Waltzing with Bracey: A Long Reach Home, By Brenda Gilchrist ’47
Waltzing with Bracey: A Long Reach Home By Brenda Gilchrist ’47 Bauhan Publishing, 2012 In this brave and thoughtful memoir, Brenda Gilchrist tells the story of learning to claim her place in the world—Deer Isle, Maine—and a wonderfully bossy little corgi, Bracey, who helps her to do so. After a girlhood spent abroad in various world capitals, Gilchrist never felt entirely at home anywhere, or indeed, particularly confident about who she was. Her family’s Deer Isle summer cottage might qualify as an anchor of sorts. But there are so...
read moreThe World of Sicilian Wine, By Bill Nesto ’69
The World of Sicilian Wine By Bill Nesto ’69 and Frances Di Savino University of California Press, 2013 The World of Sicilian Wine provides wine lovers with a comprehensive understanding of Sicilian wine, from its ancient roots to its modern evolution. Offering a guide and map to exploring Sicily, Bill Nesto, an expert in Italian wine, and Frances Di Savino, a student of Italian culture, deliver a substantive appreciation of a vibrant wine region that is one of Europe’s most historic areas and a place where many cultures intersect. From...
read moreIslands of Time: A Novel, By Barbara Kent Lawrence ’61
Islands of Time: A Novel By Barbara Kent Lawrence ’61 Just Write Books, 2013 When Rebecca Grangers falls in love with Ben Bunker, she is only 14. In 1958, a summer girl is not allowed to love a year-round boy, son of a fisherman in Downeast Maine, and yet she does. When her father dies, loss and anger overpower her, and she commits a sin, terrible at the time, that almost destroys her. She hides from her life in fantasies until she returns to Maine as an adult, and struggles to come to terms with the past. Islands of Time is a moving story...
read moreThe Woman Upstairs, By Claire Messud ’83
The Woman Upstairs By Claire Messud ’83 Alfred A. Knopf, 2013 Nora Eldridge, an elementary- school teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts, long ago compromised her dream to be a successful artist, mother and lover. She has instead become the “woman upstairs,” a reliable friend and neighbor always on the fringe of others’ achievements. Then into her life arrives the glamorous and cosmopolitan Shahids—her new student Reza Shahid, a child who enchants as if from a fairy tale, and his parents: Skandar, a dashing Lebanese professor who has...
read moreA Bowl of Eggs
by Rob Radtke ’82 One of the great privileges of my work is to travel around the world to visit the programs of Episcopal Relief & Development, the international development agency of the Episcopal Church. We are the stewards of sacrificial generosity from around the United States, and we take very seriously the responsibility we have to our friends and supporters to ensure that their gifts are used as they intend. My travel helps me carry out that responsibility. Recently, when I was in northern Ghana, I visited about six...
read moreJoining the Board of Trustees
Yunli Lou ’87 Yunli Lou ’87 and her husband, James Kralik, operate Milestone Capital, where Yunli serves as managing director. Milestone is a China-focused private equity investment and advisory firm with main offices in Shanghai and Beijing. Yunli also serves as a director of Yuhua TelTech and Dehaier Medical Systems and was an observer of Focus Media. Yunli, Milton’s first graduate from China, is a graduate of Harvard College and was named a John Harvard Scholar. Helping to promote and expand Milton’s profile in Shanghai, Yunli and...
read moreProducing Groundbreaking TV in Afghanistan and Egypt
Anna Elliot ’03 inspires young entrepreneurs In hindsight, Anna Elliot’s reality TV series might seem like a media mogul’s strategy to build market share in developing countries. A reality television competition for aspiring and inspiring entrepreneurs, the first program aired in Afghanistan on the largest national channel and featured 20 entrepreneurs pitching and launching their social ventures. What Anna did intend, with her countercultural program, was to leverage the power of real people telling real stories. These stories, she...
read moreWhy Would Hotels Go Green?
Tedd Saunders ’79 doesn’t like to say that he pioneered the green hotel movement. A third-generation hotelier, in 1989 he sold his family on the idea that they could reduce their environmental footprint, offer four-star service, and still make a profit. He wrote a book about how to do it and launched a consulting firm to spread his eco-friendly business ideas. Tedd’s hotels were the first in the United States to offer guests, among other things, the option of reusing towels and sheets for more than one night. He was ahead of his time...
read moreThe Storyteller and His Color Machine
The Color Machine’s office is a Brooklyn artist’s loft: all open concept, complete with floor-to-ceiling windows, polished concrete surfaces and jangling elevator cage. The space is a comfortable blend of well worn and cutting edge—a perfect place from which filmmaker Raafi Rivero ’95 and his business partners to craft visual stories. Raafi has worked in film and advertising since graduating from film school at Howard University. Prior to that, he studied film at Brown, and he’s been in New York City since. Two years ago, Raafi and...
read moreOne Truck, Local Sources, Ingenuity with a Dose of Love
The Mei Mei Street Kitchen food truck is parked next to the Boston Public Library on a freezing December morning. Bundled Bostonians rush down the sidewalk intent on destinations. A few know that inside the truck the proprietors are preparing delicious, warm and comforting food that one wouldn’t expect: velvety carrot soup with bits of feta; pork belly with cranberry hoisin sauce on a soft cream biscuit; cheddar and leek bread pudding. Devoted customers begin to line up, shuffling their feet to keep warm, until the window shutter is raised...
