What’s Happening at Bement
Friday, June 6 was a day of celebration at Bement, as the school honored twenty graduating ninth graders at the close of its 100th year of operation. Bement’s Commencement ceremony is a formal, intimate affair that features speeches from ninth graders (half of this year’s graduates spoke at commencement this year, with the other half delivering their speeches at baccalaureate the preceding day) and a musical performance from the ninth-grade musical, The Wizard of Oz.
Each year Bement’s graduating students amaze the gathered audience of families, students, faculty, and staff with their poise, courage, and elocution. It is a fitting way for them to conclude their time at Bement, whether it was just one year or, in the case of three graduates from the Class of 2025, the full ten-year experience. Everyone in the Bement family is welcome to attend commencement–mark your calendars for the first Friday in June and please come by to enjoy the festivities!
What I’m Reading, and/or Watching, and/or Listening To
The start of summer means reading for pleasure can begin in earnest, and I have started my summer book journey with a new novel from one of my favorite practicing writers of fiction, Karen Russell. Her latest novel, The Antidote, is typical of her past work: a family saga set in a quirky place & moment in time (in this case rural Nebraska during the Dust Bowl) seasoned with a dose of the supernatural. Russell is a master storyteller and I love her interest in the esoteric, but she is also skilled at surfacing complex themes and ideas in her work. In the case of The Antidote, the narrative centers around the role of memory, trauma, and truth during a period of extreme climate change. With overseas travel dominating my June, I should move quickly through the novel and hopefully have another book to report on by the time I next post in this space!
What Else Is on My Mind
After commencement, I began a two-week period of travel, starting with the TABS Board of Trustees meeting at Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, Ohio. After a quick stopover back in Deerfield, I left for Asia, accompanied by Kim Loughlin, Bement’s Assistant Head of School and Director of Admission, and Jeff Pilgrim, Bement’s Director of Secondary School Counseling. Flying halfway around the world to meet with current and prospective Bement families in Asia is an annual highlight for me; Bement is so fortunate to have great friends so far away, and we are always met with a warm welcome when we arrive.
Understandably, international families we meet on this year’s trip have many questions about the state of American politics and the future of international students attending American schools, colleges, and universities. At an event in Hong Kong, a young prospective student asked me about current events and wondered what could be done to ensure that children like him can continue to study at schools like Bement. After I reassured him that Bement and schools like it are doing what they can to ensure that American boarding schools remain open and welcoming for students from all over the world, I left him with a personal encouragement.
I told him we need bright young students like himself to keep pursuing a rigorous, globally focused education and to do so with Bement’s core values in mind, so one day he and his fellow future leaders can help shift the emerging paradigm in global politics from rancor and self-interest to one of compassion and generosity of spirit. Perhaps a little lofty for a brief conversation at a boarding school information session, but I meant it: Bement exists to provide the next generation of scholars and citizens with an education that promotes the greater good, and I remain irrepressibly hopeful that our students will deliver on that promise.
Poetry Corner
As a way to close the final faculty & staff meeting of the year, I shared the poem below from Billy Collins: “As if to Demonstrate an Eclipse.” Collins’ poem evoked for me a series of images of summer relaxation, something I hope for all of Bement’s hard-working employees. It also centers around gratitude, a feeling I hope we all feel for the teachers and school employees in our lives who do so much for young people every day!
“As if to Demonstrate an Eclipse” by Billy Collins
I pick an orange from a wicker basket
and place it on the table
to represent the sun.
Then down at the other end
a blue and white marble
becomes the earth
and nearby I lay the little moon of an aspirin.
I get a glass from a cabinet,
open a bottle of wine,
then I sit in a ladder-back chair,
a benevolent god presiding
over a miniature creation myth,
and I begin to sing
a homemade canticle of thanks
for this perfect little arrangement,
for not making the earth too hot or cold
not making it spin too fast or slow
so that the grove of orange trees
and the owl become possible,
not to mention the rolling wave,
the play of clouds, geese in flight,
and the Z of lightning on a dark lake.
Then I fill my glass again
and give thanks for the trout,
the oak, and the yellow feather,
singing the room full of shadows,
as sun and earth and moon
circle one another in their impeccable orbits
and I get more and more cockeyed with gratitude.