winter 2007 - Concord Academy

winter 2007EditorGail FriedmanManaging EditorTara BradleyDesignIrene Chu ’76Editorial BoardTara BradleyDirector of CommunicationsGail FriedmanAssociate Director of CommunicationsPam SaffordAssociate Head for Enrollment and PlanningCarol ShoudtMajor Gifts OfficerDiane SpenceDirector of DevelopmentLucille StottDevelopment WriterElizabeth “Billie” Julier Wyeth ’76Director of Alumnae/i ProgramsEditorial InternsNora Christiani ’07Charlie Hruska ’07Photography InternEverett Wallace ’07Write usConcord Academy Magazine166 Main StreetConcord, Massachusetts 01742(978) 402-2200magazine@concordacademy.orgwww.concordacademy.org© 2007 Concord AcademyCover illustration: Robert BrinkerhoffCommitted to being a schoolenriched by a diversity ofbackgrounds and perspectives,Concord Academy does notdiscriminate on the basis of sex,race, color, creed, sexual orien -tation, or national or ethnicorigin in its hiring, admissions,educational and financial policies,or other school-administeredprograms. The school’s facilitiesare wheelchair accessible.F E A T U R E S4 The House That Molly Built:Remembering Mary “Molly” Gregoryby William H. Eddy Jr.17 CA Bookshelfby Martha Kennedypage 1720 Convocation 200622 The Power of Languageby Gail FriedmanIllustrations by Robert BrinkerhoffINCLUDING:Rachel and David: The Language of Love by Nora Christiani ’07A French Connection by Caroline Hughes ’08Students’ Studies by Charlie Hruska ’07The Impact of Learning Chinese by Gail Friedman32 Dido and Aeneas: CA’s Operatic Premiereby Nick Morgan ’0737 Why You Should Care (A Lot)About Endowmentby Lucille StottFrom Monuments for the USAD E P A R T M E N T S2 Welcome to a New ConcordAcademy Magazine4 Letters5 Message from the Head of School6 Campus News11 Alumnae/i Association Update12 Alumnae/i ProfilesNancy Jaicks Alexander ’51Susanna Horton ’65Helen Haskell Hobbs ’70Kabir Sen ’95by Nancy Shohet West ’8441 Athletics2006 Fall HighlightsTo Vassar, Berlin, and Beyond:Will Byrne ’0244 Admissions45 Arts48 In Memoriampage 32

CAMPUS NEWSBelow: Tom Forman ’91 andTanya McQueen. Above right:Ed Peselman, Tom Forman,Ben Bailey, Stephanie SolakianGoldstein, and Jim Lichoulas,Class of 1991.Extreme MakeoverWith footage from thepopular TV show hecreated running behind him,Tom Forman ’91 took CA insideExtreme Makeover: HomeEdition during a fall assembly.Forman told the CA audiencethat earlier experience in hardnews frustrated him becausehe had to remain objective,reporting on people’s plightsbut never able to help.Extreme Makeover: HomeEdition, he said, has changedthe reality TV genre, touchingon issues such as homelessness,poverty, and illness,while attracting eighteen millionviewers a week. The showbuilds new houses for familiesin crisis.Forman visited campus withTanya McQueen, a designer onthe show. Before the assembly,the frenetic and talkativeForman lunched with formerclassmates and several students,offering stories andcareer advice.Forman’s first stab at televisionwriting came shortly after heleft Concord Academy, whenhe wrote a piece for nationalTV at age 18. He was workingfor network TV news in hisearly twenties, and has workedon a variety of network, cable,and syndicated shows. Whentwo French photographerscaptured the 9/11 World TradeCenter attack on 140 hours ofamateur tape, CBS askedForman to turn the footage intoa documentary. By adding 200hours of his own shooting, hecreated the two-hour 9/11, forwhich Forman won Peabody,Murrow, and Writer’s Guildawards, as well as an Emmy.From Our House to BauhausCONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER 20076They came to learn aboutarchitecture, but learned abit about Concord Academyhistory too.When CA’s architecture classvisited the Gropius House inLincoln this fall, studentstoured the modernist structure,meandering through WalterGropius’s office and bedroom,squeezing into his smallkitchen, and learning howthe father of the Bauhausmovement used large industrialwindows and a spiraled fireescape as adornment.They noticed how Gropiusavoided traditional materials,using clapboard to panel thefoyer, for example, cork onfloors, and stucco on living anddining room walls. And theylearned that Bauhaus wasn’tabout certain people or styles,but about the need for youngpeople to be open-minded,unencumbered by traditionalways of thinking.But the class also discoveredthat Concord Academy playeda role in this architecturalmasterpiece: Gropius built thehouse in Lincoln because hisdaughter, Ati, was a student atCA, and the family wanted areasonable commute to school.Ati Gropius Johansen graduatedfrom Concord Academyin 1944.Photos by Everett Wallace ’07

CAMPUS NEWSIndependent ThoughtHead of School JakeDresden authored a storyabout Concord Academy’s workwith neurology and learning inthe winter 2007 issue ofIndependent School magazine.The article stresses the valueof understanding learningstyles and explainshow Concord Academyfaculty are working tobecome better teachers byunderstanding how thebrain affects learning.“While many schools offerlearning centers for studentswho struggle,” said Dresdenin the article, “I would arguethat schools like ConcordAcademy should have learningcenters for all students — foreach can become a better studentand scholar by turning hisor her own learning inward.”View the story at www.nais.org.Taste of KoreaFor three days in October,Concord Academy’skitchen staff learned Korean —the cuisine, not the language —thanks to an international chefprogram by Sodexho, CA’sfood service provider.Chef Hak Joon Kim (above),the exe cutive chef of SodexhoKorea, instructed the staff inthe basics — how to cookrice — as well as the complextechniques and seasoningsinvolved in authentic Koreanentrees.Korean students said theyappreciated the taste ofhome — especially the rice! —and other CA students,unafraid to experiment, waitedin long lines to test delicaciessuch as samchi-curry-gui, acurried mackerel dish; waejigalbi-jjim,braised spareribs;and ojingeocho-muchim,seasoned squid with vinegar.The Boston Globe coveredthe Korean chef’s visit in itsweekly food section.Holly FowlerA Tragic JourneyCONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER 20078Everett Wallace ’07Sally Rubin ’95 discussedher film, The Last Moun -tain, at an assembly November30. The film is a personaljourney of love and courage,the story of Rubin’s quest toinvestigate the mystery surroundingher father’s death.He died in a hiking accidentwhile Rubin was a student atConcord Academy. Rubin’sdocumentaries have covered awide range of topics, includingboys’ body images (Cut) anda nude antiwar protest (BodyPolitics). Rubin also is associateproducer of two criticallyacclaimed Frontline series onPBS: The Farmer’s Wife andCountry Boys.

Miss Fairchild Pop PartyMad ScientistsSam Posner ’99 andSchuyler Whelden ’98turned the Performing ArtsCenter into a dance partywhen they played with theirband, Miss Fairchild, at a fallassembly. Combining pop,funk, soul, and humor (amannequin shares the stagewith her bandmates), MissFairchild gradually turneda polite audience into a nearriot.Bopping in the aislesalongside students wasMusic Program DirectorKeith Daniel, who plays saxophoneon Miss Fairchild’supcoming album.Michael Wirtz once againturned National Chem -istry Week into a full-blowncelebration of science — andsilliness.Students researched factsabout chemistry in the home,which were placed on signsaround the school during theOctober event. Inspired by thetheme, “Your Home — It’s Builton Chem istry,” Executive ChefSal Porfino served up a cakein the shape of a house, theweek’s theme etched into theicing. Paul Quimby ’08 stunnedthe community at morningannouncements with a flawlessrendition of Tom Lehrer’s“The Elements” (with lines like“There’s yttrium, ytterbium,actinium, rubidium / And boron,gadolinium, niobium, iridium”rolling off his tongue).Mike Wirtz and students, celebrating chemistryPhotos by Everett Wallace ’07Unafraid of the quirky, chemistryteacher Wirtz organizedwhat he called a “gogglepsych.” While most of thespirited participants wore laboratorygoggles outside the lab,a few interpreted the psychdifferently. At least one studentran cross-country that afternoonsporting his ski goggles.Rocking out in the P.A.C. (with MusicProgram Director Keith Daniel at center).Inset above left, Daddy Wrall andSchuyler Whelden ’98.9WWW.CONCORDACADEMY.ORG WINTER 2007

CAMPUS NEWSFarewellColleagues, alumnae/i, andfamily gathered in theRansome Room recently to bidfarewell to Patty Fennessey,who retired after twenty yearsas gifts coordinator in theDevel opment Office, whereshe often struck up friendshipsas she processed donations tothe school. “Patty is really oneof our most important relationshipofficers,”said Director ofDevelopment Diane Spence.“For many alumnae/i and parents,Patty was CA.” Fennesseylooks forward to spending moretime with her family, especiallyher grandchildren.Photos by Everett Wallace ’07Family TimeNearly eighty grandparentsvisited their grandchildren’sclasses during Grandparents’ Day inNovember. Left: Katie McNally ’08with her grandparents, Leo andLillian Hebert. Below left: AndrewMcCue ’10 with his grandparents,Bill and Shirley Duff. Below: Brendaand Paul Levin and Torvy and Al Hurd,grandparents of Roger Hurd ’09.ALUMNAE/I UPDATES“Big Bang! Abstract Painting for the 21st Century,”featuring works by Peter Barrett ’86, runs at theDeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts throughApril 22.The Harvard Club of New York City presented “An Eveningwith Julia Glass and Katherine Mosby” in October.Glass ’74 and Mosby ’75 discussed recent works, fieldedquestions, and signed books.Ellen Condliffe Lagemann ’63 has been named the BardCenter Distinguished Visiting Fellow by Bard College andSimon’s Rock College of Bard. She plans to take a leave ofabsence from her position at Harvard University and beginat Bard in July 2007.Dasha Lavrennikov ’04 traveled to Russia last summeron a Fulbright Hays grant, part of the Fulbright program.She researched how nongovernmental organizations(NGOs) work to improve the plight of orphans and streetchildren in Russia, and this summer plans to continue herwork on children’s rights with an NGO in Cuzco, Peru.CONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER 200710ChangesConcord Academy welcomedseveral newfaculty and staff members inrecent months. They includeAssistant Librarian WendyBerger PP’01, ’06; scienceteacher Susan Davis; ITNetwork Administrator JaredFalcon; CA Summer CampDirector Greg Jutkiewicz;Film Tech Intern AlexanderKieft; English teacher MorganMead; history teachersPascale Musto, CathleenCoyle Randall, and PeterJune-Young Sun; Sue Olson,gifts coordinator in theDevelopment Office; Frenchteachers Rebecca B. Ruquistand Laurence Vanleynseele;mathematics teacherTimothy Seston; Director ofAlumnae/i ProgramsElizabeth "Billie" JulierWyeth '76; and school physicianAbigail Zavod.Matt Taibbi ‘87 wrote the October 19, 2006 cover storyfor Rolling Stone: “Time to Go: Inside the Worst CongressEver.” His new book, Spanking the Donkey: Dispatchesfrom the Dumb Season, is described in CA Bookshelf(page 17).Jeremy Tamanini ’94 is in Dubai on a Fulbright grant,researching a project titled “Place Branding and EconomicDevelopment in Dubai.”Read more about your classmates in Class Notes inthe spring issue of Concord Academy magazine and onthe Chameleon Connection (www.concordalum.org).

