Sometimes a Soul

By Henry Birdsey

MONDAY:

We started off the morning listening (some less interested than others) to Tal ranting about the current status of the football world around the globe. (For those less culturally integrated, “Football” is played with the foot, not by tackling to get an oval pigskin lump) Isabel talked about how she wanted ice cream, but was too lazy to go to the store but she and her sister went to a creamy stand and talked together. The new rage of “skate board guys” out on the patio is growing rapidly.

“Skateboarding not a phase, it’s a passion,” says seventh grader, Evan Sandoe

Nate talked about how his Dad woke him up at the un-godly hour of 6:55 A.M. (We laughed at him about his teenage sloth-like sleeping pattern. Wow that’s real early) and made him go for a swim in their pond, and Tal proceeded to tell us about his days at Camp Cherokee in Georgia and how he went swimming every morning in the lake in the nude. Rider Talked about his pony, Mike, who he has known since he was three, was leaving to go to another barn, and Rider felt like part of his childhood was leaving. Anna read “Minor Bird” by Robert Frost:

I have wished a bird would fly away,

And not sing by my house all day;

Have clapped my hands at him from the door

When it seemed as if I could bear no more.

The fault must partly have been in me.

The bird was not to blame for his key.

And of course there must be something wrong

In wanting to silence any song.

Tal warned the whole school about the upcoming annual Ninth grade hike and how metaphorically, the ninth graders are leaving and it is time in those two day for the sevies and eighties to step up, or as Tal describes it: “Man up and Woman up!” The younger students have the time (and opportunity) to be the great leaders and sculptors of the school. Yared told us that his leg injury was getting better and he could run and bike now. We cheered. We stared in horror at the giant smiley face Edgar had drawn reading: Happy Harold!

In math, some of us learned about inequalities, linear equations, the tangent ratio, secant, central, and inscribed angles, the law of sines and cosines. There were some exasperated groans, and some cheers of joy at a finished sheet of homework torn out of a notebook left on the big room table along with orange peels, empty organic yogurt containers, guitar picks, a graduated flask belonging to the science room, and Song of Myself, by Walt Whitman.

The whole school has been recording the weather for a few weeks, and growing genuine Vermont pond-weed and algae in our reeking fish tank. We observed the atmospheric pressure on our inaccurate home-made barometer. We tested vacuums and iron filing in test tubes. We turned in our water molecule cartoon strips and Nitrogen labs.

After lunch, we watched a short movie, as a conclusion oo Reed Martin’s project on the Koinonia commune. The name of the movie “Briars in the Cotton Patch”, was a metaphor for what Koinonia was in the world and outside society. They were people unafraid of community integration between blacks and whites. With each advancement of the community, it was described as a thorn into the majority of the society, the cotton bush. People cried as they remembered the days of the commune and the feelings it gave them. Members philosophized and contemplated what it meant to take the teachings, the spirit, and the body of Jesus Christ, and bring in to life in whatever form on earth. People came to Koinonia for an escape from the material world, to be closer to the land, and for an alternate life of Christianity. Clarence Jordan, the founder and spiritual leader was the drive behind this thorn into the southern United States.

“We succeeded spiritually, not statistically.”

“I won’t step aside, but I won’t create trouble.”

“God, Let me die with my working boots on.”

“We will fear mediocrity over failure.”

-all quotes by Jordan

There are two kinds of revolt. Both of which can achieve something, on some level, but the big mistakes are made by making the wrong decision about what kind of revolutions are efficient and truly Eutopian. One kind is violent, loud, directly powerful. Another is quiet, revolt of the mind, carried into society with reasonable caution, but rightly stubborn in the belief. Clarence Jordan, I think was the second. An emotionally raging pacifist with not only a vision, but a place where humans, divided by judgment of society, can live in harmony like brothers and sisters.

I believe, in an abstract sense, the majority of the time, that this is what NBS is supposed to be. There are no confines but greatness, and we should want to be and actually be working, seeking, striving for this greatness with every thing we do. We are not revolutionaries, not yet, but before we fight, we must understand which way to do it, and most importantly, WHY.

