or a quick reference meant to signal to voters, ‘I am like you....
read more5 Friendly Reads
Searching for books about friendship, it turns out, is unfriendly business. Looking past the standbys of young adult fiction (think of A Separate Peace), we find ourselves staring out at a stark landscape: the last two centuries of fiction favored exploring the loneliness of individual consciousness, not the pleasures of the BFF. Alas, the genre that yields my personal favorites, American literature, turns a cold shoulder, too: tales of rugged individualism do not accommodate bosom buddies. From Douglass to Thoreau to Hemingway, American...
read moreRick Moody
American novelist and short-story writer Rick Moody was this fall’s Bingham Visiting Reader. Best known for his highly acclaimed novels, The Ice Storm and Garden State, Mr. Moody read to students his short story “Boys,” from his 2001 collection, Demonology, and answered questions about his approach to the writing process. “Boys enter the house. Boys enter the house. Boys, and with them the ideas of boys (ideas leaden, reductive, inflexible) enter the house.” —opening line from Rick Moody’s...
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