ALUMNAE/IASSOCIATIONUPDATEStaying ConnecedBY THE TIME you are reading this, I hope youwill have taken the time to reconnect with ConcordAcademy—your classmates, friends, and teachers—by responding to your class secretary’s requests fornews of the celebrations and milestones that you want to share with theCA community. Our most recent survey of alumnae/itold us that Class Notes, in the springissue of the magazine, is one of your favoriteaspects of our alumnae/i outreach program, andyour notes are arriving at CA in greater numbersthan ever, now that classes from 1957 to 2006 aresubmitting their Class Notes electronically.As I think about Class Notes, I realize that thework of each Alumnae/i Council committee—Nominating, Alumnae/i Giving, and Outreach—has been focused in some way on connectingConcord Academy’s alumnae/i to each other, andto the school.For example, at our fall Alumnae/i Councilmeeting, Head of School Jake Dresden and ChiefFinancial Officer Judi Seldin provided councilmembers with a window into the life and financesof CA. This snapshot, together with committeechairs who shared their goals for the year, set thestage for an engaging discussion about howalumnae/i can help our school pursue its mission,and what kind of meaningful opportunities theschool can, in turn, create for volunteers. Themeeting spilled over into an impromptu discussionamong council members, other volunteers,faculty, administrators, and students as weenjoyed brunch in the Stu-Fac dining hall.The Outreach Committee, whose missionrevolves around keeping alumnae/i connected,worked with the school on the redesign of theConcord Academy Web site, which launched thiswinter and will include an improved ChameleonConnection, the alumnae/i section of the CA site.Log on (www.concordalum.org) and you’ll learnabout your classmates; gatherings of alumnae/i,faculty, and staff in your area; and Alumnae/iWeekend, June 15–17, 2007.The Concord Academy Young Alumnae/iCommittee (CAYAC) continues to be busy buildingCA connections, and the chairs of CAYAC,Mike Firestone ’01 and Kelsey Stratton ’99,report that graduates are using Web sites suchas facebook.com to stay in touch with formerclassmates. A number of Concord Academygroups are active on facebook.com, including apage set up by Mike and Kelsey, who used it tospread word about a gathering of recent graduatesat Jillian’s in Boston just before the New Year.Besides the Jillian’s party, other recent alumnae/ievents included a Friends of Concord AcademyAthletics (FOCAA) reception during the fallChandler Bowl competition, which attracted agreat turnout of alumnae/i, parents, students, andfaculty. In addition, Concord Academy hostedtwo area receptions during the fall—at theCentury Club in New York and at Fenway Parkin Boston. More than two hundred alumnae/i,faculty, and friends attended these two events,and the evenings proved to be energizing andilluminating.The Nominating Committee continues workingto identify alumnae/i who would like to bemore actively involved in the work of the school.It also has been accepting and considering nominationsfor the Joan Shaw Herman Award forDistinguished Service.Our Annual Giving effort, responsible foran essential portion of the operating budget eachyear, is also one significant way that alumnae/ihave and continue to stay connected—andsuccessfully so. At this writing, not only is thenumber of gifts from our alumnae/i up over thistime last year, but alumnae/i gifts overall haveincreased by 20 percent. This is a great sign ofconnection to our school, and we are ever sograteful for this support.Whether on campus or online, we inviteyou to stay connected with the Concord Academycommunity, and we always look forward tohearing from you.Marion Odence-Ford ’82President, Alumnae/i Association11WWW.CONCORDACADEMY.ORG WINTER 2007

ALUMNAE/IPROFILESNancy Jaicks AlexanderClass of 1951Compassionate Care forthe IncarceratedCONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER 2007BYNANCYSHOHETWEST’84T H I S I S S U E• Nancy Jaicks AlexanderClass of 1951• Susanna HortonClass of 1965• Helen Haskell HobbsClass of 1970• Kabir SenClass of 199512“No one knew whether you got this froma door handle or bathroom germsor drinking glasses. Guards wore big yellowgloves when they brought in food.”It was 1985 and Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, the noted scientist andfounder of the hospice movement, had a favor to ask of Nancy JaicksAlexander ’51.Twelve men with HIV had been isolated from the rest of thepatients at the California Department of Corrections’ primary prisonhospital for men. Kubler-Ross wanted Alexander to talk with theprisoners, to draw on her background in counseling and hospice work.Alexander was a member of Kubler-Ross’s teaching staff whenthe Centers for Disease Control first designated HIV a disease in themid-1980s. No one yet knew how it was transmitted or what groupswere at risk.When Alexander, who lives in Berkeley, spoke to her husbandBob about volunteering in the AIDS unit, the retired architect wasconcerned about the fifty-mile trips to the prison and said he wouldsupport the idea only if he could accompany her. Each of the Alexanderswas assigned an inmate to counsel. At the end of one year, Bob’sinmate died, and Nancy’s inmate had one request: “Why don’t youstart a support group for men with AIDS?”It was a difficult time to enter the arena of AIDS counseling.“This was before the HIV drugs we have now,” Alexander explained.“So when a man was diagnosed, he would most likely become sickwithin the first three months and often be dead three months after that.The patients were treated like lepers. No one knew whether you got thisfrom a door handle or bathroom germs or drinking glasses. Guardswore big yellow gloves when they brought in food. There was openhomophobia and paranoia and fear.” In her earlier hospice training,Alexander had learned to follow safe practices when working in anykind of medical setting, and she said that faith in the importance of herwork counteracted any fears she might have had regarding illness.Over the next several years, Nancy Alexander ran a support groupfor men with AIDS. “A total of 273 men attended our group during thattime,” Alexander said. “Some came for only one session; others stayedin the group for three, four, five years. I offered support, but Bob was asignificant father figure to them. He was a true iconoclast, and the menall looked up to him. He had been a bit of a troublemaker himself, andthey recognized that in him.”In 1989, the hospital chaplain confided to the Alexanders hisdream of having a hospice at the medical center. When prison adminis-

Susanna HortonClass of 1965Ancient Medicine,Modern Miracles“Each case is a mystery, a puzzle.Studying medicine gives youthe tools to solve a puzzle.”Nancy Jaicks Alexander ’51trators finally approved the idea eighteen months later, Nancy Alexanderoffered to train prisoners in hospice counseling. “Once trained, theseinmates could visit with other prisoners who were close to death,” sheexplained. “The whole idea was that no man should die alone in prison.”Now, fifteen years after she trained that first group of volunteers, thefacility is a seventeen-bed, state-of-the-art, fully accredited hospicewithin the prison. It is named for Bob Alexander, who died in 1992,shortly after helping to launch the program.Today there are forty inmate hospice volunteers, and althoughAlexander is retired, she travels once a week to participate in theirongoing training and support. “I’ve done this for twenty years now,” shesaid. “I believe in rehabilitation and compassion.”The hospice program, she points out, is a way of bringing outthese qualities in both the men who are ill and the men who counselthem. “If I looked at every man and wondered what he was incarceratedfor, I never would be able to do the work I’m doing,” she said. “My goalis to seek out and communicate with the heart of that person and thegoodness in that person. It’s astonishing to talk to the ‘lifers’ who havebecome hospice volunteers. The appreciation of their fellow inmatescompletely changes their self-perception. They realize that they are notall bad, that they can do good in the world. That’s why I’m there.”Alternative approaches to medicine that are just now beingaccepted by the mainstream medical community are nothing newto Susanna Horton ’65.Long feeling that she possessed a special healing energy, Hortonbegan working in a holistic medical center in 1995, where she learnedabout acupuncture and Chinese medicine. She had already completed afour-year course in polarity therapy, which focuses on healing throughthe chakra energy system developed in ancient India. Through acupuncture,she saw a way to channel her healing energies in a medical direction,and began formal acupuncture training at a school of traditionalOriental medicine in California.“Starting medical school at age fifty was very challenging,” shesaid. “My energies were not exactly at their peak. And yet I discovered Ihad a passion for medical studies.” Horton relearned chemistry, biochemistry,and other sciences, but most enjoyed analyzing medical cases.“Each case is a mystery, a puzzle,” she said. “Studying medicine givesyou the tools to solve a puzzle.”Upon completing her master’s degree in acupuncture, Hortonhad planned an oncology specialty, but an unexpected opportunity arosein a fertility practice. “I started there just to fill in for someone whowent on vacation, but it turned into a permanent job because the physiciansquickly saw the results of my work—how the patients respondedmentally and emotionally,” she said. “Undergoing fertility treatments isvery stressful. The women I did acupuncture with became more positiveand less stressed, and ended up with better results.”Horton recalled one patient who sought treatment after sufferinga series of miscarriages and unsuccessful in vitro fertilization. “When Istarted working with her, she was haggard and depressed. I put every-13WWW.CONCORDACADEMY.ORG WINTER 2007

CONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER 2007thing I knew about acupuncture and energy healing together,” Hortonsaid. “And then I saw dramatic changes. She eventually got pregnantand had the most healthy, happy pregnancy. Now she has a beautifullittle girl. We don’t get paid what doctors get paid, but things like thatmake it all worth it.”In addition to her fertility work and her general acupuncturepractice, Horton runs a healing school with her husband in LosAngeles. “We love teaching energy healing because everyone has theability to benefit from it,” Horton said. “We show our students howto connect with and develop their innate higher abilities. Some peoplecan see into the subtle dimensions, some can hear, others have more of akinesthetic sense for feeling the energies. In our classes, we open up anddevelop those skills. Everyone has the potential for healing; we just haveto awaken and focus those energies.”While American society may be slow to accept the kinds oftherapies that Horton offers, the ideas behind them are ancient.“Chinese medicine has been around for thousands of years because it’sso effective in understanding the profound connection between thebody and the mind. It’s truly holistic, meaning that mind, emotions,and body are all treated together, whereas Western medicine tendsto recognize only the body,” she said. “It was a perfect fit for me becauseI was able to draw upon my energy healing and spiritual healing andtake it a step further.”14Susanna Horton ’65Scientific DiscoveryHHelen Haskell HobbsClass of 1970elen Haskell Hobbs ’70 excelled at science even when she was ateenager. But she wasn’t convinced she should pursue it as aprofession. “I was a social beast, and I thought being a scientist wouldbe very lonely,” she recalled. “I found science fascinating. But I alsoloved art history and piano. So when I went to college, I decided not totake any science for my first year, just to see what life would be likewithout it.”Hobbs quickly found she missed science; its lure was too compelling.So she transferred from the University of Pennsylvania toStanford, which had a special major that combined biology with thesocial sciences. After graduation and a year of work at a maternal careclinic in Africa, she started medical school at Case Western ReserveUniversity.“Most people don’t like the first two years of med school, butI loved it,” said Hobbs. “I loved learning about human physiology, andthen in the last two years about patient care.” During a residency atColumbia, she met her husband, who convinced her to continueher training at his alma mater, the University of Texas. “I went theresight unseen and realized it was where I wanted to be,” she said. “Theteaching there was known to be outstanding. I was immediatelyimpressed by the rigor of the medical science and the straightforwardnessof the people.”Selected as chief resident at the University of Texas teaching hospital,she completed her MD, still unsure of her next step. A mentor atthe hospital encouraged her to try laboratory science. Hobbs entered aprestigious genetics lab at the age of thirty, “never having held a pipettebefore.” The two researchers who ran the lab won a Nobel Prize the nextyear. “Working with them, I recaptured the intellectual intensity that Iremembered from my years at CA, from my classes with Molly Plumb,Phil McFarland, and Ron Richardson, and with Rita Jordan, a CA tutorwho first gave me the idea of becoming a physician,” Hobbs said.The transition from patient care to laboratory science was difficult,but not for the reasons Hobbs expected. She wasn’t lonely; she justfound the pace too slow at first. “As a practicing clinician, you assess,you diagnose, you intervene, and then your patient gets either better orworse. It all unfolds as a very rapid process,” she said. “In the lab, everythingis much slower paced, and I had trouble accommodating to thatpace. But I decided I was not going to leave until I had some success.”

Kabir SenClass of 1995Passion for Teaching,Passion for MusicHelen Haskell Hobbs ’70It came during a study that analyzed why certain populations, such asthe French Canadians in Quebec and the Afrikaners in South Africa,have a high prevalence of high cholesterol and heart attacks. “That tasteof success was like a drug for me,” she recalled. “Everyone has their ownstory to tell, and in science you tell your story in the laboratory. I havean intense desire to understand things.”Hobbs now serves as director of the Eugene McDermott Centerfor Human Growth and Development and is an investigator in theHoward Hughes Medical Institute at the University of TexasSouthwestern Medical Center. Last year she won Germany’s highlyrespected Heinrich Wieland Prize for her research on variations in cholesterollevels and was inducted as a fellow into the American Academyof Arts and Sciences.“I work among lots of really bright people who are generatingdata and answering questions that are interesting to me,” Hobbs said.“I still teach at Southwestern. I travel, go to meetings all over the world,talk to other people involved in research, visit their laboratories andsometimes their homes. Whenever I go someplace, I’m embedded in ascientific community that includes people I’ve established relationshipswith over a long period of time.”For someone who once thought a career as a scientist would betoo lonely, it sounds like the best possible kind of discovery.Kabir Sen ’95 spent his childhood in London and near HarvardSquare, influenced by thriving arts scenes in both places and byeverything he heard, from The Beatles to Run DMC. But Sen says it wasat Concord Academy that he learned about hip-hop from his New YorkCity housemates and his friends on the basketball team. Though he hadstudied piano and other instruments from a young age, it was therhythm, meter, and lyricism of hip-hop that would become his passion.Sen played piano in the jazz ensemble at CA, also filling hisschedule with sports and theatre. He went on to Wesleyan University,where a jazz professor encouraged him to turn his passion for progressivemusic into academic study. He wrote his senior thesis on theevolution of political hip-hop.During college, Sen worked with the funk soul band, UncleTrouble. After graduation, he moved to Boston and turned to hispre-CA alma mater for part-time work. The Shady Hill School offeredhim a position coaching sports and teaching poetry and songwritingworkshops.Those workshops, for seventh and eighth graders, whetted hisappetite for teaching hip-hop music and culture. Sen developed ahip-hop curriculum at Shady Hill, then started taking it to other schoolsas a visiting artist. “I run assemblies at schools and colleges on lyrics,production, and performance,” he explained. “I fuse many elements ofdifferent cultures into my own music. I want kids to realize there is arich culture of hip-hop that they won’t hear on the radio. It is my goalto expose young people to a wide range of hip-hop culture’s positiveelements.”At the same time that Sen was teaching and coaching, the musicindustry and media began to take notice. In 2001, he released his firstsolo album, Cultural Confusion, followed in 2003 by Fuel for the Fireand, this past spring, by Peaceful Solutions, an optimistic collection ofsongs that focus on rechanneling negative energy. Among his playlist,Sen says he is partial to “The Liar,” one of his most commerciallysuccessful compositions. “It’s a comical song about celebrities, a bluesypoem about a person who has delusions of grandeur,” he explained, thenlisted several more favorites. “‘Answers’ is a song about peace on bothglobal and personal levels. ‘Memories’ is a narrative about using thepast to help you figure out the future. ‘Letter to my Grandmother’ is apersonal song about love and loss. My music and lyrics come from a15WWW.CONCORDACADEMY.ORG WINTER 2007