TUESDAY:

Morning meeting: Claire is excited about her science project on the climate of Hawaii, and has made a great beginning on her comic about two botony nerds in on Vacation in Hawaii, and on a deeper level, she read Isabel’s story, and saw how many “stages” or “phases” that Isabel has gone through over her three years at NBS and Claire was thinking about what her own phases would be. Tal swaggered about, showing off himself about the school grounds, feeling superior about his Koinonia Commune T-shirt, saying he was wearing his Clarence Jorden get-up, since he was wearing torn jeans as well. Sophie read the poem “Alone with everybody” a favorite of mine, by the one and only: Charles Bukowski.

the flesh covers the bone

and they put a mind

in there and sometimes a soul,

and the women break

vases against the walls

and the men drink too much

and nobody finds the one

but keep looking

crawling in and out

of beds.

flesh covers

the bone and the

flesh searches

for more than

flesh.

there's no chance

at all:

we are all trapped

by a singular fate.

nobody ever finds

the one.

the city dumps fill

the junkyards fill

the madhouses fill

the hospitals fill

the graveyards fill

nothing else

fills.

Reed Messner gave his project on the Renaissance. Reed’s project was totally amazing.

He told us about the spiritual awakening and revelation of Francesco Petrarch, at the summit of Mt. Ventoux. He was disgusted with the past ages of medieval times when society thought the human could not evolve anymore. He named this the “dark ages. ”Petrarch was the first humanist, and father of the Renaissance (meaning “rebirth” in French) The Renaissance movement spread through Europe and spawned the beginnings, and exponential development of drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture, science, religion, literature, poetry, and a new society spreading from Florence, Italy, across Europe (partly owning to the physical closeness of cultures in Europe, Tal said—). We learned about architects, Vetruvius and Brunelleschi, and artists famous from their work in that time period and artistic rivalry, Michaelangelo (“Sistine Chapel,” “David”) and Leonardo Da Vinci (“Mona Lisa,” the flying machine, miscellaneous writings and inventions) Artists weren’t truly respected until the Renaissance, and at this time, they also developed a genius step toward painting with the discovery of linear perspective, making a 2 dimensional surface appear to be three dimensional, or showing an object in 3D form. This discovery started the offspring of Realism in the art world. We looked at the Mona Lisa, which used the golden ratio to show the parts of the head proportionally. And in the “Last Supper”, the lines of linear perspective point directly to the center of the painting, which is Christ’s eye. Tal noted that the windows in the background of the “Last Supper” were mimicked by Picasso in “Guernica,” which, in it’s own way, is a contemporary re-play of the Last Supper. Reed told us that Leonardo was working with a telescope, 400 years before one was actually used in astronomy officially.

In the time of the Renaissance, even more so than the development of society in terms of art, and literature, in my opinion, was the fact that at this time, people began to understand science, astronomy, and human body, but religion (mostly Christianity) also developed, parallel to science. They operated intertwining through the science of art and spirit of it. That is an ultimate middle path.

In the afternoon, the eighth and ninth grade lit. class watched a documentary about Picasso’s “Guernica,” painted during the Spanish civil war, as a response to the bombing of the twon of Guernica in 1937 in the Spanish Civil War. “Guernica,” the painting is an important part in our current literature book, My Name Is Asher Lev. The film showed a few out of hundreds of pre-Guernica sketches, with only a few shapes, and objects that came through in the final piece. Picasso made the painting, which is 11 feet tall and 26 feet long, in eight stages, using structures of diagonal, horizontal, and vertical lines to divide the surface into fractions. It showed the development of each character and object, and separated the figures in triads that are grouped together mostly based on expression and symbolic meaning. We looked in detail at the flower in the hand of the dead soldier, the arrow pointing up from the ground, the windows (in fact much like those of the last supper), the horse covered in newspaper, the lamp at the top of the painting, slightly resembling a human eye, the raging bull, symbolizing power, destruction, and blind rage, the Pieta-like weeping mother and her dead child, the woman with the oil lamp, the staggering woman looking at the light from an open door, and closed door and doorknob at the far right, the shades of light, the hollow neck of the dead soldier, and his hand, resembling the hand of Jesus in Grunewald‘s Crucifixion interpretation where the hands of Jesus are clawing, and violent looking, rather than traditional crucifixions, where the hands are open, gracefully. Picasso used in this monumental painting bits and pieces of strategy and style of past artists. He took all things in that current world and compacted it into a painting, full with every bit of meaning, left to decipher, again and again.

