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With the spring term comes sun, flowers, and the dance showcase. Widely-anticipated and always well-attended, it combines student and professional choreography. Explained Director of the Dance Program Jennifer Whitcomb, “The spring concert is usually the largest one all year.” This year’s concert features 17 pieces: 11 choreographed by professional choreographers and six by Deerfield students. The spring showcase is also unique in that it features our senior dancers in their last major dance performance at Deerfield. Most of the seniors will perform solos or duets, such as a piece by Hillary Brooks ’02 for Alex Comerford ’10, a collaborative ballet piece by professional Carrie Towle and Emily Swarts ’10 for Swarts, and a funky piece for Rachel Teague ’10 co-choreographed by professional Amy Diaz del Rio and Teague. What exactly will the pieces be like? Ms. Whitcomb said, “We all feel better with the onset of spring, and many of the dances in the show reflect that change.” In her opinion, “We have a nice balance of playful pieces and thought-provoking ones.” While the showcase will bring great happiness to the community and to the dancers, it is a bittersweet event for all the seniors after a long history of Deerfield dance. “There are mixed emotions, but of course I am excited! It’s also our last show here, which is really depressing,” said Swarts. For better or for worse, four- year-senior dancer Daryl Cooley ’10 will not be able to participate in the Spring Showcase because she qualified for the Interscholastic Equestrian Association’s National Horseback Riding Competition in Georgia. However, she will be back for the Parents’ Weekend showcase to star in a duet with Sam Gray ’10, among other pieces. The showcase will take place on April 22nd and 23rd starting at 7:30 p.m., and a shorter version of the original concert arrives on April 30th at 8:00 p.m. for Parents’ Weekend.

Local author, teacher, and writer Peter Smith is this year’s Lambert Fellow. Named in honor of former English Teacher Bryce Lambert, the fellowship furthers the possibility of writing careers to students and faculty. Mr. Smith will head to campus on the week of April 26. Mr. Smith’s impressive writing career made him a perfect candidate for this year’s Lambert Fellowship. According to his official resume, Mr. Smith edited a major publication (O the Oprah Magazine), taught at the graduate and undergraduate college level, and published numerous works of fiction and nonfiction in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Life, O the Oprah Magazine, and many others. Mr. Smith also ghostwrites, or writes for pieces of which he was not the official author; he has ghostwritten nine pieces throughout a variety of fields. Ghostwriters often receive no credit for their work as predetermined by a contract made between the author and ghostwriter. Contributions can range from writing entire chapters of books to editing already completed works. In Mr. Smith’s case, he was hired by other authors to add on to their work. Even beyond having an exciting career, Mr. Smith’s ability to relate to the boarding school life made him a more appealing candidate. As English Teacher Sonja O’Donnell, who identifies the Lambert Fellow each year and brought Mr. Smith to DA, asserted, “He knows us.” Having grown up as a ‘faculty-brat,’ Mr. Smith attended Milton Academy and went on to study in France, in Australia, and finally at Columbia University. He now lives in the Pioneer Valley, allowing him to connect with our community on a deeper level. Another advantage of Mr. Smith’s local proximity to campus is his availability to share his knowledge. Contrary to most speakers who make one speech and leave, Mr. Smith will be available the majority of the week and also speak at school meeting on April 27. He will potentially visit classes, meals, and other activities. Mrs. O’Donnell describes him as a “fine communicator” and a “wonderful person to invite into the classroom.”