Rebecca Foy“What it comes down to is this:what’s best for my music careeris not necessarilywhat’s best for me as a person.”Kabir Sen ’95combination of elements—personal experiences, political concerns,opinions, and ideas that interest me.”In 2002, Sen was featured on the cover of Billboard magazine;he has been profiled in publications including the Boston Globe, Spinmagazine, the International Herald Tribune, and the Harvard Crimson(Sen’s father is a Nobel Prize–winning economist at Harvard). Asegment in the New Yorker described his Shady Hill classes, and he wasinterviewed on NPR’s news show “The World” about his most recentalbum. Sen even hosted an MTV top-ten countdown last summer.Despite the attention, Sen recently opted for a change of course.He is now working toward his master’s degree in elementary educationand is part of a teacher-training program at Shady Hill, where heapprentices in a fifth-grade classroom. “A lot of great things happened inmy music career last year,” he admitted, “but I really wanted to go backto grad school and learn more about teaching. With the exception of achildren’s music CD that I wrote and recorded for IBM this year, I’vebeen passing on a lot of great musical opportunities.“What it comes down to is this: what’s best for my music careeris not necessarily what’s best for me as a person. I was in need ofmore personal and professional growth. I’m not sure if I want to be aclassroom teacher or a music teacher, and I’m hoping my experiencethis year will help me figure it out.”Learn more about Kabir Sen and his music at www.mckabir.com andwww.myspace.com/mckabir.CONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER 200716Lolita Parker Jr.

Who the Hell Are We Fighting?:The Story of Sam Adams and theVietnam Intelligence WarsC. Michael Hiam ’80Steerforth Press, 2006When CIA Southeast Asian analystSam Adams broke the news thatthe Viet Cong ranks were growingand numbered nearly twice as manyas conservative U.S. governmentestimates, he was silenced, mostnotably by General William West -more land. The information becamepublic — and Adams’s findings validated— when public proceedingsbegan in the lawsuit, Westmorelandv. CBS. At the heart of the lawsuitwas the massive intelligence failureregarding Viet Cong troop strength,and questions surrounding why criticalinformation was not conveyedto frontline troops.The Whole World OverJulia Glass ’74Pantheon, 2006Greenie leaves the comfortingroutine of her Greenwich Villagebakery to become the personal cheffor the audacious and conservativegovernor of New Mexico. Leavingbehind her husband and four-yearoldson, she becomes wrapped upin the governor’s affairs and soonfinds herself involved with an oldflame. Glass, winner of the 2002National Book Award for ThreeJunes, follows Greenie as shedecides whether to trade her familyfor a new life in the mesmerizingSouthwest.Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son:A Memoir of Becoming a ManKevin Jennings, former facultyBeacon Press, 2006This memoir travels from trailerpark to Harvard to the White House,with stops along the way atConcord Academy, where theauthor taught history from 1987 to1994. Jennings describes severalpivotal moments in his personalquest to come to terms with hishomosexuality, including a chapeltalk at CA in which he came out tothe community — a momentousoccasion for a man who had longwondered how to share the side ofhimself that he had taken suchpains to hide.Mixed: An Anthology of ShortFiction on the MultiracialExperienceEdited by Chandra PrasadIncluding “The Anthropologists’Kids” by Ruth Lounsbury Ozeki ’74W.W. Norton & Company, 2006Ozeki, whose novels include MyYear of Meats and All OverCreation, crafts the story of facultybrats George and Fatima — theanthropologists’ kids — who runamok at Yale while navigating theirway around their strict Asian mothersand their absent-minded, white,professorial fathers. By creatinga secret world within the stuffyhalls of academia, these childhoodfriends find refuge in each other —until a misguided encounterchanges their lives forever.CA Bookshelfby Martha Kennedy, Library Director17WWW.CONCORDACADEMY.ORG WINTER 2007

Ralph Rugoff ’75 invited artists topropose a monument that Americansdeserve. Below, “Untitled: A Monu -ment to Shopping, Distraction, Cruelty,Numbness, Dumbness, Hunger,Arrogance, Apathy, Vanity, and RoadRage” by Barbara Kruger. Right, aburlesque queen from Pretty Things byLiz Goldwyn ’94.Monuments for the USARalph Rugoff ’75California College of the Arts, 2005As director of the Wattis Institutefor Contemporary Arts at theCalifornia College of the Arts,Rugoff invited a variety of artists tosubmit proposals for “the type ofmonument that the people of theUnited States need, or deserve, atthis moment in history.” This exhibitcatalog features responses fromsixty artists, whose varied ideasprovide a fascinating look at post-9/11 contemporary art. Rugoffrecently curated Shoot the Family, acollection of family portraits forIndependent Curators International.Pretty Things: The LastGeneration of AmericanBurlesque QueensLiz Goldwyn ’94Regan, 2006A fascination with secondhandgarments and burlesque broughtLiz Goldwyn in touch with thestoried women of striptease. Whowere the women behind theseelaborate costumes and why wasthe demise of burlesque so woe -fully undocumented? Through interviews,letters, and photographs,Goldwyn brings to life the end of anera with personal accounts ofAmerica’s last burlesque queens.The Seratonin Power DietJudith J. Wurtman andNina Frusztajer Marquis ’82Rodale Books, 2007Marquis — a medical doctor,nutrition expert, and health writer —has collaborated with Wurtman onthis no-nonsense guide, which helpsdieters use food to increase theirproduction of serotonin, a brainchemical that has the power tocalm, reduce emotion-drivenovereating, and generally enhancefeelings of well-being. Marquis andWurtman are founders of the Adaraweight-loss centers, where they’vetested the serotonin-drivenapproach to dieting on their clients.CONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER 200718John E. Reed / Hollywood

Far From ItJohn Movius ’98A year in the making, this limitededition incorporates forty-fourphotographs by John Movius andeight poems by Andrew Tillinghast;together they create a powerfulcollection of art that touches onthemes of connection, touch,loss, dreams, and wonder. Thebook is available throughjohnmovius.com/book/book.html.Beyond the Brief: CommunicationStrategies for Lawyers andLegal MarketersStephanie Solakian Goldstein ’91Thomson Legalworks, 2006A comprehensive media guide forthe legal profession, Beyond theBrief teaches firms to work with themedia so the public recognizesattorneys as experts in their fields.Goldstein provides strategies andPR guidance for lawyers, explaininghow well-crafted media policies canimprove a law firm’s bottom line.Spanking the Donkey: Dispatchesfrom the Dumb SeasonMatt Taibbi ’87Three Rivers Press, 2006The subtitle hints at where Taibbiis coming from. Spanking theDonkey groups articles that thekeen, and sometimes scathing,political observer wrote for RollingStone, the Nation, and New YorkPress during the 2004 presidentialcampaign. The result: a rollickingand cynical indictment of America’spolitical process.Did we miss your book?Contact Martha Kennedy atmartha_kennedy@concord academy.org.And please consider donatinga copy to theJ. Josephine Tucker Library’salumnae/i-author bookcase.“I Gave Thomas a Haircut,” at left,reflects the intimacy of the photocollection in John Movius’s new book,Far From It.19WWW.CONCORDACADEMY.ORG WINTER 2007

Convocation 2006David RostCONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER 2007ON SEPTEMBER 5, Concord Academy kicked offthe school year with a formal Convocation. Thistradition took root after the September 11 tragedy,which underscored to Head of School Jake Dresden thevalue of gathering as a community.20Ron Richardson© 2000 Monika Anderson“Gathering in one place is an ancient rite practicedby all communities, binding its members togetherin a common experience and creating a senseof belonging. This Convocation’s purpose is toprovide such an experience for everyone as webegin the school year together,” said Dresden, ashe welcomed 104 new students and seventeennew faculty and staff members to CA.Board of Trustees President Ellen Condliffe Lage -mann ’63 and Student Body President FreddieTunnard ’07 addressed the crowd, followed byTeacher Emeritus Ronald Richardson, who taughtFrench at CA between 1966 and 2000. Dresdenintroduced the guest speaker, quoting a studentevaluation of Richardson from the 1980s: “Ronjust seems like a natural to me. Everything was sosmooth, so fun, but so solid. He does naturallywhat other teachers read books about. I asked astudent after the first class if this was a typicalclass and she answered, ‘Oh yes—he is always insuch a good mood and I always feel good afterthis class.’”Richardson then lived up to the introduction,with a funny and upbeat reminiscence of his yearsat Concord Academy. “When I came to ConcordAcademy in the fall of 1966,” he said, “it was asmall girls’ school with some 240 students. Therewere few buildings other than the houses on MainStreet—and one of them, Aloian House, was aprivate residence. Every once in a while a zealousnew tour guide would take visitors to the schoolinside, thinking it was a dormitory, much to thedelight of the owner. There was no P. A.C., noMAC, no SHAC. We met for announcements andassemblies in the Reading Room. This Chapelwas much smaller. The present dining room was abasketball court, with a platform at one end thatserved as a stage for plays.”Richardson also recalled some campus pets,which, by his description, were as talented as their

owners. “Almost every teacher had a dog,” herecalled, “and they all came to school—Cooper,Baron and Cricket, Euclid, Pandora, Fatty Cake,Julia Child, a big lab. One of the dogs, Barkis, ashaggy sheepdog who belonged to Betsy Miller, aFrench teacher, knew how to tell time. Most daysBetsy would say to him, ‘Now dear, we’re goingto Widener right after classes, so be at the car bytwo-thirty.’ Betsy did a lot of research—onMolière—at Harvard. Barkis was always on time.Tuesdays, however, Betsy would say to Barkis,‘Remember it’s faculty meeting, so there’s no waywe’re getting out of here much before five.” At aquarter to five, we all saw Barkis lumbering up tothe parking lot from the river, where he’d spentthe afternoon. Many of the dogs went to class.Most slept in a corner, but a few participated vigorously.For a while there was an old basset wholoved to conjugate Latin verbs. Amo, amas,amat—woof, WOOF, W O O F!!”Richardson ended his talk with wisdom for studentswho might question the value of CA’s rigor.“Now all of you who were here last year—everysingle one of you—said to yourself, in a softwhisper or a loud shout, ‘This place would beheaven if it weren’t for the work.’ And yet it is thework that makes Concord Academy such aremarkable place. The work is a golden bond ofactivity. You students will be introduced to mostof the major academic disciplines. You will mostlikely encounter, stumble over, be required totake a course in what will later be the basis ofyour life’s work. You won’t know it at the time.Years from now when you are applying for agrant to do graduate work in, say, biology, you’llask yourself, ‘How, when, did I get so interestedin this stuff?’ After a moment or two of reflection,you’ll realize that it was in Miss Evans’s classat Concord Academy. The person you ask nextweek to help you with a math assignment maywell become a close friend. I’m not sure I shouldtell you this, but dozens—dozens—of ConcordAcademy graduates have married—one another!“I learned a lot about teachers and teaching duringmy years here. A teacher—a good teacher—is,first and foremost, a student, a student for life.Mastering material well enough to teach it toothers effectively is a special challenge, and as noacademic discipline is static, a teacher must keepup with changes in materials and new techniquesof presentation.“Shortly before I retired, someone said to me,‘You must be sick to death of teaching the sameold stuff year after year.’ That was not the case,and I can only hope that I did not give theDavid Rostimpression that it was. I still remember the gentleexcitement I felt when we were about to take upin class a project that I knew from experiencewould inspire energetic enthusiasm. Over theyears, I came to accept the fact that not manystudents would share my personal affection forcertain uses of the subjunctive, but I never lostthe sense of anxiety, apprehension, when I wasabout to present a passage from a novel or a playor a poem that I treasured deeply myself. I musthave read L’Etranger with students forty, maybefifty, times. I never tired of it. In fact, my last yearhere, I gained new insights chatting about it witha colleague—in the lunch line, I believe.”With that simple anecdote, Richardson deliveredkey messages about Concord Academy: that learningis a lifelong process, and that the opportunityto learn is abundant, and sometimes availablewhen you least expect it, even in the lunch line.After Richardson’s speech, the CA Chorus led theschool in “Concord, Concord,” and students filedout, primed for the start of another year..Barkis: Knew how to tell timeAbove: The CA Chorus21WWW.CONCORDACADEMY.ORG WINTER 2007

y Gail FriedmanIllustrations by Robert BrinkerhoffEverett Wallace ’07When physics teacher Brian Giannino-Racine studiedKorean last summer, he picked up a lot more thanlanguage skills.As the school year resumed, he began to notice that youngerKorean students were using formal grammatical forms whentalking with upperclassmen; sometimes, he realized, they evenbowed to the older students.With language study opening a window onto Korean culture,Giannino-Racine came to understand why some of CA’sinternational students struggle with the informality on campus,with many teachers called by their first names, with authorityfigures who consistently invite debate in the classroom.CONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER 200722The teacher had long been fascinated with languages; hestudied French, Russian, and Japanese in college and spent asabbatical from CA in Florence learning Italian. When herecently opted to take on an entirely new language, he settledon Korean, in part because he so enjoyed the wit and dynamicnature of his Korean students. “I was basically curious abouttheir culture,” he said.With only the summer available for focused study, Giannino-Racine dove headfirst into the language. He spent two hoursweekly one-on-one with an instructor (no one else had signed