In science, we prepared for our Ultimate Frisbee match by watching videos of professional ultimate players, and then playing our match in the rain. NBS played Vermont Commons in Burlington and lost 12-4, but VCS trains all year. Traditionally in ultimate Frisbee, each team sings a song after the game. We did a version of “London Calling” by The Clash, and changed the lyrics a little to fit the circumstances:

Vermont Commons in a faraway town

Now that war is declared-and the battle come down

Vermont Commons, when the disk went up

Came out of the cupboard with the ultimate huck.

Vermont Commons, now don't look at us

Their flick is fantastic, left us in the dust

Vermont Commons, see we ain't got no swing

Not when their D keeps us on the wing.

CHORUS

The ice age is coming, the disk is zooming in

They got them some wheels and they're determined to win

A nuclear error, but we have no fear

Vermont Commons by the lake...-and we live…down by the river

(The North Branch River in Ripton, that is)

WEDNESDAY:

Nathan and his family’s foreign exchange student from Spain, Yoann, had an argument (about cereal we think), but Nate said that even though they were mad at each other at the beginning, the fight brought them closer together. Anneke went home and read books about Guernica, which covered her whole desk. Multiple people said how much Reed’s project inspired them to be really good on theirs, including myself, and I already gave mine. We talked about how things (projects in this case) can seem large, overwhelming, and lifeless, but when you begin to learn about it, the vast worlds of knowledge behind each idea, fact and feeling, the stuff (whatever it may be) comes to life because it is understood.

In the afternoon, we went to the basement and did our somewhat unstructured art class. Most of us were in the stage of making large self-portrait collages using shredded, dusty, and out of date (by at least 30 years) National Geographics and world book encyclopedias, using faces, textures, objects, 1979 Cadillac car logos, Jimmy Cliff pictures, burning buildings, dolphins, sunrises, mules, rural Chinese farm fields, and a whole lot of sticky (and mostly dried out) YES (brand) paste to hold it all together.

THURSDAY:

Cassie presented her project on Communism and McCarthyism. The basic definition of is “a system where financial and social status is common among all people” and all “property is held in common.”

Cassie told us about the meaning of the symbol of communism, the red star with a hammer and sickle. The red color represents defiance, and the five points of the star represent the five basic ideas of communism, or the five fingers on the hand of a worker. The hammer symbolizes industrial progress and power, and the sickle represents the importance of the common agricultural worker. Some of the first communist ideas were in Sparta, where everyone lived for the city, not for self or family. They fought. Plato was also considered by some to be one of the first people with communist ideas. At that time, some religious groups (even some Christians) had some communist attributes.

“Nature has given every man the right to the enjoyment of an equal share in all property” -Francois-Noel Babeuf

FNB was a radical anarchist in post Revolutionayy France who advocated for all property to be held in commona and to use violent methods to over-throw the new system. He is considered to be the first anarchist, as well as a communistic thinker.

Cassie told us about the official beginnings of the communism idea, starting with Karl Marx. Marx, as a young man, aimed to conquer the world with poetry, but soon realized that he was not a productive poet. In fact, according to Cassie, he was a crappy poet. After this failure, he began writing for revolutionary papers until these were shut down by the government. He wanted to commit to his communist ideas and make them known, because he believed religion was a drug, and a temporary solution to personal and societal problems and unhappiness. The real problem is the reason why people feel the need to put all faith into a religion and not into the real problem. Marx believed that with communism, the high and low classes could both benefit from one thing rather than the higher class becoming higher, and the lower class staying stationary. Marx met Friedrich Engels, and together they wrote multiple books about communism, and most famously, they were the authors of the Communist Manifesto.

We talked about the Russian Revolution, led by Vladamir Lenin and Leon Trotsky in 1917, and the first and second Red Scares. We learned about “The Hollywood 10”, 10 actors, all accused of being communist, and projecting communist ideas through their films. Tal warned us that we will be learing all about the Red Scare, McCarthyism, the Wobblies, and the American Communist Party when we are in High School.

