Mae Emerson ’19 and Fernanda Ponce ’19 were among 11 area students honored with Peacemaker Awards by the Interfaith Council of Franklin County and Traprock Center for Peace and Justice last week at Greenfield Community College. Emerson said it was a “nice surprise” to be nominated for her work coaching Special Olympic athletes in floor hockey. Ponce said she was “shocked and honored” to be recognized for her work addressing issues of gun violence, immigration, cultural traditions, and institutional racism. Read More. » 

The Boston Musical Intelligencer writes, “Deerfield Academy junior and third-year Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra member Meriel Bizri led off with a strikingly secure and beautifully inflected account of the first movement of the Sibelius Violin Concerto. She has chops aplenty for virtuoso display but chose a work of deep musicality. Fresh from a Boston Symphony Orchestra prize-account of the movement, she obliged on this afternoon with probing poetry, intense emotion, and spot-on technique. As the well-drawn unsettling truculence from the orchestra resolved to noble resignation, Bizri returned with a luscious benediction.”
Read more.»

Astronomers have captured the first-ever picture of a black hole utilizing a network of telescopes around the globe. Read about Katie Bouman, the 29 year-old

The renowned poet W. S. Merwin died on Friday at the age of 91. Merwin visited Deerfield Academy in October, 2011 while he was poet laureate

The discovery of blue pigment in the teeth of a medieval skeleton in Germany is challenging widespread assumptions about the production of illuminated religious texts. It has long been assumed that monks, rather than nuns, were the primary producers of books throughout the Middle Ages. Recent historical research, however, has challenged this view, revealing that religious women were not only literate but also prolific producers and consumers of books. Read More.»

“Previous Moon missions have landed on the Earth-facing side, but this is the first time any craft has landed successfully on the unexplored and rugged far

On this day in 1872, the HMS Challenger set sail from England on a four-year scientific survey that laid the foundations of modern oceanography. This

“This past Tuesday several hundred attendees — including religious leaders, scholars, ambassadors, members of Congress and the UN’s Secretary General — braved a chilly night to come to the National Cathedral to see King Abdullah receive the 2018 Templeton Prize for his work in calling Muslims — and all people — to identify and pursue common purposes.
Designed to be larger than the Nobel Prize, the Templeton Prize was established in 1972 to honor those who affirm life’s spiritual dimension through insight, discovery, or practical works.”

The Oxford Word of the Year is a word or expression that is judged to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the passing year,

The basement of The New York Times, lovingly known as “the morgue,” has an impressive archive of some six to eight million photographs dating back to the late 1800s. And with the help of Google Cloud, these historic images and the data, much of it hand written, will soon be digitized.

“Calculating ratios for different types of pronouns in civil rights speeches. Counting the frequency and proximity of vowel sounds, consonant sounds and rhymes in rap music.
Those are just two examples of the projects students have taken on in Peter Nilsson, Anna Gonzales, and Ben Bakker’s “Distant Reading” course at Deerfield Academy.” Read More.

Feranmi Okanlami M.D., M.S., Class of 2003, is leading a groundbreaking effort in collegiate adaptive sports at the University of Michigan. Feranmi is assistant professor of family medicine and physical medicine and rehabilitation, and knows the benefits of adaptive sports firsthand: a former academic All-American athlete himself, he graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School in 2011 before suffering a spinal cord injury in 2013. He is drawing on his own experience to develop a top-flight adaptive sports program that prioritizes diversity and inclusion.

If you’re in Michigan, consider joining Feranmi for a drop in game of wheelchair basketball on 7/16, 10/7, 11/18, or 12/2.

Stay tuned for a spotlight on Feranmi in the fall issue of Deerfield Magazine, and we are also looking forward to welcoming Feranmi back to campus as a guest speaker for Martin Luther King Day activities in the winter term!