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up for the class), then studied on his own another ten tofifteen hours a week. He listened to tapes, made endlesspiles of flashcards, and scrawled Korean words on awhite board in his living room. The language devoteeimmersed himself with such energy that he covered theequivalent of a year of college Korean in ten weeks.While Giannino-Racine stands apart for tackling a nonromancelanguage and for the intensity of his approach, heis not alone in his idiomatic pursuits. In fact, at CA, therepercussions of language study travel well beyond thelanguage classroom — and beyond the straightforwardbut important ability to converse. Faculty members’ passionfor languages pervades the campus and curricula,affecting students in ways both overt and subtle.Beyond the obvious advantage of conversation, languagestudy brings to campus a variety of tangible benefits. Forexample, Giannino-Racine, along with history teacherPeter Sun, who is Korean-American, shared research intoKorean culture and learning styles at a faculty meeting,discussing, among other things, students’ overridingcourtesy and concern for their families. Teachers learnedthat what they may have considered shyness or discomfortwith English actually could have more complicatedroots. “Koreans may avoid asking you a question notbecause their language skills are poor,” explainedGiannino-Racine, “but because they don’t want to insultyou.” In Korea, questions can be considered disrespectful,implying that a teacher didn’t communicate his or herlesson adequately.In the case of English teacher Cammy Thomas, languagestudy had a direct impact in the classroom. Frustratedteaching only the English translation of The Odyssey, shestudied Homeric Greek, poring over favorite scenes inHomer’s epic with her instructor to better understand theoriginal text. Now when Athena shrinks Odysseus into ashriveled beggar, her students hear about it in thedescriptive language the author intended.It’s not unusual for foreign language study to find ahome within literature or theatre classes at CA, or duringrehearsals for a play. Both English teacher Liz Bedelland theatre teacher Megan Gleeson have invited SusanAdams, head of the Modern and Classical LanguagesDepartment, to discuss the German origins of BertoltBrecht’s The Threepenny Opera. “In the theatre, so muchof the world we create on stage depends upon the(continued on page 27)Rachel and David: The Language of Loveby Nora Christiani ’07CONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER 200724“David, time for bed. Turn offthe television . . . Davidito,apagas el televisor por favor . . . ya te lodije. ¡Apágalo! Ahora mismo.”“I’m going…”“Basta, David. Uno . . . dos . . .”While a struggle between siblingsover the television may be commonto many families, this exchangebetween Rachel Frenkil ’08 and herbrother David tells a unique storyabout Rachel, her love for languages,and the sibling who gave newpurpose to her language studies.Rachel began to learn Spanish beforeage two under the tutelage of herbilingual mother, Cynthia Frenkil.At five, Rachel “went to college,”taking Spanish classes for kids atBoston University; she continuedlearning Spanish with tutorsthroughout elementary school.But when Rachel was seven, her reasonsfor speaking Spanish drasticallychanged: her family adopted David,a baby boy from Guatemala. Withher brother’s heritage giving newmeaning to her Spanish lessons,Rachel’s language skills began toimprove. Meanwhile David was

Frustrated teaching only the Englishtranslation of The Odyssey,she studied Homeric Greek, poringover favorite scenes in Homer’s epicwith her instructor to betterunderstand the original text. Nowwhen Athena shrinks Odysseus into ashriveled beggar, her students hearabout it in the descriptive languagethe author intended.learning Spanish from his motherand from Rachel and English fromhis father.In fourth grade, Rachel’s languageskills took off in a new directionwhen her school required studentsto study French. Having masteredSpanish, French was relatively easy,but Rachel recognized that she waslearning it in a more academic way,unlike the casual conversationalroots of her Spanish—a differencebetween her relationships with thetwo languages that continues today.By high school, Rachel was fluent inboth Spanish and French.Rachel entered Concord Academyin 2005 and this year is takingAdvanced Spanish and German I(her fourth language). Despite herexperience, Rachel says her Spanishclass is challenging, but in a newway. In addition to the difficultnature of the course’s advancedgrammar, Rachel said, “I’m not usedto learning Spanish in a classroomsetting.”In the Frenkil home, languages continueto permeate the atmosphere.Frenkil’s mother speaks to her childrenonly in Spanish. Rachel generallyspeaks to her brother in English,though when angry will switch intoSpanish (apagas el televisor!).Rachel hopes some day to use theseskills and to become an interpreter.“In college, I’m going to try to learnas many different languages as I canand study abroad,” she said. “I alsodefinitely want to live in Europe if Ican when I’m out of college, partiallybecause I think my languageskills will be more useful there andalso because I want to experiencewhat it’s like to live in a country thatisn’t America.”She tasted the experience duringspring vacation last March, whenRachel and her family traveled toGuatemala, hoping to reconnectDavid with his birth country. Thetrip honed Rachel’s Spanish abilities;she was responsible for communicatingfor herself and her father, whospeaks little Spanish, when hermother wasn’t with them. Moreimportant, it gave her insight intowhat the Spanish language andGuatemalan heritage mean toDavid—and provided a powerfullesson in the ways bilingualism canconnect people.When the Frenkils visited Mayanruins, a graduate student in archeologyeducated the family aboutDavid’s almost-extinct tribe ofMayan lineage. From that lesson,they were able to identify the traditionalclothing patterns of his ancestors.Rachel, seeing how importantsomething as simple as fabricpatterns was for her brother, beganto understand the links David feltto his past.The trip to Guatemala and, moregenerally, living with a brother whowas adopted, have given Rachel aunique perspective on languages.For her, language is more than alist of vocabulary words and conjugations.Spanish provides a vibrantlink between Rachel, David, andDavid’s history. It allows her tocommunicate and, most important,to connect.25WWW.CONCORDACADEMY.ORG WINTER 2007

“SA FrenchConnectionby Caroline Hughes ’08alut!” The French girls form acircle in the crowded hallway as Isqueeze my way to the middle. Igently approach every girl, walkingthe entire circumference of the circleto plant three kisses (right, left,right) on their cheeks. At an approximaterate of ten people, three kisseseach, two times a day (greeting andparting), I gave six hundred of thesekisses in my ten-day sojourn in LeChambon-sur-Lignon, France.In my French teacher Sarah Ismail’schapel of fall 2005, she spoke glowinglyabout Le Collège-LycéeInternational Cévénol, remarkingthat “Le Cévénol (as the school isoften called) is not a typical school inmany respects.” During World WarII, Le Cévénol housed Jewishrefugees, an unusual endeavor in thelargely apathetic nation. In recentyears, the region has sponsored aResistance museum, and two filmmakershave recorded their experiencesas refugees in the town.Madame Ismail visited this town onsabbatical in February 2004.“Having visited several Frenchschools, I felt that this one wasunusual,” she said, “not just for itsunique status and unusual history,but also because it treated the kidswith respect—sadly, not somethingyou see often in French schools.”The headmaster, a remarkable manoriginally from Togo, championedthe idea of an exchange, as did Headof School Jake Dresden. Thanks tomuch planning and a strong friendshipbetween Le Cévénol’s Englishteacher and Madame Ismail, sixCA students were able to travel toChambon in March 2006.CONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER 200726“Leaving behind the languageof your early selfhood allows a newstart,” she explained.

Besides me, Jess Langman ’08, KhalifDiouf ’07, Caroline Griswold ’06,Janet He ’06, and Emily Hager ’06participated. We had all completedFrench III and, with few exceptions,understood our peers. As I commentedin the journal that remainedmy steady companion (and my onlyEnglish of the day), “In one weekmy French has improved more thanin one year of French in the U.S.”We all stayed with sixteen-year-oldstudents and attended their classesduring the day. During free blocks,students gathered in the basement tofeign working; I was reminded ofthe Upper Stu-Fac during the CAschool day.dance floor at a formal dance inCambridge, the French andAmericans danced to the samehip-hop music, and on CA’s quad,the French played soccer with oursenior boys.Madame Ismail plans to continuethe program this spring, with sevenstudents, and in years to come.France certainly stayed with us, evenafter our return. One day in March,Caroline Griswold stood at thedoors of the Chapel to greet everyoneas they entered in the morning.I approached her without a wordand pecked the air by her rightcheek. Right, left, right.Sarah IsmailWhen the students stayed with us inConcord in April of last year, theywere clearly French, just as we wereclearly American. However, on theCA students sightseeing in Le Puy-en-Velay(continued from page 24)language and how it feeds our imagination,” saidGleeson, who inserted some original German into CA’swinter production of Brecht’s work. “By speaking thelanguage, we come to understand the culture and thepeople from which a piece is written.”Likewise, when Theatre Program Director David R.Gammons guided students through Anton Chekhov’sThe Seagull, CA’s fall production, he sought translationsof the characters’ foreign expressions from Adams andfrom French teachers Sally Ismail and Nicole Fandel.“One character in particular, the doctor Dorn, sings littlesnippets of songs,” Gammons said. “They operate bothas strange non sequiturs and as part of the rich fabric ofChekhovian everyday life, but they also contain fascinatingclues about character and situation.” The languageteachers translated several phrases, which became partof what Gammons called the “dramaturgical resourcepacket,” a trove of research from which actors and crewcan draw creative inspiration.Concord Academy teachers often use sabbaticals orprofessional development opportunities to strengthenlanguage skills. For example, English teacher AlisonLobron spent three weeks in Guanajuato, Mexico, learn-ing Spanish — and gaining sensitivity toward the foreignstudents at CA. “It made me realize how much extraeffort it takes to think in another language,” she said.Afterward, she found herself making slight modificationsin the classroom. When teaching The Odyssey, forexample, she spent more time focusing on cadence andsentence breaks to aid students for whom English was asecond language.At times, the effect of language study trickles beyondits intended use, leaving substantial imprints on thecommunity. When a student successfully nominatedBedell to attend a seminar in Paris, the English teacherrediscovered her latent French skills. While her spokenFrench was rusty, she understood virtually all the conversation.“It suddenly made French come roaring backinto my life as something I wanted to be good at again,”Bedell said. She followed the two-week seminar withtwo summers in France, including a sabbatical in 2005.The tangible impact: Bedell developed a course at CA,Literature of Paris, which focuses on nineteenth- andtwentieth-century French literature. She led a culturallyfocused student trip to Paris last spring.Less tangible was Bedell’s realization that foreign study(continued on page 29)27WWW.CONCORDACADEMY.ORG WINTER 2007