In the afternoon, in the 8^th and 9^th grade lit. Class, reading My Name is Asher Lev , we talked about Asher being in Paris and finally, making the biggest decision as an artist. He painted a crucifixion, but he is an observant Jew. He is causing his family pain by painting of Christian form, but the crucifixion he paints, called Brooklyn Crucifixion I is of his family. His mother, torn apart, supporting both Asher’s Fathers work in building Jewish yeshiva schools, and Asher’s passion for art. She worked for both of them. We said that even though this painting might cause pain to his family on the surface, it is a painting of appreciation. A painting of thanks. A painting of love.

“HeHeHehejfcnbchhhdhdhdhjj” (editor’s note: this is probably something typed by Dalia while Henry was working on the email.)

FRIDAY:

In our morning meeting, I read “Summit and Gravity” by Octavio Paz:

There's a motionless tree

And another one coming forward

A river of trees

Hits my chest

The green surge

Is good fortune

You are dressed in red

You are

The seal of the scorched year

The carnal firebrand

The star fruit

In you like sun

The hour rests

Above an abyss of clarities

The height is clouded by birds

Their beaks construct the night

Their wings carry the day

Planted in the crest of light

Between firmness and vertigo

You are

Transparent balance

-Octavio Paz

(Editor's Note: Tal thinks Octavio’s poem expresses an idea we are all trying to achieve, and may yet achieve, the place where “wings carry the day/ planted in a crest of light between firmness and vertigo.”) And Nathan read a poem I had sent to him the previous night by Charles Bukowski called “16 bit intel 8088 chip”

16 bit intel 8088 Chip

With an Apple Macintosh

you can't run Radio Shack programs

in its disc drive.

nor can a Commodore 64

drive read a file

you have created on an

IBM Personal Computer.

both Kaypro and Osborne computers use

the CP/M operating system

but can't read each other's

handwriting

for they format (write

on) discs in different

ways.

the Tandy 2000 runs MS-DOS but

can't use most programs produced for

the IBM Personal Computer

unless certain

bits and bytes are

altered

but the wind still blows over

Savannah

and in the Spring

the turkey buzzard struts and

flounces before his

hens.

I thought of this poem after talking with Tal about the ongoing war at NBS about which word processing device is better, The PC, or The Mac. (Tal said he has been listening to this ridiculous argument by his teen students for 23 years, since he first started teaching). This poem was read in attempt to show the universal meaninglessness of technology.

Later, we worked with Rose, making signs out of glass and concrete for our future human size sundial. And everyone else worked on the soon to be garden with shovels, rakes, spikes, trowels, garden carts, and Nepalese hoes. Tal repeatedly asked who was the best peasant. He said being the best peasant was a very high honor.

In the afternoon, Tal read two stories. The first was written by Aylee. Before reading, Tal bluntly announced:

“This story is about dandelions.”

Aylee wrote about how when she was little, she had an obsession, a love for dandelions. It meant spring, freedom, happiness. And she got older, and realized that it was not fitting for a sixth grader to sit in a field and look at dandelions and four leaf clovers. But in seventh grade, she got an email from some classmates. Thee email was a list of things her classmates “loved”. She remembered her love of dandelions. She saw that all those years the dandelions had not changed. She had and in her changing she he had moved to new things, and was now coming back.

“The silence is crazy with noise, if only I could hear it” said Aylee in her story. (editor’s note: Isn’t this what we are trying to do?)

Then we read Sarah’s story. It was about her two childhood friends, Anneke and Aylee. She was only ever with one at a time, and this made Sarah feel like her heart was in two places, but when Anneke and Aylee came together, at NBS in seventh grade, they became best friends, leaving Sarah out. Sarah judged them for their “dippy-nes” and superficiality, but came to realize that there were layers of meaning under them, but they were covered by everyday life, and Sarah wanted to love their best selves, just like she wanted to preserve her best self. She couldn’t be strictly against “superficiality” all of the time. She couldn’t judge clothes, or lipstick, or music. The outside never changed the inside. Her fear of “dippy-ness” was not from other people. It was self-inflicted, it was fear of losing herself, for an internal reason.

The world is not changing. We are. NBS is not changing. The students are. We are nearing the end of the year. For some, the end of their NBS career. It’s scary. To leave a place that has provided comfort for three years. But if we didn’t have to move on, then our time wouldn’t be precious. We can only take, in our precious time, what we have learned, into whatever new place, internal or external, we find ourselves in.

