By Dewey! First in a Series Featuring New Books at SDL

Melvil Dewey was a cranky old guy who believed in spelling reform, among other things, and his Dewey Decimal System is not loved as much as formerly, but school and public libraries still find it useful for our materials. I'd like to feature some of our new books by Dewey categories.. For today, we'll look at the first category, 000-099, called "Generalities." This is where books about computers go, since Dewey presumably had never dreamed of such things.

Our new book in this section in Tim Berners-Lee's Weaving the Web: the Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web By its Inventor. (HarperSanFrancisco, 1999) Besides being the inventor of the Web, Berners-Lee is a professor at MIT and a MacArthur Fellow and was named one of the100 greatest minds of the 20th century by TIME Magazine.

For a little perspective on the Web: our current students have never been aware of a world without it. On the other hand, when I was in library school at UNC in the early 1990s, the Web was so new that PhD candidates in Information Science were giving lectures on it to us Masters' candidates. Now we all take it for granted and use it without thinking about it.

This promises to be a fascinating account of a force that pervades our personal, work and academic lives. Especially now that we are at a point where commercial forces and government entities rattle their spears over possible control both content and access, while true Web believers are adamant in their desire to see it remain free and open, it's good idea for those of us who care about open access to information to understand what's behind it all.

Highly recommended for anyone concerned about the future of information.

Seven buses and activity vans took 220 boys and assorted faculty to the Asheville School on a brilliant October Saturday afternoon. Warmed by the sun cooled by the crisp breezes, and fueled by tons of tailgate feasting at home, fans were dressed in green, painted green, glittering in green, carrying banners and flags and a blue skeleton waiting to be hanged or hatcheted. We cheered, we yelled, we schmoozed, we held our breaths (though the suspense was only for play, since we knew we’d win). At the end of the game we rushed the field, then returned to school tired but happy. In the evening we danced under swirling colored lights to the primitive beats of the sound system. Boys and girls mingled, boys danced alone, girls danced in groups, boys and girls dances in lines and together. It was an evening for young energy. The island boys laid down fancy moves, Asian boys met Asian girls, a mysterious well-rounded apparition in a bathrobe and flipflops proved light and agile on his feet and blew us away, little brothers danced and teased and mingled in, a quiet boy found a girl who thought he was fascinating and they talked all evening, ping pong balls got squashed underfoot, and chaperones prowled the perimeters, some bored, some tsk-tsking, some cheering on the Red Sox on the silent TVs overhead. Four hours of dancing, and it was time to say good bye for another year and to start looking to the winter.

P.S. On Sunday I asked one of the Korean boys how he had liked the dance. He said, "I went, but I didn't stay very long. The dancing they were doing wasn't like the etiquette dinners. I thought it would be more like that."

The Stage is Set

The school is ready, the faculty's ready, the students are ready, the kayaks and tennis courts and soccer field are ready -- in fifteen minutes we have Convocation, to open the 2007-2008 school year!

Go Greenies, start on the new adventure!

Spring Fiesta

The wonderful Parents' Council put on a festive luncheon for faculty and staff this Tuesday. We enjoyed the colorful decorations and the fabulous food. Thanks, parents! Enrique and Lupe (pictured here) were present, overlooking it all.

Student Artists

Several student paintings and photos created under the direction of art teacher Betty Weil were shown recently in the local "Artists of Tomorrow" show and are now hanging in Wetmore Hall. Here are a few, including an American flag treatment by one of our German students.

Summer Reading Bookfair

We're trying a new approach this year to summer reading. Based on a model used by other independent schools and shared with us by Woodberry Forest, here's how it works. Students will attend a book fair today in the Beaver Student Center to browse the books offered by sponsoring faculty. Each participating faculty member has chosen a favorite book for summer reading. Students will sign up with the teacher to read that book over the summer, and maybe share reactions through blogs or email. When school opens again in August we will have a series of social evenings during which a group of students will meet with the teacher to wrap up discussion of their book.

This year's choices include fiction and non-fiction, old and new titles, long and short, ranging from John Steinbeck's classic The Pearl to Michael Pollan's recent The Omnivore's Dilemma.

Here's a list of the available choices and their faculty sponsors:

The Omnivore's Dilemma: a Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan (sponsor Kirk Brown)

The Pearl, John Steinbeck (Vance Brown)

Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card (Dan Chase)

In the Heart of the Sea: the Tragedy of the Whaleship "Essex," Nathaniel Philbrick (Erich Cluxton)

Lady on the Hill (the story of the Cecil family and the Biltmore House), Howard E. Covington, Jr. (Scott Greene)

The Cruelest Miles, Guy and Leney Salisbury (Leigh Harris)

Angels and Demons, Dan Brown (Brandon Herder)

The Alchemist, Paolo Coehlo (Laura Hope-Gill)

Wolf Whistle, Lewis Nordan (Jane Hyde)

Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (Ryan John -- new faculty in English!)

Grievances, Mark Ethridge (Donna Kinney)

A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole (Mary Landingham)

Hardball, Chris Matthews (Jackson Mabry)

A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson (Bryan Martin)

Art of War, Sun Tzu (Jeff Miles)

The Road, Cormac McCarthy (Mary Jane Morrison)

No Excuses, Kyle Maynard (Duncan Parham)

Six Hours One Friday, Max Lucado (Bruce Stender)

The Legend of Bagger Vance, Steven Pressfield (Denis Stokes)

The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (Lyn Tillett)

Shoeless Joe, W.P. Kinsella (Craig Tredenick)

Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe (James Uhler)

The Manchurian Candidate, Richard Condon (Betty Weil)

This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald (Michael Zito -- new faculty in English also!)

A First Draw!

As you probably know, Matt Horwitz is our unofficial but undoubted campus chess champoin. Beating Matt is a goal of a lot of the guys, and one day recently, Marcus managed his first draw. Congratulations, Mmarcus!