I have always felt at home in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. My dad grew up summering in the Whites, my grandpa was the executive director of the Appalachian Mountain Club, and I have been climbing them since the age of five. From what my dad has told me of my grandpa, he was at one with the mountains. Long after his hiking days were over, he would spend hours sitting on the porch of his cabin, Echobank, with his binoculars, watching people walk across the Gulf Side Trail. He could even pick out the regulars 3000 feet above, and identify them by name. My grandpa spent most of his professional life trying to preserve the land in the Whites and wrote about the men who almost destroyed it in his book Logging Railroads of the White Mountains. He closes the introduction by saying, “The rest of this book tells the story of the logging invasion – the combatants, the campaigns, the victories, and ultimate defeat, as the mountains were saved and put in trust for future generations.” One-hundred years after “the mountains were saved,” I stood atop Bondcliff, a mountain in the middle of the Pemigewasset Wilderness. The Pemigewasset Wilderness is 45,000 acres of protected forest, created by the White Mountain National Forest after years of unregulated logging ravaged the beautiful landscape. The WMNF was created by the Weeks Act of 1911 that allowed the government to purchase land in watershed areas in order to protect the natural ecosystems. Perhaps it was out of respect for my grandpa and the relationship he had with the mountains that I found myself on Bondcliff, overwhelmed by the most beautiful view in the Whites. As I stood in the center of the Pemi, it seemed as if all signs of human activity were absent from the panorama. A massive expanse of green spread out in front of me. Five hundred feet below, a bird sang in the valley. Clouds formed and slid up the cliffs, gaining speed as they rose out of the trees. As they leapt over the lip of the summit ridge, they curled over, falling back down into the evergreens. But as I looked closely at the mountains, something unnatural blemished their sides. Long, spiraling lines ran up the slopes, like a topographical map inscribed in the trees. I realized they were the logging roads, their marks still on the land. Nearly one-hundred years after it was turned into a “wilderness,” the Pemi showed the scars of the industry that nearly destroyed it. The history of the venerable peaks played itself out before me. The one-hundred foot Chestnut trees towering out of the valley. The loggers moving in; entire mountains stripped of their behemoths and roads carved into their sides. Finally the new trees sprout out of the naked slopes, rising from the rubble, their roots reclaiming the rotting stumps. The Pemigewasset is an example of the rapacity of industrial America. It illustrates the conflict between Manifest Destiny and the desire to preserve the land’s natural beauty. The scars on the peaks of the Pemi remind us of the hubris that comes with the belief that the land is ours to do with what we want. In American history that belief has driven us to exploit much of the pristine land of our country. The Pemi is an attempt to alter that belief and say we would rather return it to its unspoiled state. But even time can’t erase the scars of the loggers, at least not 100 years. That day atop Bondcliff, I realized my love for the mountains was completely entwined with my Grandfathers belief in preserving them. The day my dad got a call saying my grandpa’s heart was failing, he had a vision of my grandpa taking off his pack on top of Mt. Adams with all of the Whites spread out around him. My grandpa succeeded in passing on his conviction for the mountains to my dad and my dad passed it on to me. I knew that day that if I were to honor my grandpa, a man I never knew, but felt completely akin to, in any way it would to be to continue to “put [the mountains] in trust for future generations.” Sources: Belcher, C. Francis. Introduction. Logging Railroads of the White Mountains. By Belcher. Boston: Appalachian Mountain Club, 1980. 16. Print.

Laddie Trees ’11 broke his own school record of 166.5 feet by throwing 196 feet, just five feet shy of the New England record on April 10, 2010. Last spring, in his first-ever track season, Trees was chosen on a whim to fill a vacant position in the javelin throw. In only two throws, Trees stunned his coaches, teammates, and many others as his newly-discovered talent took flight. “The first [throw] was a flop,” said Trees, “but the second one was about 140 feet.” Without any formal technique training and with only a few practice throws, Trees had already qualified for the New England championship by throwing over 120 feet. “That just doesn’t happen,” said javelin coach Conrad Pitcher. “The guys who throw that distance have been throwing for five or six years.” Mr. Pitcher and Co-coach Mark Ott acknowledge Trees’ athleticism as the reason he has had such success in such a small amount of time. “He has a unique combination of flexibility, quickness, and strength,” said Dr. Ott, “and he instinctually has the right form.” “He’s about as natural a javelin thrower as you can find,” added Mr. Pitcher. Trees’ natural throwing ability has been tested before. He played baseball for much of his life, sometimes playing pitcher—although he admits he had some “accuracy problems.” With further instruction on javelin technique over his first season, along with his natural talent, Trees was able to throw 166.5 feet at the New England championship meet on May 15, 2009 —enough to land him second place in New England and claim the school record. This year, “I’m throwing even farther,” says Trees. “I hope I have a shot [at winning the New England championship] since I didn’t lose by much last year.” Aside from significant individual achievements, Trees’ presence on the team has also been a catalyst for a stronger overall javelin program. “Laddie is a great teacher; he has a great attitude and he always tries to help [his teammates],” said Dr. Ott. “His attitude has drawn in more people to throw the javelin.” Dr. Ott said that javelin throwers, Rico Welch ’10 and Rajab Curtis ’12 often “try to compete with Laddie,” and have improved and may score significant points for the team this year greatly because of Trees’ presence. As the new track and field season kicks off, Trees is also trying his hand at long jumping, hurdling, and pole-vaulting. There is no telling if Trees will have a similar influence on these other events, but as Dr. Ott put it, “he’s going to be fun to watch.”