Hootenanny at the NBS

By Reed Messner

Monday morning we had our morning meeting, and it was the first day in two weeks that Luke was there. He came back from Barcelona, Spain. So the first moment we had him back in our presence, he showed us his Barcelona t-shirt that had a mule on it, and he explained the difference between mules and donkeys because Catalonia’s animal… representative, is the mule.

“When a donkey and a horse hook up, they make a mule; but a Mule can’t reproduce because it doesn’t have any junk. That’s what my mom said!” He explained. We all laughed. (editor’s note: we have a suspicion that this is not exactly how Luke’s mom said it.)

I read a poem, “We are Many” by Pablo Neruda. Here it is:

Of the many men who I am, who we are,

I can’t find a single one;

they disappear among my clothes,

they’ve left for another city.

When everything seems to be set

to show me off as intelligent,

the fool I always keep hidden

takes over all that I say.

At other times, I’m asleep

among distinguished people,

and when I look for my brave self,

a coward unknown to me

rushes to cover my skeleton

with a thousand fine excuses.

When a decent house catches fire,

instead of the fireman I summon,

an arsonist bursts on the scene,

and that’s me. What can I do?

What can I do to distinguish myself?

How can I pull myself together?

All the books I read

are full of dazzling heroes,

always sure of themselves.

I die with envy of them;

and in films full of wind and bullets,

I goggle at the cowboys,

I even admire the horses.

But when I call for a hero,

out comes my lazy old self;

so I never know who I am,

nor how many I am or will be.

I’d love to be able to touch a bell

and summon the real me,

because if I really need myself,

I mustn’t disappear.

While I’m writing, I’m far away;

and when I come back, I’ve gone.

I would like to know if others

go through the same things that I do,

have as many selves as I have,

and see themselves similarly;

and when I’ve exhausted this problem,

I’m going to study so hard

that when I explain myself,

I’ll be talking geography.

In the afternoon, Tim Woos, a composer and a former student of the North Branch School came to show a presentation on music.

“What is music?” he asked us. He then played three songs on the radio/amplifier- A Beethoven symphony, “Master of Puppets” by Metallica, and “Party in the USA” by Miley Cyrus.

“What is music? These three are so different, but they all are music.” Tim said.

We thought for a minute or two, and we all had trouble coming up with an exact answer.

“It’s a collection of notes put together towards one goal, the one song,” somebody blurted.

“But what makes those songs music, and the sound of the scuffling of these papers not music?” Tal asked.

“It doesn’t have to be notes though, it is any sounds. All sounds are music,” somebody added.

Tim told us that his definition of music is “organized sound.” Other songs that Tim showed us and explained to us were compositions by Jennifer Higden, Tim’s upcoming teacher, who won the Pulitzer Prize two weeks ago, a hyper accordion playing, a composition of cars and trucks driving by, and they all sounded amazing, and made us feel something different. He also played an amazing piece by Schumann that caused us to hear music differently.

At the end of the day we all drew pictures, then split up into groups. Tim then instructed us to compose a simple piece of music based on our pictures. My group, consisting of Luke, Nathan, Sophie, Rose, Rio, Henry, Isabel and I, composed a piece using a wheelbarrow, marbles, a pizza pan, sand, a piece of PVC pipe, and a lawnmower. The other groups used vocal sounds, a poem, beat-boxing, pencils, a Frisbee, 6 orange cones, two pieces of crumpled paper, their hands, and many humming noises

Music is simply organized sound. Why does music, just a certain collection of notes and vibrations in the air, make you feel a certain way? One sound would make you feel happy and peppy, and make you want to dance. Another set of notes would make you feel sadness. Some make you feel scared/frightened, angry, inspired. Why is that?

Tim said effective music is music that makes you feel exactly what the composer or performer was trying to express.

First thing Tuesday Morning Meeting, Tal thoroughly explained the physics of his large hiking backpack as he got ready for the annual ninth-grade hiking/backpacking trip (which I will be participating in this year). He asked everybody if they thought he was cool. We all know the answer.

Henry said that he was thinking about Tim’s project the other day, and he was feeling bad that he didn’t have as broad of view of music. He thought about it from the perspective of a student, and as a fellow musician.

