Friday, December 19, 2008

“Peace & Good Williams!”

A holiday tradition that always brings good cheer and spirit is the Senior Class Holiday Assembly presented during the last assembly of the first semester. Seniors are responsible for writing and directing a holiday piece that will put us all in the mood to celebrate the holidays with friends and family.

This year’s senior holiday assembly, written and directed by Molly Hannon and Elma Burnham, was set at the annual Williams Faculty Holiday Party. As I told the audience, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” seniors dressed and impersonated (all in good nature) their faculty advisors, teachers, and coaches.   Mariah Carey made an appearance and the senior boys performed their version of the Candle Dance!

On a more serious note, I would like to wish all of you a very happy holiday and I am so proud of what we’ve accomplished in 2008 and looking forward to all the wonderful things that I will be able to write about in 2009. 

Until then, all my best to you and your family. Happy New Year!

Enjoy your break. Stay tuned. See you in 2009.

Friday, December 12, 2008

I always set my holiday calendar to begin the holiday season with our annual Winterfest celebration of performances by students and faculty from our Arts Department. Traditionally, Winterfest occurs the second Tuesday night of December at a time in our academic calendar when second quarter classes are coming to an end and the entire school is preparing for semester exams. For everyone involved it is a time to reflect on the joy of the season.

Harkness Chapel on the campus of Connecticut College serves as a merry venue for our student performances. The program features festive songs performed by our band and jazz band under the direction of Peter Emanuel, including A Cambridge Carol and You’re a Mean One Mr. Grinch! I am always amazed at the relative ease our students have when performing a variety of challenging pieces; several musicians deliver solos while others change instruments after every song! Girls in the Select Chorus, directed by Laura Smith, sang Jingle Bell Rock while the boys in Acafellas sang Hazy Shade of Winter. In addition, the Select Chorus and Acafellas treated us to Caroling, Caroling, a song that the boy and girl groups performed as a duet. Mr. John Knudsen, history teacher, and Mr. Emanuel sang alongside our male group comprised of vocalists from every grade level. In the transitions between the various performances, the Thespians, a theater club under the direction of Jane Martineau, read and recited from period literary works such as Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost.

The evening ends with Williams' traditional “Winter Lights” dance featuring girls and boys performing a “candle dance” choreographed by dance teacher Bo Parish and set to the music of Carol of the Bells. The glow of battery-operated lights adds warmth and sparkle to the dancers' graceful movements. My daughters talk about this dance every year and wait with great anticipation to watch the performance. Having seen this dance performed for the past five years, I always observe some new, fascinating feature. 

It is with great joy that I get to watch our students and teachers perform such a wonderful tradition and trust that you will mark your calendars to attend each year.  Happy Holidays for sure!

Enjoy your weekend.  Stay tuned.

View a slideshow of images from Winterfest Dress Rehearsal

Friday, December 5, 2008

“Going Green…”

As an integral part of our Service Committee, the Environmental Club is working very hard on a number of initiatives to make our campus more environmentally friendly.  Led by Elma Burnham, Catherine Schrage, Julian Sacca-Schaeffer, Mallie Buffum, Caroline Mills, Sam Pieniadz and Mrs. Diane McCue, the club and I recently toured the Dining Facilities at Connecticut College. While on tour, we discussed the methods that the food services at the College were using and how we could integrate them in our new Student Center. Thanks to our club’s efforts, we were able to establish a liason and working relationship with our neighbor to be able to compost biodegradeable food products in the Weissman Student Center.

This week, the Environmental Club is manning the compost can and helping the students and kitchen staff determine which food products can be composted and placed in a marked bin to be picked up by our liason at Conn College. Because Connecticut College is committed to institutional composting, it has a master compost facility located behind the school’s tennis courts. Each day, a student group from the college transports the food items for compost to the two large “Earth Tubs.” Examples of food that our students and kitchen staff can compost are fruit peels, eggshells, tea bags, undressed salad and vegetables from the salad bar. Once the food products begin to settle in the earth tubs, the compost goes through a power mixing and aeration process. In only a few months, the college will return to us the freshly fertile soil to be used for our campus landscaping.

In conjunction with our efforts to go green, Elma, Catherine, and senior proconsul Dan Fisher, made a short video and entered it into the Connecticut Light & Power “Live Green Win Green” Contest. On very short notice, the group assembled and shot a video featuring all that we are doing here to save the environment. This video explains the variety of environmental initiatives taken by Williams. All of our viewers are permitted to vote up to three times, and we have the possibility of earning $20,000 from CL&P for our school. The link to the video is: http://www.clpenergyinfo.com/lgwg/videoplayer.php?file=%7BBC22EC15-1431-9C2D-09C5-ABD68608D8CF%7D.m4v. 

Be sure to have a look at our student’s work and join me in “voting early and often.”  I know you will enjoy it and be as proud as I am of our students’ efforts.

Stay tuned.  Enjoy your weekend.

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