Seniors’ Studiesby Charlie Hruska ’07CONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER 2007Every week, about a dozen CA students, including one faculty member, gather ina classroom to learn Korean. They repeat common phrases, practice simple Koreanvocabulary, sometimes watch popular Korean TV shows.The class has a formal syllabus, and the teacher follows up with students tokeep them on track. No matter that this instructor is only seventeen, an internationalstudent who was motivated to teach Korean by peers who showed an interest in hernative language.“Last spring, I was talking to a friend about how there are so many Koreans atCA and how he wished he understood Korean,” said Janice Kim ’07. “I thought itwould be cool if I could somehow manage to teach Korean somewhat formally tostudents.”Janice turned the course she began last spring into a senior project, a privilegegranted to a few students to do interdisciplinary work during their final year at ConcordAcademy. She describes her class as a bridge between two cultures.Janice and two other students this year—Gwen Blumberg and LouisaDenison—have shaped senior projects that allow them to study a language outside thepreframed classroom structure, to combine other passions with high-level work in theirchosen languages.Gwen is creating an activity book for elementary school children—full ofrecipes, short stories, coloring, and crafts—in Spanish and English. The idea came toher during a summer trip to Peru, where she worked with orphans. “There I was incharge of keeping a bunch of kids in an orphanage entertained each morning, so I hadto come up with activities to do with them,” she said. “Most were activities thathopefully the kids could continue to do after I left, as I wasn’t there all that long. That’sreally how I came up with the idea for my senior project.” Besides compiling the activitybook, Gwen plans to incorporate research in her project about the controversysurrounding bilingual education.Louisa is tackling French literature for her senior project, combining extensivereading (Les Liaisons Dangereuses, for example, and Madame Bovary) with Frenchcooking to illustrate the role of women in nineteenth-century France. “The kind of foodyou eat, who prepares the food, who eats the food—all these aspects of eating reallydefine your social position and your own values,” she said. “I’m hoping to use food as alens to view the different social standings and lives of the French women I am readingabout.” She isn’t sure yet what she’ll be serving at the presentation. “I’ll steer toward thesweet side of things, since I doubt CA wants to taste some of the extravagant meatcourses the French favored back then,” Louisa said.While the sweets may disappear rapidly from Louisa’s plate, the lessons offoreign literature will not. “There is something incredibly valuable about readingliterature in its original language,” Louisa said. “I’m really lucky to have the opportunityto decide what books I want to read—and to shape my project around what I take fromthese books. Already, I am finding Madame Bovary full of beautiful words anddisturbingly persuasive characters.”28

(continued from page 27)can liberate a student, uncovering another self, a freerself. From her own experience, Bedell describes “analmost idealized form of identity,” one in which shecan toss off the baggage of home. “Leaving behind thelanguage of your early selfhood allows a new start,”she explained.When Bedell travels to France, after a few days she feelsher fluency return, and she is transformed. “I need tobe immersed three or four days,” she said. “When I getthat far I begin to feel a little bit different. I am different.I experience the world differently in French than inEnglish.”David RostThat insight has helped Bedell realize that internationalstudents may be navigating much more than foreign lan -guage and culture. “For some kids, part of what they’renegotiating is a new self,” she said.For science teacher Gary Hawley, the effect of languagestudy and travel has been equally profound, affectinghim as both teacher and person. “It’s changed mecompletely, in every way,” Hawley said of his 2005–06academic year in Oaxaca, Mexico.Determinedly ensconced in a new culture, he foundthat even the simplest encounters had the power toturn his priorities upside down. One day, for example,Hawley was watching a mechanic fix his car and grewincreasingly agitated as the man repeatedly walkedacross the room to his toolbox. After about an hour,Hawley couldn’t stand it any more. Why not move thetoolbox closer to the car? Hawley suggested. Themechanic calmly declined; as far as he was concerned,the toolbox was where it belonged.Hawley ended up spending most of the day with themechanic, for a job that might have taken ninety minutesin the States. He had lunch with the man, discoveredthat he had learned his trade in Dallas. Along with hismechanic’s life story, Hawley discovered a new perspectiveon time. “In Mexico,” he said, “time isn’t wasted ifyou’re with someone else.”Seemingly mundane experiences like that led Hawley tolook at people, including his students, as complex storiesworth exploring. He now moves through life moreslowly, taking time to get to know people, even thosehe’s worked with for years. He has developed new closefriendships with old colleagues, explaining, “I didn’t takethe time to see them in the way I do now.” In the classroom,students he once found merely interesting are nowbundles of stories to examine. He finds that students’Since returning from Mexico, science teacher Gary Hawley sees each student as a complexbundle of stories.personal anecdotes constantly infiltrate his freshmanbiology class. “It makes me want to do the coursedifferently next year, based on stories about ourselves,”he said.When teachers like Hawley inspire students with theirenthusiasm for foreign cultures or languages, it underscoresthe love of learning so vital to CA’s credo.Naturally, CA’s foreign language teachers regularlyinspire a love of foreign languages and cultures. Somespeak several languages and have lived in a variety offoreign countries. French teacher Nicole Fandel, whocame to the U.S. from Belgium at age twenty-two, understandshow hard living in a foreign land can be. “That’swhy I look after the international students,” said Fandel,who advises the International Student Organization.“Food, dress, the way you address teachers and parents.How we write and how we direct our arguments.” Shelists the cultural shocks faced by international students.Among faculty outside the language department, Mathe -matics Department Head George Larivee may be bestknown for his language passion. He studied German in29WWW.CONCORDACADEMY.ORG WINTER 2007

Tim MorseHe became a role model, instilling hislove of Italy in students,planting seeds for later wanderlust.Max HallAdams’s classes and during several summers, andpolished his Spanish on a sabbatical in Nicaragua, buildingupon a foundation of French from early years workingin Africa and Haiti. While he throws out foreignwords in math class “just for the fun of it,” he believeshis language knowledge has the most impact outside theclassroom. An active supporter of the German Club,attending their films and weekly German table, Lariveehas offered homework help to students in French,Spanish, and German, and is currently mentoring asenior project on bilingual education.This personal passion of Larivee’s is not lost on his students,even if he’s teaching them algorithms or helpingthem solve equations. Likewise, when physics teacherMax Hall played Ragazzo Fortunato at a postsabbaticalchapel talk and explained that the title means “LuckyGuy,” nothing seemed quite as appealing as living inRome, as Hall did, and mastering Italian. He became arole model, instilling his love of Italy in students, plantingseeds for later wanderlust.CONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER 2007Larivee, Hawley, Hall . . . are other schools full of mathand science teachers who love languages? If not, why isConcord Academy? Giannino-Racine thinks it points toa broad institutional philosophy, and says somethingabout CA’s character. “The people this school attracts tothe Science Department are people who have broaderinterests,” he said. “CA attracts people who aren’t onedimensional.”It also demonstrates that love of learning girds not onlythe school’s mission, but also its faculty. “If you’re notinterested in other people’s cultures,” Fandel said,“you’re going to be just a dispenser of knowledge.”30

The Impact ofLearning ChineseWvisit to China. As a first-year graduate student,realizing that businesses would likely need someonewith her language skills and education, Darbychecked out Columbia’s job board and, within afew days, landed a position with an internationalconsulting firm, which led to her 1973 visit toChina. She credits her strong command ofMandarin with that opportunity, and with othersthat followed. Among them: Darby helped IBMwith its first computer sale to China (to the Bankof China in Hong Kong). She helped marketTsing Tao beer in the U.S. and worked with PanAm to develop routes to China. She also workedfor Allied Chemical, selling its first milliondollars worth of chemicals to China. Darby livedin Hong Kong from 2000 to 2004 with herhusband, Lawrence A. Darby III, a corporatesecurities lawyer, and her twins, Lawrence andAbigail, who today continue their study ofChinese in college.Darby now travels to China several timesa year for consulting assignments and research forthe Chazen Institute. She recognizes how muchthe Mandarin classes at CA influenced her life.“There’s no question the Chinese language atConcord impacted my entire career,” she said. “Itstill does.”She credits CA for “providing me with thefoundation” for a career she loves. “I was able toDid you study Chinese at CA? Send your memories to magazine@concordacademy.org.hen Mary Wadsworth Darby ’68 traveledto China in 1973, she was part of the firstU.S. business group—and the very first Americanbusinesswoman—to visit the country since it hadclosed to the outside world during the CulturalRevolution.Only five years had passed since Darbyleft Concord Academy, and the Mandarin classesshe took at CA already stood as building blocksfor her budding career as an expert in Chinesefinancial markets. That career went on to includeexecutive positions at Chase and Morgan Stanley,and as executive director of the America-ChinaSociety, chaired by former Secretary of StateHenry Kissinger and former Secretary of StateCyrus Vance. Today Darby is a senior researchscholar at Columbia Business School’s JeromeA. Chazen Institute; besides researching, she usesher expertise in Chinese financial markets to consultfor both Chinese and global businesses.It was Chinese that originally attractedDarby to CA. She had taken an intensiveMandarin summer program at Thayer Academyand was determined to continue the language inhigh school. “Concord Academy offeredMandarin classes,” she recalled. “The school wasso far ahead of its time, so visionary.”Darby loved those classes. The teacher, TingLin Shang, insisted her students learn to read,converse, and write. “I remember studying hoursof Chinese each day to prepare for our biweekly,two-hour intensive Mandarin classes and practicingcalligraphy with my brush to write charactersevery night,” said Darby, who called the classes“good survival training. The first mistake was tenpoints off. Making the mistake twice was twentypoints off. And if you got the same characterwrong the third time it could cost you your placein the class.”By her senior year, Darby was so advancedin Mandarin that CA supplemented her educationwith tutoring at Wellesley College. After CA,Darby got her BA in East Asian Studies fromPrinceton, then headed to Columbia for graduateschool. In 1972, President Nixon made his historicgo to China with David Rockefeller and HenryKissinger. I have met many of the leaders ofChina, including Deng Xiaoping, Premier ZhuRongji, former Communist Party of China memberBo Yibo, presidents Jiang Zemin and HuJintao, foreign ministers Huang Hua and LiZhaoxing, Ambassador Yang Jiejr, and many otherpolitical and business leaders,” she said. “I was inBeijing and Shanghai the year of Mao’s death, andwitnessed the Gang of Four demonstrations inboth cities. The progress since my first visit isalmost beyond imagining.”Attorney Phebe Miller ’67 also studiedMandarin at CA, then chose to attend Wellesleystrictly because it was among the few places teachingthe language. She spent a summer studyingintensive Chinese, and transferred to Princetonafter participating in a foundation-funded programthere that focused on languages considered“critical,” but that weren’t widely taught. Duringthe summer of 1970, Miller studied Chinese inTaipei. “Studying Chinese had a huge impact onthe direction of my life,” she said. “It hugelyaffected where I went to college. And I went toHarvard Law School because it had East Asianlegal studies.”Early in her law career, while working inthe London office of a New York-based firm,Miller was among the first group of Englishlawyers to visit China, where she met with financialofficials. When she left the firm, she becamegeneral counsel of Discount Corporation of NewYork, where she organized and attended meetingsin China. Upon arriving in China with a Discountexecutive, she discovered that her Chinese lawprofessor at Harvard, who helped set up some ofthe meetings, hadn’t arranged for an interpreter.“He thought I could handle it,” she said (and shedid). From 1995 to 2000, as chief legal officer atthe Bank of New York, Miller managed issuesinvolving China and other Asian countries.Today Miller lectures on U.S. and EuropeanUnion securities and banking law at theUniversity of London. She rarely uses her Chinese(though she did once startle some talkativeChinese students by asking them in Mandarin toquiet down). “Although I remain very interestedin China, and try from time to time to read orspeak Chinese, it is not now the focus of mycareer,” she said. Still, Miller becomes enthuseddescribing the classic Chinese characters shelearned to draw in Shang’s class at CA.Mandarin classes were offered at ConcordAcademy from 1963 through 1969, and again from1997 through 2002 (through a teachersharingarrangement with Concord-CarlisleRegional High School). Tutoring was provided inthe eighties to several students who wanted tolearn the language. While Chinese language hasnot been taught at CA since 2002, Chinese culturehas, via classes such as Early Chinese History andCulture, Asian American History, and BecomingAmerican: The Literature of Immigration.Reintroducing Chinese language study isone of CA’s strategic initiatives, and the school isstriving to develop resources to meet that goal.Darby considers it a critical need. “The twentyfirstcentury belongs to China,” she said. “If aschool does not offer Mandarin, it will not bepreparing its students well for the future.”Mary Darby ’68 has been named ConcordAcademy's Davidson Lecturer. She speaks atCA on April 12, 2007 at 2:10 p.m. in thePerforming Arts Center.31WWW.CONCORDACADEMY.ORG WINTER 2007

Dido and Aeneas:CA’s OperaticPremiereby Nick Morgan ’07Caleb WertenbakerCONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER 200732On a campus that seems a New England prototype—simple,quiet, unadorned—the drama ofthe baroque disturbed the calm, filtering acrossConcord Academy as winter descended. Singerstrained to belt out complex arias. Pianists sharpenedthemselves for the harpsichord, while othermusicians adapted to seventeenth-century techniques.In its headquarters in the top floor of theStudent Health and Athletic Center, the DanceCompany began to piece together a dynamicwork, a movement of Henry Purcell’s baroqueopera, Dido and Aeneas.The Dance Company, comprising eleven ofCA’s most accomplished dancers, execute modernand period dance with equal specificity and spontaneity.They are a creative, thoughtful troupe,and this year they are creating movement toenrich and enliven Purcell’s aged opera, which wasfirst performed in 1689. Sung by students, playedby student musicians, and brought to life byyoung dancers, Dido has caught the attention of aschool that routinely stages performances rarelyfound at the high school level. Opera remainsuniquely ambitious, and Purcell’s work will be thefirst full opera ever performed by CA students.Dido and Aeneas begins with a shriek—actually thehowl of brazed chamber music—and also endswith a shriek. Based on a selection from Vergil’sAeneid, the opera follows Dido, the queen ofCarthage, her lover Aeneas, who is shipwrecked inCarthage, and the tragic story of their love, a storytinged throughout with magic, a love stymied bysorceresses and depraved witches.When that shriek pierces the Dance and Perform -ance Studio, it will signal the culmination ofa year’s worth of work. “The yearlong processallows us the time to internalize the Dido landscapeand then to theatricalize, to projectwhat fills us,” said dance teacher Richard Colton.“To bring Dido and Aeneas to life, in all itsfascinating contradictions, is our hope.”