“There is so much to know… There are so many worlds to enter.”

Nathan then read some quotes from Neimueller and the Tao Te Ching instead of a regular poem.

During All-Tal, Ollie gave us his project on Eugenics. The first thing he did, was tell us (this isn’t actually true, what he says. It wa just an experiment.) that there will be no romantic relationships between any kids who have divorced parents, because their relationships will be more liable to fail. He also said that next year the soccer team will have tryouts and only the top 12 kids will make the team, to save money on the socks and jerseys the school has to buy. He named all the “bad note-takers” in the school and said that they must give their notebooks to the good note-takers. They have been deemed “un-improveable.” In the new Perfect NBS, there will be no resources or time spent on the “weaker ones.”

Everyone knew that this was just an experiment, but we were mad anyway. We argued about the changes, and wanted to know who got to decide, and rebelled. As clever as young Oliver is, that is what he wanted to happen, for people to understand what Eugenics was like to the people involved, to see what it might be like to have one group of deciding who is fit and who is not.

He gave us loads of information about various people who were for eugenics, different examples from the past, information about genetic engineering, and at the end we watched a clip of the original Frankenstein movie and we responded to questions.

I think nothing on earth, nothing even in the mind, would make something like eugenics OK. The idea is a great idea; to make the human race perfect. But the way they thought they could obtain the goal is completely unacceptable and disgusting. Hitler killed 6 million Jewish people in the search of this goal, but it is an awful and disgusting thing to think about.

During science class, we had two beakers, one on top of the other. One contained very hot water, while the other one was very cold and had ice in it. The two created fog/a small cloud in the space between. We then tried dropping a lit match into the water to create more of a cloud, and tried the same with aerosol. All of the ninth grade boys, including myself, shouted like monkeys when the cloud appeared. (editor’s note: what is this monkey shouting by ninth grade boys?) It was very fun.

On Wednesday morning Lydia read “Returning” by Wendell Berry. Here it is:

I was walking in a dark valley

And above me the tops of the hills

had caught the morning light.

I heard the light singing as it went

among the grass blades and the leaves.

I waded upward through the shadow

until my head emerged,

my shoulders were mantled with light,

and my whole body came up

out of the darkness, and stood

on the new shore of the day.

Where I had come was home,

for my own house stood white

where the dark river wore the earth.

The sheen of bounty was on the grass,

And the spring of the year has come.

Wednesday afternoon we continued on our self-portraits. So far we have done non-dominant hand drawing, a closed eyes drawing, a complete pencil drawing, a charcoal drawing, a collage for thank-you cards, and we are currently working on a complete, big collage. We have worked in silence, to keep everyone completely focused, and making their best work (because, well, everyone will shout like monkeys and baboons if given the opportunity)

Thursday morning Edgar said he shadowed at the high school yesterday, and he sat in during a literature class. “It was completely different than what we did here. It wasn’t worse necessarily, It was different questions, and the teacher just talked, and here we all talk, and… I don’t know. It was just totally different.

Simon also said that on the way to school today there was somebody new on the bus, an adult, and he didn’t know whether to talk to them or not. But they got off the bus before he could say anything. He said that you should take every chance you have, even if it is about something miniscule before it is too late. He said if you are going to do something, do it. Don’t just sit there thinking about it.

On Thursday morning Miles read “Hate Blows a Bubble of Despair” by E.E. Cummings:

Hate blows a bubble of despair into

hugeness world system universe and bang

fear buries tomorrow under woe

and up comes yesterday most green and young

pleasure and pain are merely surface

(one itself showing, itself hiding one)

Life’s only and true value neither is

Love makes the little thickness of the coin

Comes here a man would have from madame death

nevertheless now and without winter spring?

She’ll spin that spirit her own fingers with

And give him nothing (if he should not sing)

How much more than enough for both of us

darling. And if I sing you are my voice.

Reed Martin presented her project on the Koinonia. For those of you who do not know what that is, it is a farm community started by Clarence Jordan in 1942, in Georgia, that is still going on today. At first it was a utopia containing both African-Americans and whites living together, being paid equal wages, in the south, before the civil rights movement. Compared to all the racism around it, it was such a revolutionary idea. They were antagonized and shot at and even bombed by the KKK; Tal’s grandfather’s feed store was even bombed by the local people because Tal’s Grandfather refused to participate in the boycott against Koininia. A lot of people were scared. away. But in the 70’s the hippies came on over and gave them more residents again.