The only ninth grader in the Advanced Dance Ensemble, Lena Mazel ’13 is poised and controlled, devoted and passionate. “Lena was allowed into it [The Ensemble] not only because of her prowess as a dancer, but also because of her maturity, dignity and grace,” said Director of the Dance Program Jennifer Whitcomb. Mazel started dancing at age three and became seriously committed at eight. Mazel admitted, “I quit one year to play baseball and try gymnastics,” but she soon returned to dance. Her styles of expertise are ballet and modern, but she dabbles in jazz as well. Mazel laughed, “I’m awful at hip-hop!” Her dance training is extensive, not surprisingly. She started at the Brattleboro School of Dance in Vermont and has also danced at The Rock School in Philadelphia. For this April’s dance showcase, Mazel is choreographing a piece for her first time. While she does not aspire to become a professional choreographer, she plans to dance professionally. For a dancer engaged in academics, summer can be the most critical time for improvement and professional training. This summer, Mazel will attend an American Ballet Theatre (ABT) summer intensive in Alabama. Her favorite dance performance is Le Corsaire, “Hand down, my absolute favorite! It’s about pirates. How can you go wrong with that?” she exclaimed. And for such an experienced dancer herself, she ought to know.

There’s the Buckingham Palace, the Taj Mahal, and then there is Deerfield’s own Bewkes House. Katie Walker ’10 resides in what the inhabitants call “the palace.” Her room used to be dorm resident and math teacher Pamela Bonanno’s office before the house was converted into a dorm. Walker has two huge windows on either wall, a porch, high ceilings, hard wood floors, a fireplace, a small couch against one wall and two built-in shelves on either side of her desk. Walker’s additions to the décor only add to the room’s splendor. She has four large blown-up photos of her friends covering the empty wall space, two paintings resting on the symmetrical shelves, and an enormous beach scene poster curving around the wall above her bed. A circular pink rug in the center of her room warms the polished wooden floors. She has moved her desk on the opposite side of the room to block the boarded up fire place. Walker has plans to make use of her porch: “We have decided to establish a Bewkes dorm lemonade stand” named “From Your Suite,” she said. She also has ambitions for setting up a grilling station with John Zurlo ’10. “I have the biggest single and the best room on campus,” boasted Walker, adding, “my room was a total surprise; I had no idea I would be getting something like this.” Despite her own good fortune, she assumes the room will be converted into a double.

