What’s Happening at Bement
‘Tis the season to give thanks and give back, and Bement’s fifth annual Bement Gives Back Challenge (BGBC) is well underway. Each November, Bement students, families, alumni, employees, and friends are encouraged to participate in the BGBC as a way to extend Bement’s mission into their local communities and support Bement’s annual fund in the process. Thanks to generous challenge donors, any Bement community member who 1) makes a gift to the Annual Fund and 2) logs volunteer hours during the month of November has their volunteer hours multiplied by $50/hour in additional contributions to Bement’s Annual Fund.
Students, their families, and additional parent volunteers coordinate volunteer efforts throughout the month to offer everyone opportunities to come together in community around the shared goal of making a difference in the lives of others. Last week, for instance, Bement’s Community Service club worked with a few current parents to organize a food drive to support the Bonus Bag program of the Franklin County Community Meals Program. Families brought non-perishable food & drinks to Bement, and students and parent volunteers decorated and packed brown bags to deliver to FCCMP for their annual Bonus Bag drive. Thank you to everyone who is helping make another edition of the BGBC a driver of community spirit and annual fund success once again!
What I’m Reading, Watching, and Listening To
Each year, Thanksgiving vacation is a time for me to catch up on reading–I still have a few chapters left in Eager and a fresh issue of The Atlantic arrived last Thursday–but vacation is also movie time in the Schloat house. The kids will want to watch an action movie or two, which is fine by me, but my guilty pleasure movie-watching this vacation will be centered more in my own current favorite cinema era: the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Specifically, I’ve been drawn lately to films from that era that capture the strange mix of post-Watergate paranoia and early Reagan-era excess that defined the transition between decades. I’ve seen Parallax View, for instance, so next up are Klute, Three Days of the Condor, and Blowout – a conspiracy/paranoia cornucopia! Blowout also happens to be a Brian de Palma film, a director whose early work I’ve recently discovered, so some of his other movies from that era–Body Double, Dressed to Kill, Scarface–could definitely find their way onto my playlist this vacation.
What Else Is on My Mind
In this season of gratitude, I want to take a moment to extend my deep appreciation to Bement’s staff – the non-faculty employees of our cherished school who give of themselves every day to make sure Bement runs smoothly. From keeping our campus safe and looking beautiful to processing the school’s finances, from fixing broken chromebooks and replacing lost computer chargers to managing Bement’s social media feeds and communicating with families near and far, from seamlessly running our development and admissions operations to feeding our entire community day after day, the dozens of adults who make up Bement’s staff work behind the scenes every year and do a fabulous job keeping our school humming. If you are a current member of Bement’s family or student community, please find a moment when you’re next on campus to wander into an office you’ve never visited before and thank a staff member; they deserve it and would welcome the visit.