For an activity, Reed broke us up into groups of twos that don’t usually talk to other. We then had to come up with three things that we both believed in and have in common. We needed a sacred belief, some sacred activities, and a sacred hope (for humanity). After we wrote them down we shared them to the class.

On Friday morning, Aylee told us that Reed and Bryn’s grandfather had died. We talked about what their love must have been like for seventy years. Sophie came in late so Luke read a poem called “Last Days” by Mary Oliver.

After that, Eric generously set out into the woods about two miles away a treasure hunt/orienteering test. We were given a paper that had three GPS points. We had to enter them in, and go to each one. My group was the orange group. I was with Tal, Isabel, Hannah, Aylee, Luke, Rio, Claire and Evan. Evan was absent, so we were a man down. There were Orange, Yellow, and Pink groups. The first point our group went to was up about a half of a mile into the woods. We had to climb a little cliff, but there was no danger involved. There were three markers- one for the orange team, one for the yellow and so on. The clue then said go 100 meters at 30 degrees. We used the compass then Tal took the paces. We found the markers and it said “bread” on it. At first we thought the bread oven, but then we remembered that Eric said the three code words you find scramble out to be “crappy hippy poetry.” We would then use that “poem” as the password to the computer, which had the last clue on it. So we set off onto the second clue, which was almost a mile away from where we were. So we walked until we got to the spring, then we met up with the yellow group at the clue. Easy. This clue said “Earth.” Bread and Earth. Hmm….We immediately got away from the yellow group because we had already passed one group who was coming back from the clue we were getting, on the way there. When we got to the coordinates of the third clue we were at the cemetery in Ripton. We found the Gravestone the clue on the paper Eric gave to us led us to. The women’s last name was Lovett. So we immediately thought that love-it was the final clue. We quickly got back to the school then we got the computer. We saw nobody there, so we assumed we were the first group back. We were very happy. I started typing in all the combinations in random order until I got something. No luck. Isabel then said that she remembered something about the some of the lady on the gravestone’s life who was a man whose last name was “cook.” I tried the combination “cookearthbread,” then I got in. That was some crappy hippy poetry. We all cheered. We ran out into the woods to were the clue told us to go, and the yellow group closely followed us. It was a race at the finish. After about 10 minutes of searching, somebody in my group finally found it. We all were happy. The yellow group followed and got second place. Then the pink group closely followed after the yellow and took the third place prize. We all got some of Eric’s homemade cookies! And lay around in the sun for lunch.

All and all, after everyone getting wet and bit by bugs, getting attacked by swamp monsters, a day with all the jolly people, all the mellow people and all the leader-y people, confusion and impatient-ness, following other teams before us’ footprints, it was an awesome time.

After lunch we talked about Ollie, and how he really is a great student under his sometimes outward appearance of not paying attention.

Rider said, “When we have a conference about you, you are just being involved, it is so hard to be mad at you, or even think that you are doing something wrong when you are so “right on” to the conversation. You know?”

After we talked about Ollie, Henry, the headmaster’s son and ninth grader, announced that he wasn’t going to go to the high school next year, he was going to a private school called Buxton in Williamstown MA. He said he is really excited about it. Hannah was really sad that she wasn’t going to see him as often anymore and she had a lot of tears because she has known Henry since he was three. Everyone tried to cheer her up, and it eventually worked. Tal told a story about him and his friends when they went off to college, and then he explained how, whenever Henry came into town, he would only have to call up his friends, get a couple of guitars together, and they could have a hootenanny. Everyone thought this word “hootenanny” was funny, and so Tal told them another funny word for a wild good time, “wing-ding.” Nathan also said he is going to miss him, and said that every time he comes back, they have to go biking together. I will also miss him dearly, but I know it is what he wants to do and where he wants to go, and nobody should even think about denying him that.

I have enjoyed writing this, as it had made me so much more aware of how much we learn every week and how much goes on. So much happens that it is impossible to collect everything to show you, but this is a lot of it. I hope you enjoyed reading it.