You enter the exhibit and go through a gigantic cartoon hell-mouth from one of Burton’s movies, Trick or Treat . Moving through a hallway installed with small televisions, you watch episodes of The World of Stainboy , animation inspired by Tim Burton’s book of poems. Tim Burton is a famous and out-of-this world filmmaker, illustrator, painter, photographer and sculptor. His huge success with the recent film Alice and Wonderland , a fantasy adventure film combining live action and animation, as well as his movies Sweeney Todd , Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , and Batman , have people lining up at 9:00 a.m. to get tickets for 11:30 a.m. Why all the fuss? With over 700 drawings, photographs, puppets, film clips, and more, the exhibit captures Burton’s diversity as an artist and his morbid yet fascinating style. “The Tim Burton exhibition was absolutely brilliant. It was nothing like what I had ever seen before,” commented Sofia Taylor ’13, who recently visited the exhibit. His style is unique, and the exhibit captures it perfectly. The paintings stand out against black lights, and eyeballs and monsters decorate a carousel. Even the brilliant artwork from his teenage years shows his signature style of dark humor, and many of these early works have inspired characters in Burton’s films, such as The Nightmare Before Christmas . In addition to art and film, the exhibit contains props from his various film productions, including objects from Beetlejuice , a mask from Batman , a sweater from Ed Wood , and even a life sized Johnny Depp dressed as Edward Scissorhands. Tim Burton at the Museum of Modern Art closes on April 26, 2010, and is an experience like no other, showcasing the brilliance of this morbidly and diversely talented artist.

Over spring break, a group of Deerfield students, faculty, and faculty children journeyed to the small neighborhood of Las Charkas, Dominican Republic, to build a house through a non-profit organization called Cambiando Vidas, or “Changing Lives.” I can still remember how I received the email from Ms. Cabral, upon which I acted spontaneously, eager to travel and exercise my Spanish-speaking muscle. A few weeks later I received another email from Ms. Cabral, expressing her desperate need for a complete team, and accordingly extending application deadlines, but again I didn’t pay much attention to it. Yet, come spring break, I found myself boarding a plane headed to San Juan. After a long flight, we arrived at the work site the next day, faces already moist with sunscreen and thin films of sweat in the eighty-degree weather, and were told to go set our backpacks down inside a neighboring house where a smiling elderly woman greeted us. Relishing the opportunity to finally use my Spanish, I gave a quick wave, accompanied by a short “Hola,” to which the woman responded, her bright brown eyes sparkling; she smiled wider and exclaimed, “Hola, mi hijo!” As I marched towards a pile of bloc, heavy rectangles cement blocks and men making mezcla, a mix of sand, water, and concrete, I was determined to make this trip mean some grand change to the elderly woman and her community; I never suspected that I would leave the D.R. as utterly changed as the family receiving the house. Deerfield has an interesting way of expressing its lack of interest in serving the larger community. We manage to show how unappealing foregoing spring break is for majority of the student-body, through our unwillingness to take risks and reply to the adventurous emails that Ms. Cabral had to send multiple times before we managed to assemble a complete team. Such situations express our utter indifference to the dire need of a family, who, without the aid of a full team, would have struggled to raise their three daughters in a scrap-metal hut, hardly worthy of being called a home. Those students who wonder why they would want to take a week from their typical spring break are, in fact, the perfect candidates for Cambiando Vidas. In reality, the purpose of the program is not only to change the lives of the family members, who have gone from having little more than a stove and septic tank, to having full indoor plumbing, windows, and separate bedrooms for parents and children, but also to change the students who go on the trip. I applied for the program, not knowing what to expect, and whispering to myself that the reason that the students who last year thought the program was life-changing was merely because they hadn’t lived their lives to the fullest. Yet over the course of the program I got in touch with a more compassionate, empathetic side of me. I realized that adventure and culture were not rooted in merely traveling to a Hilton resort in Aruba, but immersing oneself in another culture, creating that emotional bond. I had been the one not living my life to the fullest. On our last day of working, the heat was slightly more bearable, the buckets of cemento at the new working site felt lighter, and my conversational Spanish had never been better. But it was time to go. As I grabbed my bag, for the last time, from the woman’s small, one-room house, I gave a resolute “Adios” and she just smiled and replied “Adios mi hijo.” Her eyes rested on mine and I realized that even though she might not remember my name she would always remember the Americano who hardly spoke Spanish, but who lent a hand in building a house for members of the community that she cherished. I would remember the smiling, kind old woman who had inspired me to do it in my new vida cambiada. So I ask, Deerfield: are you living your life to the fullest?