read more5 Daring Perspectives
The surgeon, the poet, the financial analyst and the artist need visual awareness—awareness gleaned from intense observation of the material world, as well as awareness culled from experimentation in the studio. For Milton students, the chance to build this acuity starts early and includes everyone. Today, all Class IV students encounter a visual arts program that stretches back to the days of Richard Bassett, a famed studio teacher in the ’60s. Also, from tooting the penny whistle to perfecting the French horn, from writing computer code...
read moreFrom the Lab Bench to the Front Line: Reimagining a Science Career
Pulling on the signature white coat every morning, ensconced in a Yale genetics lab, Althea Grant ’89 could have congratulated herself: her scientific career was right on track. Yet, she was not happy. More than fifteen years later, Althea wears a khaki Public Health Service uniform to her office at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta. Now, she is right where she wants to be. Soul searching, networking and research helped Althea devise and embark on an unusual, even unlikely career shift from a coveted role in lab science to...
read moreMaking Dances: How to render ideas in space and time
Excitement has been building for weeks, and not just among the dancers. Don’t count on talking your way into King Theatre without a ticket. The Winter Dance Concert may be the biggest draw all year on campus. Seats are “sold-out” for the three nights’ run. Some students in the show have been dancing for many years; others made their way to dance tryouts after a football practice last fall. Milton choreographers figure prominently in the program lineup. These students, who earned green lights for their proposals from performing arts...
read moreMath Is Strategy: Grade Four Students Make the Decisions
Milton’s fourth graders learn three core tenets of working with numbers: flexibility, efficiency and accuracy. In other words, their teacher Randy Schmidt says, finding the right answer is important, but it’s not quite enough. “Students often come in with just the accuracy part,” Randy laughs, “and that leads to the other important work that we do.” They begin the year reviewing addition and subtraction strategies, as Randy reexamines or introduces multiple strategies for each operation. “Being open to a new strategy when they...
read moreOver Time
From above the fireplace, Headmaster Field’s view of Straus Library then (mid-1950s) and now
read moreGirls’ Cross Country Wins ISL Championship
Milton’s cross country runners are league champions. The girls brought home the Independent School League Championship Cup this fall, a feat last accomplished by the program in 1983. “The race was really fast, because the first part of the course was completely flat,” said Maddie Warwick (II). “Many of the girls in the front weren’t giving up. It was harder to pass them, because they stuck with you.” Maddie earned an early lead in the field of 85 runners and never looked back. Milton’s number-one runner finished the 3.1-mile...
read moreBuckminster Fuller, Milton Class of 1913
One hundred years ago, inventor and engineer Buckminster Fuller graduated from Milton Academy. Hailed as one of the greatest minds of our time, Buckminster experienced ups and downs in his early adult years. He was expelled from Harvard twice before apprenticing as a machine fitter at a cotton mill machinery company in Boston. During two years of service in the U.S. Navy during World War I, he demonstrated an aptitude for engineering. Following the war, an executive position at a construction firm ended with his firing. But after his...
read moreMessages: Randall Dunn ’83
Randall Dunn ’83 was the 2013 Martin Luther King Day speaker at the assembly honoring the great civil rights leader. Mr. Dunn is head of school at the Latin School of Chicago, which, like Milton, provides students with a challenging and rewarding educational program in a community that embraces diversity of people, cultures and ideas. As a student at Milton, he participated in community service, was a three-season athlete, and, as a senior, was a head monitor. Mr. Dunn earned a bachelor’s degree from Brown University and a master’s...
read moreMessages: Joe Vulopas
This year’s Talbot Speaker, Joe Vulopas, is the founder and executive director of Aevidum—a depression and suicide education awareness initiative launched at the Pennsylvania high school where Mr. Vulopas teaches English. Mr. Vulopas’s goal is spreading awareness about depression, suicide and hope. Aevidum involves trained adults in empowering middle and high school students to understand that depression is a treatable illness; to know the warning signs of depression; to use their gifts and talents to spread the message of hope; and to...
read moreMessages: Bishop John Shelby Spong
This year, Bishop John Shelby Spong continued the Endowment for Religious Understanding speaker series established by the Class of 1952. Bishop Spong spoke with students about accepting people, regardless of their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. He explained to students that the Bible is sometimes used to dissuade that acceptance, including in Bishop Spong’s own childhood experience. A retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, New Jersey, Bishop Spong is known as a theologian, religious commentator and author. Growing...
read moreMessages: Martín Espada
Tapping into his ancestral Puerto Rico and his 1960s Brooklyn childhood, Martín Espada’s poems weave stories of immigrants, family, music, racism and baseball. As this fall’s Bingham Visiting Reader, he read—with passion and humor—from selected works to students in King Theatre, framing his poems with stories of how they came to be. Mr. Espada has published more than 15 books as a poet, editor, essayist and translator. His latest collection of poems, The Trouble Ball, is the recipient of the Milt Kessler Award, a Massachusetts Book...
read moreMessages: Dr. Jackson Katz
Advocating the “bystander approach” commonly used in anti-bullying campaigns, Dr. Jackson Katz spoke with students this fall, encouraging everyone to use their voices against issues of gender violence. Dr. Katz co-founded the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) program at Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society. The program initially focused on involving college and professional athletes, given the potential there as a positive leadership platform. Today, MVP is the most widely used gender violence prevention...
read moreMessages: Nell Irvin Painter
Distinguished historian Nell Irvin Painter spoke to students about her research in her latest book, The History of White People. The book guides readers through more than 2,000 years of Western civilization, illuminating not only the invention of race, but also the frequent praise of “whiteness.” She is the author of several books and countless articles relating to the history of the American South. Her critically acclaimed book, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol, won the nonfiction prize of the Black Caucus of the American Library...
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