Vergil is omnipresent in the opera, today morethan ever: a new translation of The Aeneid byRobert Fagles has reignited interest in the Romanpoet whose work has too often been left in theshadow of Homer. The music and dance programs’joint endeavor capitalizes on the newvogue for Vergil: Concord Academy will see thebaroque opera based on a Roman poem performedwith modern daring. For example, theopening storm and background information willbe presented as a prelude, staged in the squashcourts, one floor below the dance studio. TheDance Company, at Dido previews, already hasrevealed a militaristic dance from the prelude,with harsh vocalizations and severe footwork.This strikingly modern opening, through the helpof costumed dancers, will transition to the initialscene of the classical opera.To Colton, the modern prelude provides anopportunity to put the opera in context: “Purcellbased his libretto on book four of Vergil’s Aeneid,the Dido incident. Our prelude and epilogue willjump off of books three and six, where Vergilgives background to the Dido incident and followsits aftermath.” In a sense, modernizing theprelude was Colton’s statement about Purcell andhow extreme his work was, in his time. “We willuse contemporary music in these sections, whichwill create an interesting frame for Purcell’s 1690score,” he said. “We are hoping it will bring to thefore its radical nature.”Dido may have been destined for ConcordAcademy: Purcell originally wrote it for a girls’school (which Concord Academy was for half acentury), and it remains the only classical operawith an English libretto (which makes singingand understanding feasible for opera novices).When Music Program Director Keith Danielarrived at Concord Academy in 1978, he foundyellowing copies of Dido’s choral music amongthe department’s many papers. He assumed theopera had been produced by students before hisarrival, but learned that CA had never staged afull opera. Nearly thirty years later, the thoughtof staging the piece lingered, and Daniel decidedthe time was right: he had strong singers, apowerful Dance Company, and the necessaryfinancial support, thanks to donations fromseveral Concord alumnae/i and family membersspecifically earmarked for this operatic production.Dido and Aeneas will fulfill one of Daniel’sdreams. “Con duct ing opera is the height of theconducting experience,” he explained.Throughout rehearsals, it became clear that studentshad surrendered to the poem and the score:both are lavish. The artists drowned themselvesin the characters and aura of Vergil and Purcell,listening to hours of baroque music, studyingcostumes, reading classic texts. One evening,during an early workshop, dancers tackled theshipwreck scene, set during a violent storm. Aftera rigorous physical improvisation, one dancerbegan to beat his cape, the rest following. The33WWW.CONCORDACADEMY.ORG WINTER 2007

darkened room filled with the sound of clotheslapping, like waves in the sea, then rising tobecome more violent: the eerie echo of an oceanstorm, like the storm that crashed Aeneas, hero ofThe Aeneid, onto the shores of Queen Dido.Realizing the squall that had risen, Colton commandedthe dancers to beat even more fiercely,then he quietly played a record—the first notes ofthe opera. In the squall’s eye emerges Aeneas,alone, suddenly still amidst the writhing, and hisDido rises. Aeneas, as if master of the witcheswho squirm around him, whipping their cheapscarves, seemingly disappears, hidden in theirrags. Then, in a moment of delicacy and force, hisleg emerges, the knee first, bent, like an upwardlibidinous prong. A witch’s cloth smacks him asDido’s body descends upon him.The production represents the Dance Company’sannual final project. Each spring, the Companypresents an ambitious work, often incorporatingoutside collaboration and multimedia. Last year’sproduction incorporated photography and theconcept of working outside: photographer Jaye R.Phillips was the collaborator. The preceding year,dancers entered the project via architecture andgeometry, with Concord Academy architectureteacher Chris Rowe collaborating. The two precedingprojects dove from film one year to a combinationof Emily Dickinson and rock-and-rollmusic the next.For Dido, Colton chose to enter through costumes.Many of the dancers saw an exhibit,“AngloMania,” over the summer at the Metro -politan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute andurged Colton to go. Impressed, he decided thatfashion could provide the appropriate doorwayinto the world of Dido and Aeneas. DanielMichaelson, a teacher of theatre costume at Ben -nington College in Vermont, is the collaborator.Under his guidance, the dancers absorbed thesensibility of the period through costume, first bymaking collages and sketches, then by creatingcostumes from pieces found among the torpidcontents of their own bulging wardrobes.Michael son, after taking careful note of thegroup’s ideas and aesthetic, later trucked in aselection from Bennington: a lavish and ornatewardrobe from which clothes of kings would beformed and ravished.In one striking homemade costume was BrianMahoney-Pierce ’07, covered only in a loinclothfashioned from real autumn leaves, a postlapsarianthong which he thought befitted Aeneas. Besidehim in the dance studio, Emma McCormick-Daniel Michaelson, a costume design teacher at Bennington College, consulted on Dido and Aeneas.CONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER 200734David R. Gammons

Goodhart ’08 was improvising in the character ofDido: in the costume of her own creation—apunk-folk confection befitting the rebellious andsubmissive queen—she began by propelling herselfsimply, alone, carrying herself delicately besidethe windows. Quickly and subtly, she segued intoa spontaneously realized spree of boot-smackingthat spiraled into an extended climax, juxtaposingthe forest sprite character she had created withthe work’s neoclassicist roots. She looked as if awild thing, ecstatic. Her revelry was palpable inher near-explosions, both joyous and careful.Photos by David R. GammonsLavishing herself on the floor, raising her kneesto her chest, and clapping her hands to herantique wild-west boots, this ravishing and wind -swept Dido looked like the founder of a city gonewild, a woman who knows beauty, can applyperfume and also kill, and would give almosteverything for her city, who did give everythingfor a man. But was her suicide a revolt? Emmaassured me so, but dancer Zack Winokur ’07disagreed. “It was destined,” he said, illuminatingthe conflict propelling and pulling this story apart,the hypostatic discord between destiny and freewill. “Can such resentment hold the minds ofgods?” Vergil asks. His question resonates still.At her final moment, the quivering Dido mightbe a queen or might be a fool. The question ofher suicide consumes the dancers: is it an empoweredact? Acquiescence? Contradiction is part ofher personality, for she is both a leader and alover, powerful and weak. “In the modern worldwe must accept such dichotomies,” Colton said,getting at the heart of the character of the opera.“Vergil inspires us to see our vast compassionfor each other, to be human on our course.Ultimately, it may be a metaphor for a person’sown journey.”Another day in the studio, an improvisation climaxes,and the dancers seem to have a breakthrough,melding their improvisational moveswith seventeenth-century period dance. Aeneasleans backward: all that is visible beneath thelayers of his brown velvet costume are the eyes,innocent, if only because they are at their mostsensitive, rolled backward, peering at unsenti -mental, moving life. Effortlessly, he relevés longin third position, appearing to defy gravity—longenough to allow the audience to realize his seemingsuspension, which might have gone unnoticed.His breath cannot be heard. A group ofsorceresses, black-clad, appears as a mess around abubbling cauldron, their upright skeletons foldinglike collapsed umbrellas. These encroachingwomen squirm, elongated, vainly fascinated by35WWW.CONCORDACADEMY.ORG WINTER 2007

CONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER 2007Dido and Aeneasby Henry PurcellApril 18, 2007 8:00 p.m.April 19–20 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.April 22 8:00 p.m.Concord Academy Dance and Performance StudioDirection & Choreography* Richard ColtonMusic Orchestration Keith DanielHilary Walther Cumming ’87ConductorKeith Daniel*in collaboration with CA Dance CompanyCOLLABORATORSCostume DesignDaniel MichaelsonKirian Langseth-SchmidtSet and Light Design Caleb WertenbakerPeriod Dance Consultant Judith ChaffeeMusic by the CA OrchestraDANCERSDido Jody Graf ’07Aeneas Zack Winokur ‘07Belinda Emma McCormick-Goodhart ’08Sorceress Clara Dennis ’08Enchantresses Monica Grandy ’07Elizabeth Hoffman ’09Isabella Joslin ’09Jen Lamy ’09Zoë Mueller ’08Sailor Khalif Diouf ’07Spirit Brian Mahoney-Pierce ’07SINGERSDido Freddie Tunnard ’07Aeneas David Hook ’08Belinda Addy Cahill ’07Second Woman Louisa Denison ’07Sorceress Fannie Watkinson ’08Daphne Kim ’10Enchantresses Emma Friedman-Cohen ’07Carly Anderson ’08Katie Astrauskas ’09Sailor Paul Quimby ’08Spirits Julia Hanlon ’10Bronwyn Murray-Bozeman ’10Blair West ’1036their garments, and begin to pursue desperateAeneas, seething and boiling all around him.Eventually, after an intense pursuit, they subsumehim in a pyramid of token desire. Collapsed, anarm or leg sometimes emerges, anonymous, anda crowd of Didos in the white costumes Michael -son has provided watch, shifting on their feet inthe corner like Cretan maidens. The music ends,and the dancers seem unsure if they should continue.Colton keeps watching. The edge of artisticexpectation he places upon them exacts a finalproduct that emerges from the center of bloodshakinguncertainty and discomfort, from whichsprings the most exciting and unsure moments.Dido and Aeneas is a radical opera bearing innatepeculiarities, which make it ripe for fruitfulappropriation by modern artists. But do theyappropriate or submit? “What is most interestingto me as choreographer,” Colton said, “is theradical structure of the opera.” Its cubistic qualityintrigues and motivates him. It comprisesvignettes that Colton compares to a film’s jumpcutswhich, though jerky, together form a cohesivetragic picture, a complex of emotion andidea like a Sevres serving plate that has beenshattered, pieced together, and regarded by cold,fervent eyes. “Dido is a cubistic figure, reminiscentof Picasso’s “Weeping Woman”: she isstrong and angular, but falling apart into a millionfragments at the same time,” Colton said.Daniel also noticed this quality and is excited bythe “short songs, which we couldn’t even callarias. They will interest the audience much morethan the more typical lengthy baroque arias,” hesaid. To Colton, these short phrases cut out sentiment.“The phrases are crystalline, breathlike,and keep it from disintegrating into sentimentalopera,” he said.The entire opera has the quality of a collage: oneideology is plastered upon another, one era, onesociety, one moral—those of Purcell’s time and ofConcord Academy’s today. The gods of Vergilbecame Purcell’s sorceresses, which to Colton arefigures of “pop hilarity.” The dancers hope toexpose the thin residues of Puritanism, the lingeringpagan grains of society past and present;ultimately, the portent of Jesus that Vergil is saidto have conveyed will be regarded by the artisticeye of Colton and his dancers, shrouded by strictChristianity and its remnant, the dogmatic andmoral systems that guide our lives today.The view will be kaleidoscopic, and the core ofhuman relationships into which the opera delvesilluminated by Dido’s own inconsistence. She,who founded a city greater than any, would killherself for love. Submission and enslavement,desire and duty, mercurial reconsiderationsremade in moments—these are the beauty andrichness of Dido and Aeneas.Caleb Wertenbaker