The proctor-selection process began and ended with aggravation among the junior class. After attending mandatory leadership training meetings on three consecutive Thursdays during faculty break, juniors without interest in proctorship became irritated. As for the majority of the students who applied to become proctors, the continual postponement of the release of the decision created stress and anxiety. On top of intense junior schedules, college advising meetings, and standardized test prep, the last thing stressed students needed was to hear that the decisions had been postponed two days. Proctor decisions were supposed to come out the morning of Saturday, April 10. This date then moved to Sunday evening. After receiving an email on Sunday that promised more information later that night, juniors opened their inboxes a few hours later to find that decisions would not come out until Monday. We realize that there is no perfect way to conduct a proctor selection, but we wish that the communication had been more consistent and less stressful.

Most books are words, words, words, with, perhaps, an occasional illustration. When was the last time you looked at a book in which the illustrations were equally important as the words? Graphic novels differ from comic books in their literary merit and seriousness of purpose. For example, graphic novels such as Maus , Persepolis , and Ghost World grapple with serious political, social, and psychological struggles. Yale University Press recently released the graphic novel, An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories . Topics range from sobering accounts of sexual abuse to masterfully-crafted reflections on the subtle nuances of everyday life. The variety of perspectives and styles is eclectic and inspirational. In Jessica Abel’s short story, “Jack London,” a reference to the author of Call of the Wild and To Build a Fire , the protagonist reflects on the beauty of a Chicago snowstorm. Every illustration captures her emotions, while the pen-and-ink snow scenes resemble Georges Seurat’s pointillist paintings. The prose in “Jack London” is lyrical and fluid. For example, the protagonist meditates, “…I feel like Jack London. We are a city full of arctic pioneers, bonded by the harsh conditions.” Adrian Tomine, in “Optic Nerve,” communicates psychological soupçons through his realistic facial expressions and gestures. The familiarity with characters in “Hazel Eyes” is intimate and intriguing. The intensity of Tomine’s characters is at once striking and relatable, undoubtedly due to the effective combination of prose and images. This anthology showcases the best feature of graphic novels: the creation of an alternate reality through the synthesis of written and visual components. The characters have depth and intricacies that are intrinsically human. With graphic novels, the pictures are as important as the words.

On the first day of softball practice, nineteen girls arrived on the field ready to play. After the first cuts in two seasons, the girls’ team now fields a roster of fifteen, eight of whom are new students, seven of whom are freshmen. Many people have been surprised to hear of the reform the team has undergone. Previously, the girls’ softball team, although playing at the varsity level, cared more about having fun during practice than working hard and winning games.Last year, the girls went 2-10. This season, with cuts being made and a higher level of intensity added to each practice, the team has transformed itself into one dedicated to improving their overall skills and abilities. One major difference between this years mentality is how they practice. “We run. A lot,” said senior Shea Horn ’10. A typical practice begins with a warm-up of Indian sprints, followed by stretching and a light toss. From there, the girls take soft-toss, a hitting drill where one person lightly tosses the ball to the batter–“a great way to practice good hitting fundamentals,” said shortstop Jackie Tavella ’11. Practices then are divided between infielders and outfielders so that both can practice their positions. Despite the team’s recent setback with the injury of Anna Pettee, who was hit in the head with a softball, the team remains excited and hopeful about the year. “It seems like a promising season and we have a great team; we are all excited to see what happens,” said Flora Donovan ’12.

Although the Greer Store is due to close for renovations on May 1, there will be no need for waterworks this spring. We’re used to congregating nightly at the Greer, when in fact, there is much more to the Pocumtuck Valley than we see and use. Spring term is meant to be spent outside…and not just outside of the Greer. Certainly we will miss the Greer and everything that comes with it, but let us use this as an opportunity to explore and take advantage of everything that is around us—especially with beautiful spring weather. Explore Historic Deerfield and other lesser-known sights nearby. Starting May 1, we will have the opportunity to experience Deerfield and its surroundings, and without the Greer, there is no excuse not to explore the area. Fro-Yos, popcorn, and Juke Box music can be easily replaced; valuable memories and experiences that come from being outside cannot.