Why WeShould CareAboutEndowmentby Lucille StottForbes.com recently listed Concord Academyamong the nation’s most expensive privateschools, a distinction the school would preferto shed. What the Forbes article didn’t explainis that CA made the list in large part because,for a school of its caliber, its endowment is low. And at CA,as at many schools, the size of tuition hikes and the sizeof endowment are directly related.Because of a late start, Concord Academy’s endowment is small, comparedto schools with which it competes for faculty and students. But it has grown,particularly during the last quarter-century, and that growth has allowedCA to remain a school where great teachers and talented students want to be.CA’s endowment—currently valued at $44 million—works quietly, withoutmuch attention, but it supports everything Concord Academy is proud of:inspiring teaching, a diverse group of talented students, a curriculum thatencourages critical thinking and creativity, and a beautiful, well-equippedcommunity in which to live and learn. “Talking about endowment definitelylacks emotional resonance,” acknowledged Mark Rosen, father of Johanna ’97and Seth ’06, and chair of the Board of Trustees’ Investments Subcommittee,part of the Finance Committee. “But at the end of the day, it is endowmentthat enables CA to achieve its aspirations for its people.”Tom KatesHead of School Jake Dresden likes to say that endowment allows CA tostay “nimble,” a quality that any school needs if it is to put its creative energyto best use. When the opportunity to pursue an exciting educationalopportunity arises, endowment is what allows the school to move ahead.Without it, a school remains static. In addition, said Dresden, because➛37WWW.CONCORDACADEMY.ORG WINTER 2007

Unendowed:CA’s Early DecadesWhen the formidable Elsie GarlandHobson, Concord Academy’s firstheadmistress, gave her annualreport to the trustees in 1933, she told themin stalwart terms what made the elevenyear-oldschool special: “There is a combinationof intellectual vigor, industry, andsimpli city . . . which stands as a rock,unchang ing in a changing world.”It was an important testament duringa time when the country had sunk into economicdepression, and Concord Academywas experiencing a steep decline in enrollment.In the face of these difficulties, theboard showed great vision by voting to institutea retirement plan for faculty. Teacherswould set aside part of their salary, and theschool would match a portion of it to funda cushion for later years.CA’s trustees recognized that ConcordAcademy’s people formed the rock on whichthe young school stood, and a first steptoward keeping the special character of thisschool “unchanged in a changing world”was to offer the faculty a measure of financialsecurity.But the institution itself had no suchcushion. For more than three decades afterits incorporation in 1922, the school livedyear to year. Each scholarship, each salarywas paid almost entirely with tuitionrevenue, supplemented by annual gifts fromfriends of the school.Finally, in 1954, a jubilant letter fromHeadmistress Elizabeth B. Hall announcedthe first gift intended as a permanent“Our goals for increasing financial aid are centeredon the importance of bringing together talented,curious, compassionate, and creative students whoalso reflect difference. We have to do everythingwe can for students who are great matches butsimply can’t afford CA.”Pam SaffordAssociate Head for Enrollment and Planningendowment is a permanent resource, “as income from endow -ment increases, the school is more able to act and commit,innovate and sustain.”Shortly after he arrived at CA in 2000, Dresden set in motion astrategic planning process that identified advancements necessaryto take CA into the next decade. Knowing that such advance -ments would require increased endowment income, Dresden iscommitted to raising awareness of what endowment can—andmust—do. “If we care about CA, we have to care about endow -ment, because down the road there will be no CA as we knowit without more endowment,” said Dresden. “Essentially,endow ment is about generational equity. We who benefit froma strong CA today want to ensure a strong CA for those whocome after us.”What Is Endowment?CONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER 2007millions38$45$40$35$30$25$20$15$10$5$0Total Endowment Growth1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006An endowment is a permanent fund invested for both long-termgrowth and annual income. Concord Academy’s endowmentcomprises both restricted and unrestricted funds. A gift to theendowment is considered restricted, sometimes in the form ofa named endowed fund, if a donor asks that it be used for aspecific purpose. Most of the school’s restricted endowmentfunds have been designated for the benefit of faculty or financialaid. Unrestricted gifts to the endowment, of greatest benefit tothe school, allow trustees and administrators to manage fundsstrategically, as needs and opportunities arise.How Does CA Manage and Use Its Endowment?Concord Academy’s endowment dates back only to 1954 and didnot exceed $1 million until the early 1980s. Yet the endowmenthas seen strong growth over the past twenty-five years, thanksto many new gifts combined with smart management. Currentlythe endowment is valued at more than $44 million. The Boardof Trustees’ Investment Subcommittee, which meets quarterly,

most experienced teachers. Area public schools, with whichCA competes for faculty, offer teaching salaries that are 15 to 20percent higher. For example, the latest published figures from theMassachusetts Department of Education, which reflect 2004data, cite the average faculty salary at Concord-Carlisle RegionalHigh School at $63,035. In addition, many independent schoolswith which CA competes for students, such as Milton,Middlesex, and Phillips Academy Andover, offer substantiallyhigher teaching salaries, in addition to more faculty housing.A second key factor in retaining faculty is the school’s commitmentto professional development. The National Association ofIndependent Schools (NAIS) considers 1 percent of a school’soperating budget a “generous” allocation for professional development.CA spends, on average, $100,000 per year for professionaldevelopment. This amounts to only .625 of a percent ofthe school’s $16 million operating budget. An additional $4 millionin endowment income would increase professional developmentfunds by $200,000 per year, tripling CA’s currentallocation.Increasingly in recent years, housing has become a key issue inhiring and retaining the kinds of dedicated adults CA counts onyear after year. With housing prices in the Greater Boston areaamong the highest in the country, the school must continue towork hard to increase campus housing. Though these kinds ofcapital expenditures generally are not funded through endowmentincome, financial institutions that issue bonds or loans considerthe amount of CA’s unrestricted endowment a key factor indetermining the school’s strength and creditworthiness. Once acapital expenditure is made and the project complete, endowmentbecomes essential to sustaining that initiative by providingincome to repay debt and to fund maintenance of the new space.“We manage our endowment so that gifts benefit theschool for many gen er a tions. A $100,000 gift toendow ment supports a draw of $5,000 toward theannual budget (in current dollars). When that giftappreciates above the annual draw and aboveinflation, it continues to benefit the school’s peopleand programs — literally forever. Fifty years from nowthat gift could be worth more than $500,000.Judi SeldinChief Financial Officer”CONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER 2007Endowment: The Ultimate MultitaskerBy working on several fronts at the same time, endowment fundsbecome more than the sum of their dollars. Day to day, annualincome from endowment supports every interaction that occurson campus. Year to year, endowment growth allows the school toattract talent and grow in diversity, support innovative ideas byfaculty and administrators, and encourage people to keep envisioninga stronger, better CA. Decade by decade, endowmentinstills confidence in the school’s ability to stay vital for the greatgrandchildrenand great-great-grandchildren of today’s students.When Ellen Condliffe Lagemann ’63 assumed her role as presidentof the Board of Trustees last May, she knew one of her jobswould be to help the school increase its endowment in responseto the strategic plan. “If I care about CA, now is the time to doit—when it matters most,” said Lagemann. “Increasing endowmentis absolutely essential to CA’s future, because it is the onlyway to give the school the flexibility it needs to respond toopportunities when they arise and the stability it needs to sustainall its strengths for the long term.”40Tim Morse

ATHLETICSFALL HIGHLIGHTSThe boys soccer team enjoyedits most successful season sinceHead Coach Adam Simon —this year’s Eastern IndependentLeague (EIL) Coach of theYear — took over in 1999. Theteam tied for second place inthe EIL, the highest regular-seasonfinish in seven years, andposted wins over the previouslyunbeaten Pingree and EIL second-placeLexington ChristianAcademy (LCA). A 7–6–2 recordsent the team to the Division CNew England Prep School(NEPSAC) tournament, where itfell to the number-one seed,Providence Country Day School,in the opening round. SeniorBen Sullender was named to theNEPSAC All-Star team; EIL All-Stars included Ben, senior JohnMoriarty, and junior DavidNoam. Juniors Henry Butmanand Rutledge Chin Feman werenamed EIL Honorable Mentions.Jon CrispinThe girls soccer team won apreseason match and its firstthree games of the season — itsfirst league wins since 2003.The team won five of its firstseven games and had fourshutouts in the first six games.It qualified for the EIL tournamentin fifth place and was thetop seed in the Pool B tournament.Liz Feldhusen was namedEIL Coach of the Year in her firstseason as head coach. JuniorsMary Matthews and ChelseyBowman were named EIL All-Stars, and senior Nora Christianiwas named an EIL HonorableMention.The boys cross-country teamfinished second in the league,41WWW.CONCORDACADEMY.ORG WINTER 2007

tying its best finish ever. At theEIL Championship, CA’s top malerunner, senior John Nordin, finishedthird in the league. Nordinfinished sixth overall in NewEngland Division II, earning All-New England honors, and theteam finished seventh. JuniorPatrick D’Arcy was named an EILHonorable Mention.The girls cross-country teamfinished the regular season inseventh place, and finished fifthat the EIL Championship, wherefreshman Caroline Howe led CAwith a twentieth-place showing.At the New England meet, juniorAnna Hager helped the teamearn a tenth-place finish. Anna,who was named an EIL Honor -able Mention, finished twentiethout of ninety-four runners.CONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER 2007The girls field hockey teamimproved throughout the season,which included a winagainst Beaver Country DaySchool and culminated in anovertime win against LCA. Closegames included an overtimecontest against Winsor Schooland a scoreless second halfagainst Tabor Academy.Sophomore Hannah Kaemmerwas named an EIL HonorableMention.The golf team defeated leaguefoes Pingree and Landmark —with the Landmark win the season’shighlight, avenging anearlier loss. Tri-captain Jae Cho,a senior, secured the match withwhat Head Coach Tim Hult called“one of the best clutch shots Ihave ever seen,” landing the ballwithin eighteen inches of thehole. Sophomore JustinStedman was named an EILHonorable Mention.CA welcomes Jennifer Brennanback to the Athletics Depart -ment — not that she ever reallyleft. Brennan, CA’s new assistantdirector of athletics, was interimassistant in 2002, worked at CASummer Camp from 2002 to2004, and has coached basketballat CA since 2002, becoming thegirls varsity head coach last year.42To Vassar, Berlin,and Beyond:WILL BYRNE ’02Seven three-pointers in one tournamentgame. Fourteen points and MVP honorsin the tournament final. All-Academichonors every year of college. Team captain hissenior year.Will Byrne ’02’s athletic accolades might implythat he glided effortlessly into his award-winningcollege basketball career. But when he first arrivedat Vassar College in 2002, he had a lot to prove—to his team and to himself.“During preseason pickup and practice my freshmanyear, I remember often feeling like I was inthe ranks of some All-Star team, in awe of theskills I was surrounded by,” Byrne said. “Morethan anything, adjusting to my new surroundingsand the level of competition was a mental trialfor me. Once I made the decision that I belongedon the new level of play and I lost my wide-eyedapproach, my contributions started to comenaturally.”Byrne got his first big break at a tournamentduring his junior year, when he was called in toPhotos by Jon Crispin

Jon CrispinALUMNAE/I CORNERAmong the Concord Academygraduates who played collegesports this year:Luke Douglas ’01Soccer at Middlebury CollegeEva Luderowski ’06Competed in nationals for Carle -ton College in cross-countryAustin Reed ’05Soccer at HaverfordSeth Rosen ’06Wrestling at WesleyanNick Sullender ’04Ultimate Frisbee at OberlinMike WirtzTracy Welch ’89 won theMassa chusetts Women’s StateAmateur Championship in golf,with a birdie on the eighteenthhole; she won once beforein 1998.Jon Crispinsubstitute for an injured teammate. He had seventhree-pointers—a personal record—and in thetournament final scored fourteen points, earninga Most Valuable Player award.very important. It allowed me to approach myparticipation on the team as not the thing I did,but one of many, and to put my periodic strugglesin perspective.”Years earlier, Byrne had arrived at CA eager toplay basketball, but also to explore other sports.He played baseball all four years, captaining hislast two, and sampled soccer and cross-country.“The most important things I learned on CAteams personally were the subtleties of leading ateam, the importance of leading by example, thedifficult process of mediating between coachesand players,” said Byrne, who captained thebasketball team his junior and senior years.He credits CA with making him multidimensional—helpinghim realize that there was lifebeyond the basketball court, even during theintense college admissions process. “Coaches comingto recruit you, transitioning to a higher level,the great responsibility and time commitment—it can quickly become an all-consuming presencein a young athlete’s mind,” he said. “This madethe fact that I’d gotten invested in other pursuitsCarlisle Stockton/Stockton PhotographyAmong Byrne’s other pursuits was German, apassion he discovered at CA and continues tonurture. He currently lives in Berlin, where he isinterning at the American Academy. “If it wasnot for the chance to study German at CA, andSusan Adams’s abilities in the classroom, I guessI’d have taken a very different path,” he said.Byrne still plays basketball, and has even found ateam for the less-than-popular sport in Berlin.“Having the coach and everyone around youshouting out plays and drills in German definitelyadds a new challenging element to the process,”he said, “but ultimately, basketball is basketball inany language.”—Gail Friedman43WWW.CONCORDACADEMY.ORG WINTER 2007

ARTSQ&ALarry Goldings ’86Larry Goldings ’86 is considered one of the most accomplishedjazz organists and pianists performing today. He recently hasbeen touring with James Taylor, and his album, Saudades,was nominated for a Grammy Award.Norman SeefeWhat are your most vivid music memories of CA?It was always thrilling to play for students andfaculty at CA. I performed an original piece forpiano and flute with Stephanie Stathos ’84(now one of the top woodwind players in NewEngland), and I’ll never forget how satisfying thatwas. It was great that I was given those kinds ofopportunities. I also played and sang (God helpus!) a Bob Dylan song (“All I Really Want To Do”)in front of the school. This is a vivid memory,albeit a bad one. Singing the “Fauré Requiem” inthe CA Choir made an impression as well; I’vebecome a Gabriel Fauré nut. My record, Awareness,has an interpretation of the Requiem’s “LiberaMe.” Then there were the hours I had in the SmithRoom to play that warm Mason and Hamlin,looking out on idyllic Concord.Did any particular teachers or classes make alasting impact?Keith Daniel had a major impact on me. HisMusic History and Harmony classes were veryenlightening. Not many people can say theyanalyzed Bach chorales in high school. I’ll alwaysremember how Keith could expound on TheBeatles and Beethoven, with equal respect forboth. Great music was great music to Keith, andthis attitude helped shape my own eclectic tastes,and my openness to all music. Keith also wasa friend to me, and guided me through somePortrait ArtistsCONCORD ACADEMY MAGAZINE WINTER 2007Brian Mahoney-Pierce ’07,Malika Mehta ’07, andFelicity Slater ’07 staged aphotography show in the Mathand Arts Center in December,showcasing works they createdfor their respective independentstudies in photography.Below left, portraits of JuliaDenardo-Roney ’08 are part ofFelicity’s study of intimacy andalienation through photographs.In the photo, the viewer is anobserver, but in later photos inFelicity’s sequence, the viewerbecomes involved.“The last few photos in thesequence were meant to bemuch more intimate, as if theviewer were engaged with thesubject as a friend, confidant,family member, or even assome sort of slightly impartialbut still caring viewer, such asthe family dog or cat, or a teddybear sitting in the room,”46Felicity explained.In Brian’s portrait, belowright, an inexpensive Holgacamera helped him capture thevintage look he wanted. “It ismade entirely of plastic,” Briansaid of the Holga. “It allowsfor little control of the finalproduct, so much of the exposureand focus is guesswork.Mistakes are unavoidable —and thus become a serendipitouspart of the final image.”Brian said his images offera window into how family haschanged over generations, ifat all. “Where will it go next?”he asked. “How do my imagesstray from the nineteenthcenturydaguerre o types ofour ancestors?”Felicity Slater ’07Brian Mahoney-Pierce ’07

personal conflicts. Parkman Howe, Karl Lauben -stein, John O’Connor were important figures aswell. Apart from being great teachers, they reallycared about my personal growth, and treatedme more as a peer than a student.People who knew you at CA say you stood outeven back then. Was it difficult being so muchbetter than the other student jazz musicians?Whatever confidence I had as a musician, I washumbled by my extremely average grades outsideof music. There were plenty of gifted studentsaround who blew me out of the water.How does the Larry Goldings Trio compare toyour first (and equally famous) trio, with HowieBloom and Ted Sherman in CA’s 1986 productionof Princess Ida?They are pretty much the same group, apart fromthe suits of armor.You play piano, organ, electric piano, harmonium,and accordion. Was piano your first?I can’t play accordion legally in most states, butI’ll have a go at anything with a keyboard on it.I started playing piano by ear around age sevenor eight. Probably Billy Joel’s fault.Which of your nine albums is your favorite? Why?The most recent album is always my favorite,because it best reflects my current artistic vision.Touring with James Taylor, you play the samesongs over and over. In light of that, how do youcontinue to grow as a musician?It’s true that playing with James doesn’t presentthe same kind of challenges as does a more spontaneousjazz setting, but there’s still plenty for meto sink my teeth into. This is particularly true inthe duet gigs we have been doing. Finding theright textures behind him, matching his beautifuland unique time feel, and just searching for thatmysterious place where everything feels right:these are gratifying challenges. Not to mention—it’s James Taylor. It’s thrilling to hear him everynight, and I’m honored he entrusts me to sharethe stage with him.What’s your favorite moment in the JT concert?They are the moments when you feel a true connectionwith the audience. It’s a powerful thing,to live vicariously through the purity and timelessnessof James’s music, and to witness the effect ithas on thousands of people.What recent work of yours should we knowabout, besides your work with JT?These are some recent records I’m proud to haveworked on: Saudades by Trio Beyond [Goldingswith Jack DeJohnette and John Scofield]. I, alongwith Jack and John, have been nominated for aGrammy (Best Jazz Instrumental Album). QuartetLarry Goldings; Madeleine Peyroux, Careless Love;Norah Jones, Not Too Late; John Scofield, That’sWhat I Say (the music of Ray Charles); and JesseHarris, Mineral.Of the musicians with whom you’ve collaborated,who made the biggest impression?There’s no single one. Jim Hall and John Scofieldare two of them. They showed me the importanceof finding your own sound. Among my generationof peers, I always looked up to PeterBernstein as a great player and composer, andearly on, he turned me on to so many greatrecords. I’ve also had some of my most memorableplaying experiences with these people.You’ve played with so many jazz greats. Whatkeeps you down to earth?The fact that I’m never at the level I want to be,musically. There’s always a vast amount of knowledgeto gain.If CA asked for your autograph, what wouldyou inscribe?How a dope like me ever graduated from here,I’ll never know. But many thanks for all that Igained from CA.The America PlayUmoja, an affinity groupfor students of Africanand Carribean decent at CA,presented The America Playby Pulitzer Prize–winning playwrightSuzan-Lori Parks inDecember. Act One of TheAmerica Play was practically aone-man show, featuring theFoundling Father, a pensiveprotagonist (played by LucasTurner-Owens ’07, at right),who resembles AbrahamLincoln and impersonatesLincoln in a carnival sideshowattraction. The play, saidTheatre Program Director DavidR. Gammons, who directed it,“explores what it means to dig:into the earth, into the past,into our hearts.”David R. GammonsNew FacesConcord Academywel comes four newfaculty members in the arts:photography teacher LeeFearnside ’92; Peggy Fried -land, director of CA’s FluteEnsemble; Alexander Kieft,a film tech intern; andPieter Struyk, director of thePercussion Ensemble.47WWW.CONCORDACADEMY.ORG WINTER 2007

IN MEMORIAMJudith Antonangeli, former food services staff memberJohn Richardson Bemis, husband of Charlotte Hutchins Bemis ’36;father of Eleanor Bemis ’66, Marjorie Bemis ’62, and Alice Bemis Bueti ’73;grandfather of Eliza Bemis ’99 and Robert S.M. Bemis ’04;brother-in-law of Alice Hutchins Clark ’34Walter E. Borden III, husband of Margaret Fenn Borden ’42 and brother-in-law ofGale S. Hurd ’61 and the late Edith Fenn Hanley ’40Ann Brewer, mother of Anita Brewer-Siljeholm ’71 and Conant Brewer ’74Margaret Williams Clausen ’42Charlotte Cleveland ’45, sister of Mary Crocker Strang ’56Elizabeth K. Dau, grandmother of Margaret Hoffman ’06 andElizabeth Hoffman ’09Robbie L. Deitch, mother of Matthew Deitch ’05Mary “Molly” Gregory, former faculty member (see page 4)John W. Hill, Jr., father of John Hill ’74Marshall Hornblower, father of Nancy Hornblower Rice ’64 andMarjorie Hornblower Johnson ’60, grandfather of Sarah M. Stoker ’89 andConrad Bauer ’01Francis A. Houston, husband of Mary Leigh Morse Houston ’47 andfather of Louise S. Houston ’74Richard O. Howe, father of Judith Howe Behn ’61Huson Jackson, grandfather of Ezekiel W. P. Brown ’87Mary “Mimi” Frankenberg Aloian Kissling ’48, former faculty and wife ofthe late David Aloian, former headmaster, and grandmother of Andrew Aloian ’03Alva Morrison, father of Sylvia Morrison ’72, Alva Morrison ’74, andAbigail Morrison ’76Laurence Rubin, grandfather of Nathan A. Coppersmith ’08Eleanor R. Snelling, former faculty memberBernard Solomon, father of Sally Solomon ’82Irving Telling, husband of the late Jane Cushman Telling ’4048Photos by Sally Farnsworth Blackett ’58

A Planned Gift“To Keep Talented Kids Coming to Concord Academy”Patty Wolcott Berger ’47 still speakswith enthusiasm of her favorite classat Concord Academy, an entirecourse on Hamlet taught by Head -mistress Josephine Tucker. “We discussed everyline,” she recalled. “Since then, I’ve gone toevery production I can find.”Still in touch with several of her classmates,Patty said one of the things she valued mostduring her four years at Concord Academy wasthe respect students showed to those whostudied hard and did well. “I got a wonderfuleducation here,” she said during a visit tocampus last fall. “The school really taught mehow to study.”together as an example of the readings of atwentieth-century lawyer. The collectionhas been housed in the seminar room of theJ. Josephine Tucker Library.Two Concord Academy students, ClaudineLott ’01 and Jeff Fabre ’00, helped Raoulinventory his library, and Patty said she andher husband were enormously impressed withthe intelligence and kindness of the pair. Oneday, Claudine and Jeff found a rare treasure atthe Berger home, a first edition of the Englishtranslation of Albert Einstein’s Relativity—signed by Einstein himself. Because ofClaudine and Jeff, said Patty, Raoul includedthat rare book in his gift to Concord Academy.Everett Wallace ’07A former teacher and the author of seventeenchildren’s books, Patty recently decided tomake a contribution to Concord Academythrough a charitable gift annuity. In return, shereceives a fixed, lifetime income. Beforehe died in 2000, her husband, Raoul Berger—a noted attorney, Constitutional specialist, andviolinist—made his own gift to the school,donating his entire library to ConcordAcademy. Raoul wanted to keep his libraryWhile appreciating the tax advantages andthe secure, lifetime income the annuityprovides her, Patty said she made her plannedgift to Concord Academy because “it wasimportant to give to a place that is going tocarry on with the best. The caliber of studentshere is terrific. They will be future leadersin one way or another. It is good to know mygift will help keep talented kids coming toConcord Academy.”Patty Wolcott Berger ’47Concord AcademyCharitable Gift AnnuityIn return for a gift of cash or appreciatedstock, CA will pay you a specified annuityfor as long as you live. Other benefitsmay include an income tax charitablededuction and income that is partly taxfree.The annuity amount depends on theage of the beneficiary and the amount ofthe gift. Sample rates:Age Rate of Return65 6.0%75 7.1%85 9.5%For more information, please contact:Diane Spence, Director of DevelopmentConcord Academy, 166 Main Street, Concord, MA 01742(978) 402-2237diane_spence@concordacademy.org

Concord Academy166 Main StreetConcord, MA 01742Address service requestedUpcoming Special EventsUpcoming AssembliesPerforming Arts Center, 2:10 p.m.February 22Winter Athletics CelebrationStudent Health and Athletic Center, 5:15 p.m.February 23–24The Threepenny OperaPerforming Arts Center, 7:30 p.m.March 1Alumnae/i ReceptionDenver, ColoradoMarch 9–26Spring VacationMarch 11Alumnae/i ReceptionLondon, EnglandMarch 16Violinist Sarah ChangPerforming Arts Center, 7:00 p.m.March 31Alumnae/i Council MeetingConcord Academy Model United Nations(CAMUN)8:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.April 16Patriots Day (no classes, houses open)April 18–22Dido and AeneasDance and Performance StudioApril 18, 8:00 p.m.; April 19–20, 7:00 p.m.and 9:00 p.m.; April 22, 8:00 p.m.May 11–12Theatre III Company ProductionPerforming Arts Center, 7:30 p.m.May 17–19Directors Seminar Festival:The Beauty Queen of LeenaneMemento MoriMay 22Spring Athletic CelebrationPerforming Arts Center, 5:15 p.m.May 25Spring Student Art Show ReceptionMath and Arts Center, 4:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m.May 31BaccalaureateElizabeth B. Hall Chapel, 7:30 p.m.March 1Ethicist Dan Terris pp ’04March 8CA Percussion EnsembleMarch 29National Book Award winner Julia Glass ’74April 5Storyteller Diane FerlatteApril 12Mary Darby ’68, Davidson LecturerApril 19CA Jazz EnsembleApril 26CA ChorusMay 17CA OrchestraMay 24CA film assemblyJune 1CommencementChapel Lawn, 10:00 a.m.June 15–17Alumnae/i Weekend